MARRIAGEDEBATE MANIA! New question of the week, plus possible future QOTW’s. Future possible questions (obviously meant more to spur discussion than to provoke quick yes-or-no answers): What shouldn’t you do outside of wedlock?

Who are a child’s parents?

“Marriage will help tame gay men.” True, false, insulting, irrelevant?

Why don’t you suggest some too? Drop me a line at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com.

This week’s question: “Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage…”

Any contemporary discussion of marriage is quickly going to become also a debate about love. Is love the core of marriage?

If so, what kind of love are we talking about here? Historically eros, for example, was considered more a threat and a rival to marriage than a justification for it or an intrinsic part of it. Has that changed? How should we view the connection between eros, marriage, and responsibility? (In college, a romantically-minded friend argued that marriage was inherently anti-romantic because it sought to bind the beloved to oneself, fettering the beloved’s autonomy and bringing the ugly machinery of society and state into affairs of the heart. Was he on to something?)

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