Legally Straight: Sexuality, Childhood, and the Cultural Value of Marriage (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814775981)

Argues that cultural conceptions of children - and childhood - played a key role in legalizing gay marriage

Legally Straight offers a critical reading of the legal debates over lesbian and gay marriage in the United States. The book draws on key judicial opinions to trace how our understanding of heterosexuality and marriage has changed. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the cultural value of marriage was becoming tarnished and the trouble appeared to center on one very specific issue: reproduction.

As opponents of lesbian and gay marriage emphasized the link between marriage and accidental pregnancy, the evidence mounted, the arguments proliferated, and resistance began to turn against itself. Heterosexuality, it seemed for a moment, was little more than a set of palliative prescriptions for the worst of human behavior, and children became the victims. It thus became the province of the courts to reinforce the cultural value of marriage by resisting what came to be known as the "procreation argument," the assertion that marriage exists primarily to regulate the unruly aspects of heterosexual reproduction. Cultural conceptions of children and childhood were being put at risk as gays and lesbians were denied marriage, so that writing lesbian and gay families into the marriage law became the better option.

Author: Joe Rollins
ISBN-10: 0814775985
ISBN-13: 9780814775981
Publisher: New York University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/26/2017
Pages: 208
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2018