Leaving and Clinging: The Human Significance of the Conjugal Union

Until the 1960s our sexual and familial world was bi-polar. People were generally either men or women, and marriage was the normal relation between them. To be sure, deviations occurred, but these were defined by the two poles of gender and marriage. Today's adolescents and young adults confront a rather different social context. With the surfacing of homosexuality and bisexuality, the line separating the sexes has become fuzzy. For these and other reasons, marriage is not only undergoing change, but finds itself in competition with other models of sexual discourse. Leaving and Clinging attempts to define the fundamental importance of marriage today.