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Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond Interstate Recognition In The Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Gary J. Simson
Beyond Interstate Recognition In The Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Gary J. Simson
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The national same-sex marriage debate has been dominated for the past decade by the interstate recognition issue. This article seeks to shift the focus of the debate to same-sex marriage prohibitions themselves and their incompatibility with several limitations of federal constitutional law.
After showing the legal irrelevance of the Defense of Marriage Act to the interstate recognition issue, the article addresses the proper resolution of that choice-of-law issue through the lens of a well-known New York Court of Appeals decision. In that case, despite New York's ban on uncle-niece marriage, the New York high court - one of the most …
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 …
'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 …