Marriage Reform Quotes

Happy that New York passed marriage equality tonight. A victory for human rights. Progress.

... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don't think it should exist.

Child marriage does not seem to be confined only to the mountains of Tennessee. The marriage of the little nine-year-old girl in that state, however, brought to light the marriage of a twelve-year-old girl in New York State. It seems inconceivable that parents should countenance a practice of this kind unless food is so short that one mouth taken out of the home counterbalances all other arguments. Certainly no one in their sane senses would want a child of nine to be married, and the publicity which has attended this marriage we may well hope will result not only in the passing but in the enforcement of laws requiring that children under a certain definite age may not be married. We have all heard with horror of the child marriages in India, and it is rather a shock to find that we are open to the same criticism in our extremely modern country.

Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.

During the patriarchal time, the men were always and invariably dominant, legally and socially in marriage, so now it's possible to remodel the entire house of marriage, put in new footings and new joists and a new sort of interior. That is exactly what some men and women are now doing.

We need to evolve a uniform law which does not leave room for any confusion and states that the minimum marriageable age for women is 18 years and that for men is 21 years. But the demand for this should come from within the community.

In Indonesia, where I am from, the Dutch-imposed Civil Code dating back to the colonial 1870s prevailed until the 1974 Law on Marriage granted married women greater rights, including the ability to open individual bank accounts.

There could be no greater act of madness than to imagine that we can reform Communists by marrying them.

Religious and civil marriage to be replaced by free marriage. Adult men and women have the right to unite and separate as they please....With the abolition of the right of inheritance and the education of children assured by society, all the legal reasons for the irrevocability of marriage will disappear....In marriage, man and woman must enjoy absolute liberty.

People are not going to give up marriage. But we can try to make it more fair. We can try to change that institution and make it more equal.

While there are many persons, particularly those of the older generation, who are genuinely alarmed at the statutory modification of the family status as it existed at common law, there are an equal if not a greater number who see in the emancipation of married women a necessary genuine social advance.

I support gay unions. I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely - leave marriages to the churches. And grant civil unions to gay couples, grant civil unions to a man and woman.

The whole institution of marriage itself really has no place in a progressive society.

… personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power...

Even with all its problems, I will support marriage as an institution until something better comes along.

I know what I wish Ralph Nader would investigate next. Marriage. It's not safe, it's not safe at all.

I don't want to get married unless they change the marriage laws. You should have to sign a marriage contract for no more than five years, with an option to opt out.

By demanding more from men and from marriage, it's single women who have perhaps played as large a part as anyone in saving marriage in America.

I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions.

It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us.

My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started.

I want my commitment to ending girl marriage to be equal to my commitment to ending apartheid.

Marriage, like all other human institutions, is not permanent and alterable in form, but necessarily changes shape with the changes of social development. The forms of marriage are transitional, like the societies in which they exist. Each age keeps getting ahead of the law, yet there are always some laggards of whom the law for the time being is ahead. The main tendency of our own age is towards greater freedom and equality, and the law is slowly modifying to match…. At present the strict letter of the law denies to a married woman the freedom of action which more and more women are coming to regard not only as their just but also as their dearest treasure; and this naturally causes a certain unwillingness on the part of the thoughtful women to marry… That law and custom should alike enlarge so as to suit the growing ideal is evidently desirable… we can all of us influence custom a little, since custom, after all, is only made up of many individual examples… Easier divorce may be necessary, but the opportunity of making wiser and happier marriages is more necessary still.