A focus on the married couple as the paradigmatic form of family relationship and the paradigmatic source of stability is, on this analysis, racist as well as sexist.

Brake terms this privileging of the sexually monogamous committed dyad ‘amatonormativity’, and argues that ‘amatonormative discrimination is wrong for the same reasons that other forms of arbitrary discrimination are wrong’: The similarities between exclusive amorous relationships, friendships, and adult care networks can involve mutual support, intimacy, and caretaking that provide emotional fulfilment and are grounds for moral approbation. But not only do friendships and care networks lack social recognition, their members are systematically subjected to stereotyping and discrimination.121

‘While marriage is being rewarded, other ways of organizing family, relationships and sexual behaviour do not receive these benefits and are stigmatized and criminalized. In short, people are punished or rewarded depending on whether or not they marry.

In other words, the move from tax equality to tax breaks for the married cannot be Pareto-optimal: the benefit for the married can be achieved only at the expense of the unmarried.116

because marriage is a system for discriminating against the unmarried and because rich people are more likely to be married than poor people.

registered partnerships for different-sex couples only.

If the title ‘marriage’ is reserved for different-sex relationships the institution of civil partnerships entrenches the gendered nature of marriage,

marriage reserved for different-sex couples and civil unions available for same-sex couples

ccompaniment to marriage

The symbolic pressure on women to marry, and the idea that they are worthless if unmarried, means that if marriage exists women are better off married than unmarried.

galitarians identify the problem as one of inequality; feminists refine it as patriarchy.

So, to summarize: marriage is an agenda forced upon LGBT groups by the widespread opposition to gay marriage, and while some gays and lesbians choose to marry, it’s not a cause that lies at the heart of the queer community. Marriage flattens out the varied terrain of queer social life and reduces the differences that make queers, well, queer, to legal distinctions that can be ironed out by the strong hand of the law.

Only a pluralist culture that accepts the sexual rights of those who deviate from the heterosexual norm will do this.’

But their increased use ‘risk[s] undermining or weakening the justice-enhancing traditions that women’s rights ad

If equality requires that same-sex couples have the right to marry for love, then it also follows that polygamists have the right to marry for love, and adult incestuous couples have the right to marry for love, such that there is a slippery slope from same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest

it could be a right to marry whichever consenting person you choose,76 or a right that belongs to a couple as couple,77 or the right to marry for love.

McDonough, people ‘are free to argue for the right to marry persons of the same sex, but this must be an argument for a new right, for the right which they want is not “the same” one already possessed by homosexuals’

The philosophical issue at stake is whether equal rights require same-sex marriage or, to put it in reverse, whether restricting recognition to different-sex marriage just is to instantiate unequal rights.

Thus the state recognition of marriage is state intervention in, and control of, the meaning of marriage

But it is unjust if women’s ability to combine work and motherhood, the social bases of women’s self-respect, and the benefits which are associated with marriage, are all dependent on participation in a particular form of sexual relationship.

First, like prostitution marriage is an institution that is largely based on ancient and enduring inequality between women and men, one that stems from and reinforces a gendered society in which women are viewed as objects for male ownership and use.

State-recognized marriage shares many of the meaning-based features of prostitution, even though marriage is not nearly as unjust as state-mandated prostitution would be

Male prostitution does not undermine gender inequality generally.

Including same-sex couples in the category of people who may participate in and benefit from marriage is thus not sufficient to rectify the participatory injustice.

The move to same-sex marriage still excludes people in non-monogamous relationships, and people who are in monogamous relationships but who do not want to solemnize those relationships through the institution of marriage for reasons such as religion, culture, politics, uncertainty, or one person’s reluctance.

flawed and failing if unmarried.

does not have to take account of caring responsibilities, that children are harmed if their mothers work outside the home, and that people should not rely on state benefits

The state recognition of marriage also has implications more broadly, since it shores up the notion of the couple-headed household as ideal family form, which in turn shores up the system that makes children and work difficult to combine—what Joan Williams refers to as the clash between the norm of the ideal worker and the norm of parental care.4

it is connected to tropes of ownership and control that are distinctively marital.

They find that women do more housework than men across the board,

But the status quo, in which marriage is recognized by the state and understood by state and society as the default mode for adult life, means that we cannot draw a neat dividing line between what happens in marriages and what happens elsewhere, in heterosexual or same-sex relationships, in cohabiting or casual relationships, in monogamous or polygamous relationships

They point to a mutually-reinforcing relationship between the fact of material gender inequality (the wage gap) and the marital ideology of husband-as-breadwinner: each apparently justifies and exacerbates the other.

hat domestic violence may be exacerbated by marital concepts of entitlement and ownership.3

that it reinforces the idea that women do most of the housework,

The implication of this critique is that being married makes women worse off

As I argue in this chapter, the best way to meet feminist and egalitarian concerns is to support the abolition of state-recognized marriage

The state does regulate key areas of personal relationships

perfectionist

In the book as a whole I hope to show that perfectionist and comprehensive liberals are wrong to endorse state-recognized marriage as compatible with liberal egalitarian autonomy.

Traditional marriage violates equality. While marriage can be reformed so as to mitigate some of its inequalities, equality is best served by the abolition of state-recognized marriage