Marriage Reform Research Articles

Counter-Mobilization against Child Marriage Reform in Africa

Legislating a minimum age of marriage at 18 has stirred counter-mobilization in some, but not all, countries where religious or traditional institutions enjoy constitutional authority. To explore differences between states regarding likelihood of counter-mobilization, we investigate two cases in Africa. In Sudan, a government-led child marriage reform initiative has sparked counter-mobilization by conservative religious actors, while a similar initiative in Zambia has not caused visible counter-mobilization among traditional groups and has gained the support of many chiefs. With the literature on doctrinal gender status issues as theoretical background, we argue that the nature of law—codified versus living—is a factor in these distinct trajectories. We further identify variations in two mechanisms, legal power structure (centralized vs decentralized) and type of political battle (interpretation vs administration), that link nature of law to variation in the likelihood of counter-mobilization.

Marriage Reform and the Constitution of the United Reformed Church

Recent reforms to English and Scots marriage law faced the United Reformed Church (URC) with two challenges. Its hybrid structure of church government, entwining Congregational and Presbyterian strands, complicated application of the statutory criterion ‘persons recognised by [the membership] as competent for the purpose of giving consent’. Precedent from earlier decisions on human sexuality explains the ultimate identification of the local church meeting as the competent council of the URC in England, and why the ‘enabling resolution’ passed regarding civil partnership formation was not repeated. The very different focus of Scots marriage law posed different questions, less focused on buildings or the churches using them and allowing willing celebrants to be nominated by the synod, as for opposite-sex marriage.Advisers differed on whether the denomination possessed any binding doctrine of marriage which would obstruct implementation of the amended law. The General Assembly decision on polity and how it was reached suggest an implicit ruling in the negative. This article defends that outcome, considering the doctrinal foundation of the URC in the light of concessions made at the formative union. Marriage appears as a topic on which no denominational doctrine exists, letting all councils reach theological conclusions necessary to practical decisions within their remit.

Restraining Forced Marriage

Although long a component of international women’s human rights platforms, forced marriage is only presently gaining attention as a critical problem in the United States. In recent years, a number of states have considered legislation to redress forced and child marriage, most by increasing the minimum age to marry and/or mandating judicial approval of marriages involving minors. Although civil marriage reform is important, it alone is insufficient to combat forced marriage. Even where civil marriage is limited to adults, minors remain vulnerable to forced customary, religious, common law marriages, and marriages consecrated abroad. Further, intended spouses of all ages remain vulnerable to conduct intended to coerce their consent to marry. To prevent and redress forced marriage, potential victims need ready access to emergency civil injunc- tive relief. Civil protection orders are the central civil injunctive remedy relied upon to address intimate partner violence, rape, and stalking in the United States. The expedited and flexible remedies of civil protection orders could also help combat forced marriages; however, common legal standards create barriers to relief for those vulnerable to forced marriage. This Article is the first to undertake a detailed evaluation of the viability of civil protection orders to prevent and redress forced marriage. Although protection orders show promise as a tool to prevent and redress forced marriage in many states, the nuances of the governing legal standards reduce the practical utility of the remedy for those who lack expert guidance. To enhance the accessibility of protection orders in the context of forced marriage, this article proposes that states create a new forced marriage protection order like that established in the United Kingdom to address the specific needs of those facing this problem.

Luther and the Reform of Marriage and Family Life

Abstract: Martin Luther was a reformer not only of Christian doctrines and church practices, but also of marriage and family life. This article investigates how Luther transformed the medieval concept of marriage and reconstructed family life as a sacred sphere in which the believer can exercise faith and Christian duties coram Deo, examining Luther’s criticism of celibacy, his view of sexuality and women, and his pastoral insights on the responsibilities of husbands in relation to wives and parents in relation to children, thereby demonstrating that Luther’s influence permeated the broader sphere of human life in the early sixteenth century.

Objeción de conciencia de los notarios españoles con motivo de la nueva ley de jurisdicción voluntaria

The Spanish Non-Contentious Proceedings Act of 2015 enables notaries to instruct the previous record of capacity and to celebrate civil marriages, also of same sex couples. Given the obligation of the notary to act at the request of individuals, this professional may be forced against his/her conscience in performing these marriages. This article assesses the feasibility of Spanish notaries' conscientious objection to same sex marriages, as well as the moral permissibility of their cooperation in evil. Regulatory elements examined play against the recognition of conscientious objection, that might well have been admitted without substantial detriment of the objective of the reform of marriage in the Spanish legal system. The research verifies the lack of legal protection suffered by the freedom of conscience of the notary.

