Legally Married

'I have watched the development of this book with pleasure and gratitude. It brings to the often confused discussion of marriage and associated cultural issues a clearsightedness and well-informed scholarship which will benefit a wide audience. It satisfyingly exposes the glorious variety of marriage throughout history, in the midst of an era in which that variety is becoming still more glorious.' Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford 'In the heat of debate over marriage today, many protagonists make confident simple assertions about something that is truly hard to define. Here Peterson and McLean combine clear and often wry explanation of these issues with their unsurpassed authority on the relationship (perhaps more one of cohabitation than marriage) between Church and State. Implicitly they make the strongest argument for the current debates to be a great deal more sophisticated and nuanced than sometimes they are.' Marjory A. MacLean, former Depute Clerk of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland What does it really mean to be legally married? From English teenagers eloping to Gretna Green to tie the knot without their parents' permission, to whether a wife can own property, it's clear that marriage law is different depending on where you live and when. Now, the main debate centres on whether the law should be changed so that same-sex couples can marry. The Scottish and UK governments, plus a number of US states, are to legislate to allow same-sex marriage, prompting both celebration and outrage. Some argue against it on religious or cultural grounds, others support it on grounds of equality and human rights, and still others disagree with the institution of marriage altogether. But amongst all the assumptions there are few facts and the debates about same-sex marriage in the UK and the US are taking place in an informational vacuum filled with emotion and rhetoric. Legally Married combines insights from history and law from the UK and Scotland with international examples of how marriage law has developed. Scot Peterson and Iain McLean separate fact from fiction, explain the claims made on both sides and show how many assumptions about marriage are contestable on a number of grounds. Scot Peterson is Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Balliol and in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University. He has written extensively on church-state relations in the US and the UK and he is a contributor to Church and State in 21st Century Britain (2009). Iain McLean is Professor of Politics, Oxford University and a fellow of Nuffield College. He has published widely on UK and US politics and history and is collaborating author on the recent bestselling Scotland's Choices: The Referendum and Waht Happens Afterwards (Edinburgh University Press, 2013). Cover image: (c) Carmen Martínez Banús/iStockphoto.com. Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com