Book description
As states across the country battle internally over same-sex marriage
in the courts, in legislatures, and at the ballot box, activists and
scholars grapple with its implications for the status of gays and
lesbians and for the institution of marriage itself. Yet, the struggle
over same-sex marriage is only the most recent political and public
debate over marriage in the United States. What is at stake for those
who want to restrict marriage and for those who seek to extend it? Why
has the issue become such a national debate? These questions can be
answered only by viewing marriage as a political institution as well
as a religious and cultural one.
In its political dimension, marriage circumscribes both the
meaning and the concrete terms of citizenship. Marriage represents
communal duty, moral education, and social and civic status. Yet, at
the same time, it represents individual choice, contract, liberty, and
independence from the state. According to Priscilla Yamin, these
opposing but interrelated sets of characteristics generate a tension
between a politics of obligations on the one hand and a politics of
rights on the other. To analyze this interplay, American
Marriage examines the status of ex-slaves at the close of the
Civil War, immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, civil
rights and women's rights in the 1960s, and welfare recipients and
gays and lesbians in the contemporary period. Yamin argues that at
moments when extant political and social hierarchies become unstable,
political actors turn to marriage either to stave off or to promote
political and social changes. Some marriages are pushed as obligatory
and necessary for the good of society, while others are contested or
presented as dangerous and harmful. Thus political struggles over
race, gender, economic inequality, and sexuality have been articulated
at key moments through the language of marital obligations and rights.
Seen this way, marriage is not outside the political realm but
interlocked with it in mutual evolution.
"A splendid contribution to the scholarship of politics and
marriage. . . . An exemplary work in a neglected field."-Anne
Norton, University of Pennsylvania
Priscilla Yamin teaches political science at the University of
Oregon.
