Instead of being tempted to limit marriage, let us extricate the government entirely from the business of marriage. Let it be a civil union for all, and let marriage be a personal matter between you and your faith. That way there is room for gay marriage, Wiccan handfastings, and yes, traditional Christian marriage between one [...]
[10 Dec 2010]
A law against spousal rape. A law against spousal murder. A paycheck of her own. And egalitarian marriage. Once women got political power, they insisted on being protected by the ordinary privileges of citizens of a modern democratic society rather than a husband fenced in by the medieval kind of marriage to which Douthat and [...]
[10 Aug 2010]
Our work must be not just about marriage equality, it should also be about equal marriages, and about equal rights and security for those who opt out of marriage altogether. From Melissa Harris-Lacewell‘s post Reflections on Marriage (via Twanna). Yes. Read the whole thing. Harris-Lacewell captures most of my fears and concerns about marriage and [...]
[8 Apr 2010]
A funny thing happens when people find out you are engaged: that’s the first thing anyone wants to talk about. The old Monday morning small talk question “How was your weekend?” has been replaced by “So, have you set a date yet?” People — women especially — beam and bounce, and in some cases, squeal [...]
[8 Mar 2010]
And in the absence of alternative models of masculinity, many low-income men will compensate for their lack of respect and resources by cultivating a hypermasculine identity that scorns traditional definitions of responsible manhood. Stephanie Coontz, in “For Women, Redefining Marriage Material: The Good and the Bad” on the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog.
[22 Feb 2010]
One common bond linking McCarthy, Jackson, and Stein — three women featured in Elaine Showalter’s history of American women writers, A Jury of Her Peers — is that their spouses allowed them the time and solitude required to imagine, write, and produce. Even if their spouses’ approaches were controlling or their motivations questionable, the writing [...]
[1 Feb 2010]
To find out that I could be a singular human being and also be in a marriage was the only reason that our marriage was able to survive. Julie Powell in Salon.com’s Becoming a piece of meat
[8 Dec 2009]