Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender / Edition 1

by Robin West

Overview

Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender examines contemporary debates about the meaning and value of marriage. The book analyzes arguments for traditional marriage, including those of neonaturalists, utilitarians, and communitarians or virtue theorists. The volume also considers a range of feminist, welfarist, and liberationist arguments for ending the institution altogether. It evaluates two major reform movements: one focused on expanding marriage to include same-sex couples and the other focused on the use of law to render marriage more internally just. The book concludes with a plea to activists to redirect "marriage equality" movements toward the creation of an entirely secular "civil union law" that would respect a broader range of private life-long commitments, including but not limited to same- and opposite-sex couples, without threatening the role of religious marriage in the lives of those who embrace it and without penalizing nonparticipants.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594513893
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/15/2007
Series:	Initiations: Sex and Gender in Contemporary Perspective Series
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter 1 A Look in the Rearview Mirror; Chapter 2 In Defense of Marriage (“When I’m Sixty-Four”); Chapter 3 Marriage and Its Critics (“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”); Chapter 4 Just Marriage (“We Can Work It Out”); conclusion Conclusion: A Modest Proposal;

Editorial Reviews

"West argues that same-sex marriage proponents should not rule morality out, as the courts have done, but take morality on. She convincingly articulates an affirmative moral case that the ‘good’ of marriage—fostering intimacy and care giving for dependents—applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual couples."
—New York Review of Books

From the Publisher