A Voice, a Choice

Posted: Friday, May 16, 1997
You'd never know it from reading the newspaper on the mainland, but the biggest story of the '90s broke last month, and it's local: "Democracy triumphs in Hawaii! Read all about it!" Finally, the people will vote on the question of marriage.   [Full Story]

At Last, Hawaiians Have Their Say on Gay Marriage

Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 1997
Last week in Honolulu, a conference committee for the state House and Senate agreed to the following proposed amendment to the Hawaiian Constitution: "The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples." These few words reaffirm the right of the people of Hawaii to interpret their own Constitution when their courts spiral out of control.   [Full Story]

Same-Sex Marriage: As Hawaii Goes...

Posted: Saturday, March 1, 1997
"Whatever your view of same-sex marriage," declared Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic, "in all likelihood, within a year, some same-sex couples will be legally married in America." In the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley echoed the point: "Same-sex marriage, however the majority may feel about it, is beginning to have the look of an idea whose time has come."   [Full Story]

Same-Sex Marriage?

Posted: Saturday, March 1, 1997
Will same-sex marriage be legalized? The people and government of Hawaii(2) are embroiled in an historic controversy over this question. The stakes are high, the issues are complex, and world attention is riveted on the Island State. One way or the other, we may learn the answer during 1997.  [Full Story]

Marriage on Trial II

Posted: Saturday, October 5, 1996
The courtroom is dark, and the lawyers have gone home. Court TV's crew is back on the mainland. What has been dubbed "the gay marriage trial of the century" is over. The trial was the nation's first on whether marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples. The world now waits for a judgment.   [Full Story]

Marriage on Trial I

Posted: Friday, September 20, 1996
Who would have believed it would have come to this: Society's most basic structure on trial in a small Honolulu courtroom.   [Full Story]

How Do We Make Laws?

Posted: Tuesday, July 16, 1996
Our brief survey of these models suggests there is little likelihood of reconciliation among them. And, since these three models only make sense within an integrated set of beliefs, there are, accordingly, traditional, liberal, and postmodern approaches to the making of marriage law.   [Full Story]

Same-Sex Marriage?

Posted: Monday, July 15, 1996
The self-proclaimed gay and lesbian lobby has made it clear that the definition of marriage is the core of the issue - they do not want to broaden marriage, they want to redefine it. The debate about same-sex marriage, therefore, is a debate about marriage.   [Full Story]

What is Marriage?

Posted: Monday, July 15, 1996
America today is embroiled in a conflict surrounding different definitions or models of marriage. The failure to identify this may account for how people talk past each other, not realizing their fundamental disagreements.   [Full Story]

Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted: Monday, July 15, 1996
There is much creative intellectual work to be done. Once we understand the depths of the crisis we face, we can go to the roots of our own views, and articulate them more clearly. Then we must renew the jurisprudence of associations like marriage and apply it to constitutional law. Both disciplines are locked in a stalemate between individual rights and state interests, crippling the ability of legal theorists to do justice to the reality of so-called mediating structures. If we draw on the riches of ordinary human experience, it will be possible to re-articulate a cultural and legal understanding of marriage that can serve the eventual renewal of American life.   [Full Story]