Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law Volume 20 | Issue 2 Article 11 3-1-2006 Women, Equality, and the Federal Marriage Amendment Comille S. Williams Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/jpl Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Family Law Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Comille S. Williams, Women, Equality, and the Federal Marriage Amendment, 20 BYU J. Pub. L. 487 (2006). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/jpl/vol20/iss2/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law by an authorized editor of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Women, Equality, and the Federal Marriage Amendment Camille S. Williams∗ I. INTRODUCTION Marriage and the marital family1 are arguably the only important social institutions in which women have always been necessary participants. “The marital alliance is fundamentally a reproductive alliance: [r]ecognized marriage has invariably been restricted to heterosexual couples, and the relationship categories that proscribe marriage in any particular society are generally coincident with those that proscribe sexual relations,” state Margo Wilson and Martin Daly in their evolutionary treatment of marriage.2 Because marriage has been and is a reproductive alliance, the logic of women as necessary participants is obvious: it takes a woman to make a baby. We have no knowledge of any society in which same-sex “marriage” has been practiced, until very recently.3 We do not yet know the ∗ Administrative Director, Marriage & Family Law Research Grant, J.