"There's Something About Marrying" featured the first appearance of an animated same-sex marriage on network television. Television columnist Ray Richmond wrote that the episode was a cultural milestone for "The Simpsons" and that the "issue gay marriage was mainstream to some degree, but now that staff has deigned it worthy of the show it is interwoven into the popular culture. "The Simpsons" bestowed upon something a pop culture status it never had before, simply by being ripe for a joke." John Kenneth White, author of the book "Barack Obama's America", similarly called "There's Something About Marrying" a cultural barrier breaker.