Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law (Queer Ideas)

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Part of the Queer Ideas series, edited by Michael Bronski
QUEER IDEAS—a new series of LGBT hardcovers that address important intellectual questions facing the movement.

A persuasive argument for why married couples, gay or straight, should not receive special rights denied to other families

The problem with American law, Nancy Polikoff asserts, is that marriage is the dividing line between those relationships that matter and those that don't. A woman married to a man for nine months is entitled to Social Security survivor's benefits when he dies; a woman living for nineteen years with a man or woman to whom she isn't married is left without government support.

Beyond Marriage grapples with a pressing topic—the fight for marriage equality—but significantly moves the discussion forward by focusing on the larger social and political issues of marriage and family law. Polikoff reframes the family-rights debate by arguing that marriage should not bestow special legal privileges upon couples because people, both heterosexual and LGBT, live in a variety of relationships—including unmarried couples, single-parent households, extended biological family units, and myriad other configurations. These relationships, like marriage, are about building and sustaining economic and emotional interdependence and nurturing the next generation. Polikoff shows how the law can value all families, and why it must.

"A much-needed intervention in the contemporary debate about marriage and family. Polikoff's argument is provocative, illuminating, and original."
—John D'Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
Nancy D. Polikoff is professor of law at American University Washington College of Law.

"Polikoff mobilizes an impressive array of legal history and contemporary court cases to show how marriage, whether same-sex or heterosexual, has ceased to be the only place where people incur long-term obligations. She argues vigorously that our society needs to find new ways of determining when legally-enforceable responsibilities and entitlements have accrued in interpersonal relationships."
—Stephanie Coontz, author, Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage