The Monist articles

Recent articles from The Monist

Privatizing marriage.
July 1, 2008... 1. Science Fiction Imagine a nation identical to our own, with only one difference: The government does not give out marriage licenses. In fact it does not recognize anything called 'marriage'. To be sure, people are permitted to "marry" within their own religious traditions. There...

Marriage: a basic and exigent good.
July 1, 2008... I Marrying is an act, the chosen act of the two spouses who thereby commit themselves to living as husband and wife. Marriage as a state or way of life--being married--is the couple's living out of that constitutive act of commitment in countless further acts, and in each spouse's...

On the nature of marriage: Somerville on same-sex marriage.
July 1, 2008... Same-sex couples in Canada were first granted the right to marry in 2003, (1) after acrimonious discussions in the Canadian Parliament and tribunals on the concept of marriage. In my capacity as philosopher of language and natural-language semanticist, I served as expert witness for the...

Marriage, procreation, and same-sex unions.
July 1, 2008... Should the political community declare that (some) same-sex unions are marriages? Margaret A. Somerville has ably argued that it should not, that doing so harms children and families. Adele Mercier vehemently disagrees, describing Professor Somerville's argument as "contorted," "circular,"...

History, tradition, and the normative foundations of civil marriage.
July 1, 2008... On what has become known as the traditional account, marriage is a lifelong, multi-purpose association between two, and only two, persons--one male and one female. According to many, the state has good reason to recognize, and exclusively to support, this form of union. To defend this claim,...