Liberty and Community in Marriage: Expanding on Massey's Proposal for a Community Property Option in New Hampshire

Liberty and Community in Marriage argues that intimate partners should have the right to adopt a default sharing economy within marriage no matter the state in which they are domiciled. Forty-one U.S. states employ a separate property regime for property acquired during marriage; of these, only two allow married couples to opt out of the state separate property system so as to hold their assets as community property by private contract or trust. Nine U.S. states allow default community property ownership during marriage. In support of its claim, the article compares four marriage reform proposals: two based on taking the state out of marriage; one based on stronger enforcement of equitable distribution laws at divorce; and one based on the enablement of a community property option in a separate property state. Each proposed reform refers to market-metrics in assessing property rights between unmarried persons. Only the community property option proposal, however, allows for further theoretical development of the qualitative claim that an individual has a right to enter into and maintain a marriage between economic equals; and separate property states should further, not frustrate, the exercise of that right.

Alimony Panic, Gold Diggers, and the Cultural Foundations of Early Twentieth-century Marriage Reform in the United States

By the late 1920s, the belief that US men were being exploited by the so-called gold diggers seeking advantageous divorces was widespread. Organizations like the Alimony Payers’ Protective Association and the Alimony Reform League were created to combat the perceived problem of gold digging ex-wives. Several states considered legislation to restrict alimony payments. Yet, the overall instances of alimony were relatively rare. This article explains the rise of anti-alimony sentiment during the late 1920s through an examination of the gold digger trope. Anti-alimony agitation represented a response to the changes in women’s roles and sexual norms in the 1920s.

It Takes a Female Chief: Gender and Effective Policy Advocacy in Malawi

Traditional leadership often coexists with modern political institutions, yet we know little about how traditional and state authority cues—or those from male or female sources—affect public support for human rights issues. Using an original survey experiment of 1,381 Malawians embedded in the 2016 Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), we randomly assign respondents to a control group or one of four treatment groups to receive a message about child marriage reform from a female or male traditional authority or parliamentarian. Overall, we find that the female traditional authority is most effective, while other endorsers elicit backfire effects. Endorsements produce complex heterogeneous effects across respondent sex, patrilineal/matrilineal customs, gender attitudes, and institutional trust. We extend traditional governance literature by elaborating an intersectional approach to policy advocacy and building a theoretical framework explaining the impact of state and traditional endorsements across countries and policy domains.

Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Egypt by Kenneth M. Cuno

<i>Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Egypt</i> by Kenneth M. Cuno

How should marriage be theorised?

Feminists have noted the injustice of the institution of marriage and the asymmetric power dynamics within gender-structured marriages. Recently, feminists have found an unexpected supporter of this struggle against marriage in some liberal political theorists. I argue that this new wave of interest in the wrongness of marriage within liberalism reveals shortcomings from a feminist perspective. While some liberals fail to realise that instead of being disestablished, the institution of marriage should be radically reformed, others do not recognise that such a reform should be theorised by starting from our non-idealised conditions of gender inequality and from an analysis of how the institution of marriage intersects with other spheres of gender injustice. This article provides recommendations for the radical reform of marriage by following some methodological premises of feminist theory. To illustrate how the reform of marriage should be theorised, it focuses on the intersection between the sphere of gender injustice represented by immigration and that of marriage.

Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era

The subtitle of this book is a bit misleading. It is not a broad exploration of marriage reform. Rather, it analyzes the writing and lives of several individuals and couples whom Clare Virginia Eby calls “the primary intellectual architects of what I call the progressive marital ideal” (p. xviii). She argues that we must examine “the contested conversation about marriage” in which these figures engaged, “in order to understand the Progressive Era” (p. xvii). Eby contextualizes her analysis within contemporary alarm over the diminishing importance of marriage as a social institution, its legal status, and increasing divorce. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the rising rate of divorce demonstrated the “‘diminishing regard for the sanctity’ of marriage,” which was “the very foundation of our social organization” (p. 27). State legislatures enacted new laws aimed to curtail divorce. The National Divorce Reform League (founded in 1885) changed its name to the National League for the Protection of the Family in 1897. Eby's intellectuals responded to this equation of marriage and family as the bedrock of society, arguing instead for individual freedom to determine the meaning of marriage. While they did not present a “monolithic front” in their ideas and writings, “their collective message provided a theoretical rationale for a shift in marital mores” that could be built upon for the future (p. 38).

Population crisis, marriage reform and the regulation of male sexuality in interwar Iran

Beginning in the early twentieth century, a discourse on population crisis emerged in the Iranian press. Iran, it was argued, suffered from a small and sickly population, and therefore was unable to fully exploit its natural riches and resources. One suggested solution to the problem was a reformation of the traditional model of marriage, making monogamous, age-appropriate marriage the new norm. This was to provide Iran with numerous robust future citizens, the result of healthy and suitable couples. The article presents the process in which fear of population decline led to a change in the perceptions of ‘proper’ male sexuality, of married life and of love in Iran. It shows how this process influenced gender relations and social relations, preserving women’s subjugation within companionate marriage and constructing men of social groups who practised polygamy and child marriage as corrupt and unpatriotic, unlike Western-educated elite men who adopted companionate marriage.

