Columbia Public Law & Legal Theory Working Papers
Title
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Post-Lawrence efforts to secure marriage equality for same sex couples must be undertaken, at a minimum, in a way that is compatible with efforts to dislodge marriage from its normatively superior status as compared with other forms of human attachment, commitment and desire. Resisting the normative and epistemic frame that values non-marital forms of life in direct proportion to their similarity to marriage, we must unseat marriage as the measure of all things. To this end, I’ll suggest a thought experiment: substituting friendship for marriage at the center of the social field in which human connection takes place. No longer the sun around which all other relationships and relations orbit, our investments in marriage and marriage’s investments in us are likely to yield in such as way that we can imagine making the argument for same sex couples’ right to marry while imagining and cultivating different longings than that for Loving.
Date of Authorship for this Version
February 2008
Recommended Citation
Franke, Katherine M., "Longing for Loving" (2008). Columbia Public Law & Legal Theory Working Papers. Paper 08145.
http://lsr.nellco.org/columbia_pllt/08145
Included in
Family Law Commons, Law and Society Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons