by Robert L. Plunkett

About the author: Robert L. Plunkett is the vice dean of the Southern California Institute of Law and a professor at the University of La Verne School of Law in La Verne, California.

Much has been written in the last twenty years about the state of marriage. These commentaries tend to fall into two opposite camps: those which advocate or celebrate the redefinition of matrimony and those which deplore its decline. Two decades ago, the former clearly predominated; the latter are more common today. To my knowledge, however, none of the commentators has stumbled upon the fact that marriage was abolished in the United States in the 1970s. That status which we call "being married" today is nothing of the kind; it is to real marriage what the Holy...