At 92, Gloria Steinem REVEALED Why She Broke Her Own Rule About Marriage

For forty years, Gloria Steinem was the most famous unmarried woman in America — and she was never vague about why. Marriage, she said, had been legally designed for "a person-and-a-half." You became a semi-non-person the moment you signed. She called the institution the model American slavery law was built on, and she never once softened it. Then, on a Sunday morning in September 2000, at 66, she got married. The country treated it as a punchline. The word hypocrite did a great deal of work that week. And almost nobody read the statement she actually released — one paragraph, issued through her own political committee, containing the entire answer. SOURCES & FURTHER READING Her 1987 remarks on marriage law ("designed for a person-and-a-half") Her full statement announcing the marriage, released through Voters for Choice (September 2000) David Bale's statement on the Cherokee tradition (September 2000) UPI, ABC News and CBS News contemporary coverage of the September 3, 2000 ceremony Reporting on David Bale's death, December 30, 2003 Her later remarks on her marriage and on not having children