{"id":766,"date":"2019-08-05T12:15:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T16:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/104-online\/a-union-unlike-any-other-obergefell-and-the-doctrine-of-marital-superiority\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T17:02:24","slug":"a-union-unlike-any-other-obergefell-and-the-doctrine-of-marital-superiority","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/104-online\/a-union-unlike-any-other-obergefell-and-the-doctrine-of-marital-superiority\/","title":{"rendered":"A Union Unlike Any Other: Obergefell and the Doctrine of Marital Superiority"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Obergefell v. Hodges<\/em>\u00a0is a historic decision that accomplishes the important task of requiring marriage equality across the nation. To many, the opinion\u2019s romantic language gives particular poignancy to the historic moment when the long-recognized fundamental right to marry was finally extended to same-sex couples. However, what people see as the romance of the opinion masks a profoundly conservative decision, one that abandons meaningful equality analysis, and instead engages in a full-throated embrace of the conservative institution of marriage as an essential and necessary cornerstone of American society. In so doing, the decision advances a new and troubling doctrine of marital superiority that explicitly undercuts the dignity and worth of non-marital relationships. Much to the dismay of those who may have wished to allow states to experiment with other, more progressive relationship-recognition forms,\u00a0<em>Obergefell<\/em>\u2019s marital superiority rhetoric may guarantee that marriage will, for the foreseeable future, remain the only recognized relationship in town. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2026\/05\/Carpenter-Cohen_A-Union-Unlike-Any-Other_104GeoLJOnline124.pdf\">A Union Unlike Any Other: Obergefell and the Doctrine of Marital Superiority<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obergefell v. Hodges\u00a0is a historic decision that accomplishes the important task of requiring marriage equality across the nation. To many, the opinion\u2019s romantic language gives particular poignancy to the historic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"parent":730,"menu_order":14,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-766","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24325,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/766\/revisions\/24325"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}