The End of ‘Marriage’
At The New York Times, Laurie Shrage considers the ramifications of making marriage a privatized domain. While this theory is appealing because “caregiving units are defined in terms of the commitments of ongoing support that adults make to each other and their dependents, rather than in terms of the sexual/romantic attachments that happen to exist between a pair of adults,” this proposal is not feasible because it allows marriage to be governened by the rules of private institutions, like churches, whose “discrimination might conflict with public values.”