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Professor argues marriage 'fundamentalism' helps bolster White supremacy


Bethany Letiecq (George Mason University)
Bethany Letiecq (George Mason University)
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The institution of marriage "fundamentalism" reinforces White supremacy, according to an academic paper released by George Mason University professor Bethany Letiecq.

Letiecq’s paper claims Americans have become accustomed to marriage fundamentalism in order to achieve “benefits, rights and protections.”

Marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy,” the paper reads.

Letiecq begins the piece by noting “as a White, cisgender woman, I am currently living with my partner and co-raising our children in a committed heterosexual union outside the institution of marriage.” She continues, noting the origins of both White supremacy and marriage before explaining how each became favored by religious conservatives.

“Proponents of marriage fundamentalism include conservative, Christian, and right-wing organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Family Research Council which recently gained tax exempt status as a church,” Letiecq wrote.

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Marriage fundamentalism, the scholar claims, has roots in Manifest Destiny and colonialism, leading to the “delegitimization of diverse family and kinship structures.” Due to the amount of non-traditional living arrangements of LGBT families and “grandparents rearing their grandchildren,” the nuclear family is actually the least common living situation in the country, the scholar said.

In fact, the [White heteropatriarchal nuclear family] is a minority experience compared to the numbers of one-person households, unrelated individuals or unmarried couples living together, single-parent families, LGBTQ+ families, blended families, married couples living apart, grandparents rearing their grandchildren, and so on,” Letiecq wrote.

Disrupting the "Western-prescribed nuclear family structure" was long a goal of the national Black Lives Matter organization, though the group removed the goal from its website in late 2020.

Letiecq did not respond to a request for comment from The National Desk Monday.

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