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Professor Bethany Letiecq wrote in the Journal of Marriage and Family about her theory "that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy."
"Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family," she wrote. "But it is also a hidden or unacknowledged structural mechanism of White heteropatriarchal family supremacy that is essential to the reproduction and maintenance of family inequality in the United States."
Letiecq is an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, "specializing in the utilization of community-based participatory action research approaches, anti-racist research methods."
The professor explained in the article that she is "a White, cisgender woman ... currently living with my partner and co-raising our children in a committed heterosexual union outside the institution of marriage."
In the article, Letiecq said she drew upon "critical feminist and intersectional frameworks to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages White heteropatriarchal nuclear families (WHNFs) and marginalizes others as a function of family structure and relationship status."
Comment: The frameworks that she drew upon seems not to understand that marriage did not originate in "White culture." In fact the first recorded marriage between a man and woman was in Mesopotamia.
She argued that, "since colonization," "marriage fundamentalism has been instantiated through laws, policies, and practices to unduly advantage WHNFs while simultaneously marginalizing Black, Indigenous, immigrant, mother-headed, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) families, among others."
Comment: How exactly does marriage marginalize any other ethnicity? Actually it is pointless to ask such questions to people like her. Their arguments are simply a way to attack the idea of a family, something that has been the cornerstone of society for thousands of years.
Letiecq concluded by calling for family scientists to "further interrogate how marriage fundamentalism reproduces family inequality in American family life and to work toward its dismantling."
"A deeper understanding of how these complex and often covert mechanisms of structural oppression operate in family life is needed to disrupt these mechanisms and advance family equality and justice," the abstract concludes.
Marriage scholar Brad Wilcox told the College Fix that he disagrees with Letiecq, explaining marriage as an institution that has advanced the common good in civilizations across the globe.
"Marriage benefits children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds," the University of Virginia sociologist and director of the National Marriage Project said.
American Principles Project leader, Terry Schilling, told the outlet that the article "suggests far-left academics are ramping up their attacks on the family, the most important institution in society."
"Although the social science on the immense benefits of strong, intact families is unimpeachable, this author simply waves them away," Schilling said. "She ignores the extreme harm that has come to minority Americans as a result of family breakdown in their communities."
"We need to be doing what we can right now to shore up the family, not tear it down," he added. "Otherwise, our society won't be 'reproducing' much of anything in the very near future."
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