Legally straight : sexuality, childhood, and the cultural value of marriage

Resource Information

The work Legally straight : sexuality, childhood, and the cultural value of marriage represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Biddle Law Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Legally straight : sexuality, childhood, and the cultural value of marriage

Title remainder

sexuality, childhood, and the cultural value of marriage

Statement of responsibility

Joe Rollins

Creator

• Rollins, Joe, 1961-

Author

• Rollins, Joe, 1961-

Subject

• Sex and law
• Same-sex marriage -- Law and legislation
• Children and sex
• History
• Same-sex marriage -- Social aspects
• Sex -- Social aspects
• Marriage -- Social aspects
• Sex and law -- United States
• Sociological jurisprudence -- United States
• Children and sex
• United States
• Marriage -- Social aspects
• Same-sex marriage -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History
• Sociological jurisprudence
• Sex -- Social aspects

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

"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"--Book jacket

Member of

• Critical America

Additional physical form

"Also available as an ebook."

Cataloging source

YLS

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Critical America