Queer and Religious Alliances in Family Law Politics and Beyond

Edited by Nausica Palazzo, Jeffrey A. Redding

Publication date:

05 July 2022

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781839983078

Family law is a site of social conflict and the erasure of non-traditional families. This book explores how conservative religious and progressive queer groups can cooperatively work together to expand family law’s recognition beyond the traditional state-sponsored family. Various religious groups have shown an interest in promoting alternative family structures. For example, certain Muslim and Mormon communities have advocated for polygamy, thereby aligning with queer groups’ interest in overcoming the engrafting of monogamy into state law. Advocacy by North American religious conservatives for reforms in favor of non-conjugal families and against same-sex marriage overlaps with certain queer efforts to legitimize friendships and non-traditional families more generally.

This book explores these potential areas of queer and religious political cooperation—including limitations and principled reservations to such cooperation. It then looks at additional future arenas of queer and religious political cooperation going beyond family law.

Introduction, Nausica Palazzo and Jeffrey A. Redding

PART I: MAPPING THE CONCEPTUAL TERRAIN
1. Secularism, Same-Sex Relations, and Legal Pluralism, Mariano Croce

PART II: RELIGIOUS–QUEER PERSPECTIVES
2. Custom, Preference, or Nature?: Mormon Polygamy, Same-Sex Marriage, and Natural Law Theory, Frederick Mark Gedicks
3. Cleaving Marriage: Appraising the Conservative Blowback after Same-Sex Marriage, Robin Fretwell Wilson and Rebecca Valek
4. A Multiplication of Blessings: Families and LGBTQ Rights within the Waldensian Church, Ilaria Valenzi

PART III: QUEER–RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES
5. ‘Ohana as a Way of Life: Queer Friendship in the Mediterranean Regime, Beatrice Gusmano
6. The Abolition of Legal Marriage in Israel as a Potential Queer–Religious Project, Ayelet Blecher-Prigat and Noy Naaman
7. Queer and Religious Convergences around Nonconjugal Couples: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, Nausica Palazzo
8. Queer Politics, Consensual Non-Monogamy, and Religion: Notes on the Ethics of Coalition Work, Christian Klesse

PART IV: FUTURE TRAJECTORIES
9. Achieving Equality without a Constitution: Lessons from Israel for Queer Family Law, Laura T. Kessler
10. Queer and Religious Political Alliances in the Pandemic Trump Era, Jeffrey A. Redding

Index

"Insightful, provocative, and cutting-edge, Palazzo and Redding’s book brings a novel perspective to an area that suffers academic stagnation: the politics of the recognition of diverse family structures. The premise of the book—those religious activists and queer advocates, though strange bedfellows, might be allies in promoting a more pluralistic conception of relationships—opens up unexpected and unexplored intellectual avenues. Written by a group of worldwide leading thinkers in diverse disciplines, the chapters offer a nuanced and sober account of the possibilities and the boundaries of a queer-religious alliance. A bold intervention, this book should be useful to anyone with an interest in queer politics, relationship recognition, and religious perspectives in law." — Erez Aloni, Associate Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada.