Same-Sex Marriage

Linda McClain's work is always worth taking seriously, whether or not, in the end, one agrees. See her new book, The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility (Harvard, 2006).  If you are interested in the controversy over same-sex marriage, read on ...

"The Evolution - or End - of Marriage?: Reflections on the
Impasse over Same-Sex Marriage"
Hofstra Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-28
Family Court Review, Vol. 44, p. 200, 2006

Contact: LINDA C. MCCLAIN
Hofstra University - School of Law
Email: [email protected]
Auth-Page: http://ssrn.com/author=233178

Abstract: http://ssrn.com/abstract=930989

ABSTRACT: 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 marriage that has already occurred.
Invocations of gender complementarity between parents as
essential to child well-being also conflict with the growing
recognition in family law that children's best interests can be
served by gay and lesbian parents. Canada's path toward same-sex
marriage suggests that impasse need not be inevitable. In the
United States, the impasse stems in part from the problem that
same-sex marriage serves as an emblem of everything that
threatens marriage.