American law is an outdated map of the real-life landscape of relationships. We live in a time when sex doesn’t have to lead to procreation, procreation can happen without sex, and marriage is far less pervasive and permanent than it used to be. Amid all this change, the solutions still have decades-old dust on them, waiting to be cleared off. They are part of the same approach Ettelbrick wrote about in 1989, and which Amelie, Joan, and countless others advocated for. If the law broadened its attention beyond marriage, it would, at last, validate the range of relationships that are the
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