{"id":195565,"date":"2026-02-26T23:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T23:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/195565\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T23:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T23:19:08","slug":"a-uc-berkeley-professor-explains-the-thorny-history-of-love-sex-and-marriage-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/195565\/","title":{"rendered":"A UC Berkeley professor explains the thorny history of love, sex and marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the first day of his seminar on the history of love, sex and marriage in the United States,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/history.berkeley.edu\/david-henkin\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">David Henkin<\/a>\u00a0introduces UC Berkeley students to a Frank Sinatra song: \u201cLove and marriage \/ Go together like a horse and carriage \/ This I tell you, brother \/ You can\u2019t have one without the other,\u201d Sinatra croons.<\/p>\n<p>Then Henkin asks his students to compare the 1955 tune with a very different text: Chief Justice Anthony Kennedy\u2019s opinion in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/576\/644\/#tab-opinion-3427255\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Obergefell v. Hodges<\/a>, the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage. Even as Kennedy fundamentally changed what marriage in the U.S. could look like, he voiced a sentiment that might seem to echo the 70-year-old Sinatra song: \u201cNo union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the rest of the semester, students dive into the questions that comparison invites: In an age of dating apps, increasing Gen Z loneliness, same-sex nuptials and Instagram-optimized weddings, how much do love and marriage today resemble past ideas about relationships?<\/p>\n<p>The answer, of course, is complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the first day of his seminar on the history of love, sex and marriage in the United&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-195565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}