The right to same-sex marriage: A critique of the leftist critique

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 326-337

  Mayo, David J ^a   Gunderson, Martin ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA DULUTH   (United States)

^b MACALESTER COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247300322     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.00050     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. For conservative positions on same-sex marriage, see Jeff Jordan, “Is It Wrong to Discriminate on the Basis of Homosexuality?";
2. James Q. Wilson, “Against Homosexual Marriage";
3. and Richard A. Posner, “Relations between Consenting Adults: Sodomy Laws and Homosexual Marriage";
4. all in Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds., Same Sex Marriage: The Moral Debate (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996).
5. For thorough defenses of same-sex marriage against various conservative critiques, see William Eskridge, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment (New York: The Free Press, 1996);
6. Richard Mohr, A More Perfect Union: Why Straight America Must Stand Up for Gay Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), esp. chap. 3;
7. and Mark Strasser, Legally Wed: Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution (Ithaca, N. Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1997).
8. Works sympathetic to gay and lesbian activism but skeptical of same-sex marriage include Victoria A. Brownworth, “Tying the Knot or the Hangman's Noose: The Case against Marriage”, Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity 1(1996):91-98;
9. Claudia Card, “Against Marriage and Motherhood”, Hypatia 11(Summer 1996):1-23;
10. Nitya Duclos, “Some Complicating Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage”, Law and Sexuality 1(1991):31-61;
11. Paula Ettelbrick, “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?" OUTLOOK National Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 6 (Fall 1989)
12. reprinted in Suzanne Sherman, ed., Lesbian and Gay Marriage: Private Commitments, Public Ceremonies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992): 20-26 (references to Ettelbrick will be to the reprinted paper in Sherman's volume);
13. Nancy D. Polikoff, “We Will Get What We Ask For: Why Legalizing Gay and Lesbian Marriage Will Not 'Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender in Every Marriage, '" Virginia Law Review 75(1993):1535-1550;
14. and Ruthann Robson and S. E. Valentine, “Lov (h) ers: Lesbians as Intimate Partners and Lesbian Legal Theory”, Temple Law Review 63(1990), part III: 511-541.
15. Richard Nunan, “Legal Aspects of Gay and Lesbian Rights”, APA Newsletters 97(Fall 1997):60-65.
16. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986).
17. Baehr v. Levin, 852 P.2d 44 (1993).
18. See, for example, Eskridge, chap. 1; and Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1995): 202-203.
19. Nan Hunter, “Marriage, Law and Gender: A Feminist Inquiry”, Law and Sexuality 1(1991):9-30.
20. Adrian Alex Wellington, “Why Liberals Should Support Same Sex Marriage”, Journal of Social Philosophy 26(Winter 1995):5-27.
21. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1985): bk. V, sec. 3.
22. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. xi.
23. Card, pp. 5-6; Thomas B. Stoddard, “Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry”, in Sherman, pp. 18-19; Wellington, p. 12.
24. Christine Pierce, “Gay Marriage”, Journal of Social Philosophy 26(Fall 1995):5-16.
25. For a classic feminist critique of marriage, see Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970).
26. For a more recent critique see Susan Moller Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
27. For a recent critique that is related to same-sex marriage, see Card's “Against Marriage and Motherhood."