Marriages are in trouble today. That is clear. Effective mothods of combating this trend are less evident. Counselors, pastors and social workers need more than mere theories or mere moralizing. They need a practical and comprehensive model for understanding couples and their problems. They need a throughly Christian perspective that is biblical, compassionate and human. Everett Worthington provides this in an integrated, biblically based theory of marriage and marriage therapy with analysis at three levels: the individual, the couple and the family. The model he has constructed, with techniques drawn from the major psychological schools, is standard enough to guide counselors in actual interventions and powerful enough to produce change. A thoroughgoing overview of the assessment process includes practical, workable guidelines for: creating realistic, mutually-agreeable goals for counselor and clients; estimating the number of sessions needed to reach those goals; and planning the actual assessment, intervention and termination sessions. Next Worthington offers specific techniques for enhancing cooperative change, intimacy, communication, conflict resolution and forgiveness within the marriage. But keeping couples from slipping back into old patterns is one of the counselor's most difficult tasks. So Worthington concludes with suggestions for solidifying change and effectively concluding the counseling relationship. Here is a text that will be a standard for counselors, pastors and mental health professionals in the years to come.

The essays in Marriage Proposals envision a variety of scenarios in which adults would continue to join themselves together seeking permanent companionship and sustenance, linking sexual intimacy to a long commitment, usually caring for each other, and building new families. What would disappear are the legal consequences associated with marriage. No joint income tax return; no immigration privileges like the “fiancée visa” or the right to bring in a husband or wife; no special statuses for prison visits or hospital decisions; no prerogative to remain silent in court by claiming “confidential marital communications”; no pension entitlements; no marital benefits and detriments regarding criminal or civil liability. The anthology makes a unique contribution amid the two marriage furors of the day: same-sex marriage and the Bush Administration's “marriage movement” (that marrying is good and more marriages would be better for society). Abolishing the legal category of marriage is the only policy suggestion in current American discourse that speaks to both causes. Activists on both sides of the same-sex marriage fight, along with marriage movement partisans, all seek improvement through law reform. Marriage Proposals gives them a viable reform—abolition of marriage as a legal status—for fighting battles in the courtroom and the streets. Contributors include Anita Bernstein, Peggy Cooper Davis, Martha Albertson Fineman, Linda C. McClain, Marshall Miller, Lawrence Rosen, Mary Lyndon Shanley, and Dorian Solot.

The United States Constitution has already been interpreted to provide a variety of family-related protections which, if applied consistently, also protect same-sex couples and their children. Only by radically reformulating and severely undermining existing protections can courts and commentators justify the claim that the Federal Constitution does not offer a wealth of family protections, including the right to marry a same-sex partner. Discussing the constitutional implications of civil unions with a special focus on how they might be treated in the interstate context, Strasser explains how the courts and commentators have reworked and significantly weakened a variety of constitutional protections in their attempts to establish that same-sex couples are not afforded constitutional protections. He further suggests that the constitutional protections for religion support rather than undermine the constitutional protection of same-sex unions.

This book provides an in-depth exploration and analysis of marriages between Japanese nationals and migrants from three broad ethnic/cultural groups - spouses from the former Soviet Union countries, the Philippines, and Western countries. It reveals how the marriage migrants navigate the intricacies and trajectories of their marriages with Japanese people while living in Japan. Seen from the lens of ‘gendered geographies of power’, the book explores how state-level politics and policies towards marriage, migration, and gender affect the personal power politics in operation within the relationships of these international couples. Overall, the book discusses how ethnic identity intersects with gender in the negotiation of spaces and power relations between and amongst couples; and the role states and structural inequalities play in these processes, resulting in a reconfiguration of our notions of what international marriages are and how powerful gender and the state are in understanding the power relations in these unions.

Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity is a rousing, compelling defense of traditional, natural marriage. Here, Anthony Esolen—professor at Providence College and a prolific writer uses moral, theological, and cultural arguments to defend this holy and ancient institution, bedrock of society—and to illuminate the threats it faces from modern revolutions in law, public policy, and sexual morality. Inside, discover: - Traditional marriage’s roots in age-old religious, cultural, and natural laws - Why gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility - How acceptance and legal sanction of gay marriage threatens the family - How the state becomes a religion when it attempts to elevate gay marriage, and enshrine as a civil right all consensual sex - How divorce and sexual license have brought marriage to the brink - How today’s culture has impoverished and emptied love of its true meaning In Defending Marriage Esolen expertly and succinctly identifies the cultural dangers of gay marriage and the Sexual Revolution which paved its way. He offers a stirring defense of true marriage, the family, culture, and love—and provides the compelling arguments that will return us to sanity, and out of our current morass.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.