Production
"There's Something About Marrying" was written by co-executive producer J. Stewart Burns and directed by Nancy Kruse as part of the sixteenth season of The Simpsons. Work on the episode started after the 2004 San Francisco same-sex weddings, a period in early 2004 when the city was issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This served as the Simpsons staff's inspiration for "There's Something About Marrying". The plot point where Springfield tries to increase tourism by marketing towards the LGBT community also had a basis in reality. An example is Fort Lauderdale, which became a popular tourist destination for gays and lesbians in the mid-2000s. Executive producer Al Jean said they were interested in doing the episode because they could explore the various characters' different positions on gay marriage while remaining neutral. "Lisa thinks it's good for civil rights. The reverend of the local Protestant church is opposed to it. Other people think tourists will come to town. Mayor Quimby wants the money. We don't take a position as much as explore everybody's positions," he commented.
Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, stated that the staff wanted to out Patty as gay because portraying her as a "love-starved spinster seemed old" on the show. There had previously been hints about Patty's orientation. For example, in the season thirteen episode "Jaws Wired Shut" she is part of the Springfield Gay Pride Parade's "stayin' in the closet" float, though only her voice was heard and she was not seen.
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“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)