Malaurie+&+Fulchiron,+La+famille

Malaurie & Fulchiron, //La famille//

The institution of marriage is based on four pillars, one of which is __the union between a man and a woman__ · **Marriage and the different sexes:** For a long time, marriage between a man and a woman was seen as ‘natural’. This is now beginning to shift with the acceptance of same-sex marriage in a number of jurisdictions · **‘Unnatural marriage’**: o Marriage is the legal sphere of relations between a man and a woman and is the ‘natural’ domain of procreation o Marriage is the founding act of the family o This is not the case with respect to same-sex marriage. A child can be brought into the family, but only through adoption, medically assisted reproduction, or with the help of a third party. This results in hazardous transplantation of the rules that govern heterosexual marriage into situations of same-sex marriage o It the ‘natural’ being replaced with the artificial (juridically and biologically) and is the same-sex family a fiction? o There is a notion that marriage could be decoupled from procreation. Marriage could be defined as the sharing of a life between two individuals. However, this definition no longer has anything to do with the traditional institution of marriage. o Marriage would lose part of its substance: it would no longer be the founding act of a family, and its social and institutional aspects would be eclipsed by individual aspirations o The recognition of same-sex marriage is to ‘de-naturalize’ marriage