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Marriage as a Message: Same-Sex Couples and the Rhetoric of Accidental Procreation

By Alliance Alert

Kerry Abrams and Peter Brooks, Marriage as a Message: Same-Sex Couples and the Rhetoric of Accidental Procreation (June 9, 2009). Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1416770 "This article examines the accidental procreation argument through the lenses of anthropological theory, history, literature, and constitutional law. We conclude that marriage has sometimes been used to channel male heterosexuality into reproduction, but to argue that this goal is the sine qua non of marriage is to vastly oversimplify its history in both law and culture. We then undertake a genealogy of the accidental procreation argument and speculate about its possible effects on the institution of marriage. We suggest that if courts continue to insist upon a definition of marriage that is so distinct from the actual practice of the institution, the law may actually be less and less influential in regulating intimate behavior."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on August 28, 2009 (boomark / email).