You might be surprised to hear that most scholars of social organization think that marriageis evolving itself out of existence, or at least out of its social relevance, replaced by things like cohabitation, civil unions and any number of other imaginable secular and non-secular configurations of households. Now maybe this is just a red herring meant to distract us from how relatively slow the academic community has been to join this important yet contentious social discussion (Think of same-sex marriage as the climate change of the social sciences). But can we really sum up all the emotion and debate over this evolving ‘institution of marriage’ into what is really no more than a disagreement over the definition of terms? Yes and No.

The No: Lots of people want to define marriage, but is there or has there ever really been a universal definition? (more…)

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