Cut the Connection: Marriage and the State

This paper attempts to argue that the connection between the state and the institution of marriage should be severed, i.e. that the state should take no cognizance of the marital status of anyone; there should be no laws mentioning the marital status of anyone, and in particular, there should be no legal registration of marriages, still less insistence on state agents’ solemnizing or witnessing them.

The paper then responds to various objections and discusses some examples of the actual laws surrounding marriage in various jurisdictions.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. This paper is part of an emerging web project about “Philosophical Discussions on Marriage and Family Topics.”