Producing Marriage: The Decentering of Christian Heritage in Western Countries

This article builds on the empirical findings of our research on legal debates surrounding same-sex marriage to explore the discursive reconfigurations of marriage amid the declining centrality of Christianity and increasing social pluralism. Drawing on debates in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United States, we analyse the discursive operations unfolding within legal and institutional arenas where controversies over marriage are publicly articulated. In these settings, disputes involve competing ways of making same-sex marriage publicly intelligible and legitimate. These debates function as sites where the authority historically associated with Christianity to define marriage is publicly challenged and renegotiated.

We use the concept of nonreligion not to describe the secularization of marriage, but to characterize a new regime of public morality where normative claims are justified by explicitly setting aside their religious framing. Approaching these debates as a dynamic arena of discursive struggle, we examine how actors redraw the boundaries of what can count as legitimate reasoning about same sex marriage. Our analysis highlights two key rhetorical strategies: (1) the legal distinction between civil and religious marriage, and (2) the strategic deployment of historical narratives that either naturalize or historicize marital norms. Ultimately, the article elucidates how civil marriage is redefined through ideological and discursive processes that reorganize the public recognition and classification of moral arguments in a pluralistic setting where Christianity no longer holds exclusive authority to define marriage.