Marriage proposals : questioning a legal status

Bibliographic Information

Marriage proposals : questioning a legal status

edited by Anita Bernstein

New York University Press, c2006

  • : cloth

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents of Works

  • The meaning of marriage / Martha Albertson Fineman
  • Taking government out of the marriage business : families would benefit / Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller
  • What place for marriage (e)quality in marriage promotion? / Linda C. McClain
  • Anthropological perspectives on the abolition of marriage / Lawrence Rosen
  • Marriage as a "badge and incident" of democratic freedom / Peggy Cooper Davis
  • The state of marriage and the state in marriage : what must be done / Mary Lyndon Shanley

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The essays in Marriage Proposals envision a variety of scenarios in which adults would continue to join themselves together seeking permanent companionship and sustenance, linking sexual intimacy to a long commitment, usually caring for each other, and building new families. What would disappear are the legal consequences associated with marriage. No joint income tax return; no immigration privileges like the "fiancee visa" or the right to bring in a husband or wife; no special statuses for prison visits or hospital decisions; no prerogative to remain silent in court by claiming "confidential marital communications"; no pension entitlements; no marital benefits and detriments regarding criminal or civil liability. The anthology makes a unique contribution amid the two marriage furors of the day: same-sex marriage and the Bush Administration's "marriage movement" (that marrying is good and more marriages would be better for society). Abolishing the legal category of marriage is the only policy suggestion in current American discourse that speaks to both causes. Activists on both sides of the same-sex marriage fight, along with marriage movement partisans, all seek improvement through law reform. Marriage Proposals gives them a viable reform-abolition of marriage as a legal status-for fighting battles in the courtroom and the streets. Contributors include Anita Bernstein, Peggy Cooper Davis, Martha Albertson Fineman, Linda C. McClain, Marshall Miller, Lawrence Rosen, Mary Lyndon Shanley, and Dorian Solot.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Playing Innocent: Childhood, Race, Performance * 1 Tender Angels, Insensate Pickaninnies: The Divergent Paths of Racial Innocence * 2 Scriptive Things * 3 Everyone Is Impressed: Slavery as a Tender Embrace from Uncle Tom's to Uncle Remus's Cabin * 4 The Black-and-Whiteness of Raggedy Ann * 5 The Scripts of Black Dolls Notes Index About the Author

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