Bringing Up Baby: Adoption, Marriage, and the Best Interests of the Child
Who should care for children when their biological parents cannot? This is a question of potentially explosive dimensions under the proposals considered in this journal as to who the first (and hopefully last) legal parents will be for newborn children. Some of these proposals would potentially place drones of children...
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Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter to the Nurturing of Children
Americans are talking more about marriage now than ever. Although much of the recent discussion has been sparked by the Massachusetts Supreme Court's recognition of same-sex marriage, the discussion do not end there. They extend to foundational questions about the proper role of the state, if any, in supporting and...
"Getting the Government Out of Marriage" Post Obergefell: The Ill-Considered Consequences of Transforming the State's Relationship to Marriage
To say after U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision extending the right to marry to same-sex couples that the simmering dispute over marriage turned into a "raging inferno" would be an understatement. Within hours of Obergefell v. Hodges, Texas Senator Ted Cruz called its release :some of the darkest 24 hours in our...
Marriage of Necessity: Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty Protections
Since the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Hollingsworth c. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor, the number of states recognizing same-sex marriage exploded. Even though the Supreme Court "stopped short of deciding whether the Constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage," the Court's basic vindication of...
Governments around the world continue to struggle with how to accommodate religious minorities in an increasingly pluralistic society. In February 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury called for a "plural jurisdiction" in which Muslims could choose to resolve family disputes in religious tribunals or in British...
The Perils of Privatized Marriage
Matters of Conscience: Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage from the Healthcare Context
It is difficult to ignore the parallels emerging between same-sex marriage and the recently renewed debates about the limits of conscience in healthcare, sparked by refusals to dispense emergency contraceptives. Both subjects are deeply divisive, and in both, persons of good will are saying "why should I have to give up...