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What Place For Marriage (E)Quality In Marriage Promotion?, Linda C. Mcclain
What Place For Marriage (E)Quality In Marriage Promotion?, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
The place of marriage in a just and fair constitutional democracy reverberates as one of the most challenging questions posed in debates over family law and policy. Should government properly support and promote marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, as the proxy for the form of family best able to undergird our polity by allowing realization of the goods associated with family life and carrying out the important functions society assigns to families? Or is marriage's privileged place undeserved because it is an imperfect and inadequate proxy for these purposes. This article argues that, although …
Undercover Other, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Undercover Other, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay argues in favor of legally recognizing same-sex marriages by exploring the similarities in passing between members of same-sex marriages/relationships and interracial marriages/relationships. Specifically, this Essay unpacks the claim that the ability of gays and lesbians to pass as heterosexual distinguishes the ban on same-sex marriages from former bans on interracial marriages. Part I of this Essay first describes policy-based critiques of a Loving-based argument for legalizing same-sex marriage, or as one scholar has coined, of playing the Loving card by analogizing the racism that motivated anti-miscegenation statues that the Supreme Court struck down in 1967 to the anti-gay …
The Evolution - Or End - Of Marriage?: Reflections On The Impasse Over Same-Sex Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain
The Evolution - Or End - Of Marriage?: Reflections On The Impasse Over Same-Sex Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
The debate over legalization of same-sex marriage implicates the question of whether doing so would signal the end - or destruction - of the institution of marriage, or instead would be an appropriate evolution of marriage laws that is in keeping with the ends of marriage and with relevant public values. This essay comments on an earlier published debate on that question: Special Issue: The Evolution of Marriage, 44 Family Court Review 33-105 (2006). The essay contends that the appeal to preserving a millennia-old tradition of marriage against destruction fails to reckon with the evolution of the institution of civil …
Some Abcs Of Feminist Sex Education (In Light Of The Sexuality Critique Of Legal Feminism), Linda C. Mcclain
Some Abcs Of Feminist Sex Education (In Light Of The Sexuality Critique Of Legal Feminism), Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
This essay offers some ABCs for a framework for sex education informed by feminist and liberal principles, in contrast to the conservative sexual economy underlying abstinence-only sex education. It embraces affirmative governmental responsibility to foster sexual and reproductive agency and responsibility and stresses the aims of capacity, equality, and responsibility. An adequate program of sex education should also address how gender role expectations and stereotypes may stand in the way of adolescents developing capacities for responsible self-government and acquiring a sense of personal agency with respect to intimacy and sexuality. The Essay then evaluates such a feminist project in light …
'God's Created Order', Gender Complementarity, And The Federal Marriage Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain
'God's Created Order', Gender Complementarity, And The Federal Marriage Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
Does marriage, in the United States, need the protection of an amendment to the federal constitution, which would enshrine marriage as only the union of a man and a woman? In answering "yes" to this question, sponsors and supporters of the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment (FMPA), in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have made various appeals to the gender complementarity of marriage: (1) opposite-sex marriage is part of "God's created order;" (2) procreation is the purpose of marriage and has a tight nexus with optimal mother/father parenting; (3) marriage bridges the "gender divide" by properly ordering heterosexual desire …