American Blood: The Ends of the Family in American Literature, 1850–1900 Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era Uncoupling American Empire: Cultural Politics of Deviance and Unequal Difference, 1890–1910

Book Review| December 01 2015 American Blood: The Ends of the Family in American Literature, 1850–1900 Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era Uncoupling American Empire: Cultural Politics of Deviance and Unequal Difference, 1890–1910 American Blood: The Ends of the Family in American Literature, 1850–1900. By Jackson, Holly. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 2014. x, 201 pp.$65.00.Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era. Eby, Clare Virginia. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 2014. xx, 237 pp. Cloth, $80.00; paper, $27.90; e-book available.Uncoupling American Empire: Cultural Politics of Deviance and Unequal Difference, 1890–1910. Cho, Yu-Fang. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. 2013. xiii, 212 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $24.95; e-book, $24.95. Monica Huerta Monica Huerta Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2015) 87 (4): 830–833. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-3329674 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Monica Huerta; American Blood: The Ends of the Family in American Literature, 1850–1900 Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era Uncoupling American Empire: Cultural Politics of Deviance and Unequal Difference, 1890–1910. American Literature 1 December 2015; 87 (4): 830–833. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-3329674 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 by Duke University Press2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era, by Clare Virginia Eby

<i>Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era</i>, by Clare Virginia Eby

Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era

Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era

Book Review: Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era

Book Review: Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era

The State of Gay

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have upheld and expanded gay rights, but the question of how these decisions will impact the wide-ranging diversity among sexual minorities has yet to be determined. This paper focuses on the impact of these decisions on the State of Gay in the U.S., including those from an array of demographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural affiliations. the United States v. Windsor (570 U.S. 2013) and Hollingsworth, et al., v. Kristin M. Perry (570 U.S. 2013) decisions are also considered within the context of the global community, both how they were influenced by and how these court findings will in turn broadly impact these cultures. How these decisions were rooted within the context of marriage reform legislation in the 1970s, and how heterosexuals may well be significant beneficiaries of the rulings, is also discussed. the paper concludes with a dialogue on the paths toward continued legal, societal, and political reform within a global context, and how congruence between the State of Gay and Human Rights can be more fully realized.

Until choice do us part: marriage reform in the Progressive Era

For centuries, people have been thinking and writing - and fiercely debating - about the meaning of marriage. Today, politicians speak often of defending or protecting this institution, but just a hundred years ago, Progressive-era reformers embraced marriage not as a time-honored repository for conservative values, but as a tool for social change. In Until Choice Do Us Part, Clare Virginia Eby offers a new account of marriage as it appeared in fiction, journalism, legal decisions, scholarly work, and private correspondence at the start of the twentieth century. Beginning with reformers like sexologist Havelock Ellis and anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons-who argued that spouses should be class equals joined by private affection, not public sanction - Eby guides us through the stories of three literary couples - Upton and Meta Fuller Sinclair, Theodore and Sara White Dreiser, and Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood - who sought to reform marriage in their lives and in their writings, with mixed results. With this focus on the intimate side of married life, Eby gives readers a view into a historical moment that changed the nature of American marriage-and which continues to shape marital norms today.

The Making of a Market: Credit, Henequen, and Notaries in Yucatán, 1850-1900Los Hacendados de Yucatán, 1785-1847

The Making of a Market: Credit, Henequen, and Notaries in Yucatán, 1850-1900Los Hacendados de Yucatán, 1785-1847

Sister-in-Law Marriage in the Empire: Religious Politics and Legislative Reform in the Australian Colonies 1850–1900

In 1835, a statute was passed in the parliament of the United Kingdom making it illegal for a widowed man to marry his sister-in-law.1 Marriage to a sister-in-law after a wife's death was common practice in nineteenth-century England and colonial Australia and aunts often took on the responsibility of raising children after a sibling's death. In the 1840s, a protracted parliamentary and social debate began over whether a widowed man's marriage to his sister-in-law should be made legal and this debate lasted over seven decades. In the Australian colonies, where English law had been inherited,2 a similar debate occurred in the 1870s. The marriage was legalised in most of Australia in the 1870s while it remained illegal in England until the turn of the century. The parallel debates in each country provide a window into the comparative effect of religious culture on the development of marriage law. One of the primary reasons for the protracted nature of the struggle for marriage reform in England was its significance for the relationship between church and state. This article explores the implications of the relationship between church and state in Britain and the colonies for marriage legislation.