The preceding types of families are found in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions. Sociologists are especially interested in the function and status of these forms in stratified, especially capitalist, societies.
Gender
Societies have also at times required marriage from within a certain group. Anthropologists refer to these restrictions as endogamy. An example of such restrictions would be a requirement to marry someone from the same tribe. Racist laws adopted by some societies in the past, such as Nazi-era w:Germany, apartheid-era South Africa and most of the United States in the first half of the 20th century, which prohibited marriage between persons of different races, could also be considered examples of endogamy. In the U.S., these laws were largely repealed between 1940 and 1960. The U.S. Supreme Court declared all such laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
Cultures that practiced slavery might admit that slave marriages formed but grant them no legal status. This was the practice under the Roman empire, so that in the Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, the freewoman Perpetua could be described as "a married matron" but Felicitas as the "fellow-servant" of Revocatus — even though the Christians regarded, religiously, such marriages as binding. Likewise, slave marriages in the United States were not binding, so that many contrabands escaping slavery during the American Civil War sought official status for their marriages. Among the rights distinguishing serfdom from slavery was the right to enter a legally recognizable marriage.
Religion
The participants in a marriage usually seek social recognition for their relationship, and many societies require official approval of a religious or civil body. In the Protestant tradition, Calvin and his colleagues reformulated marriage through enactment of The Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, imposing, "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage."[104] In England and Wales, it was Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act that first required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage.
In many jurisdictions, the civil marriage ceremony may take place during the religious marriage ceremony, although they are theoretically distinct. In most American states, the marriage may be officiated by a priest, minister, rabbi or other religious authority, and in such a case the religious authority acts simultaneously as an agent of the state. In some countries, such as France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Argentina, and Russia, it is necessary to be married by the state before having a religious ceremony.
Conversely, there people who have religious ceremonies that are not recognized by civil authorities. Examples include widows who stand to lose a pension if they remarry and so undergo a marriage only in the eyes of God and the community; homosexual couples (where same-sex marriage is not legally recognized); some sects which recognize polygamy (see, Mormon fundamentalism), retired couples who would lose pension benefits if legally married, Muslim men who wish to engage in polygamy that is condoned in some situations under Islam, and immigrants who do not wish to alert the immigration authorities that they are married either to a spouse they are leaving behind or because the complexity of immigration laws may make it difficult for spouses to visit on a tourist visa.
In Europe, it has traditionally been the churches' office to make marriages official by registering them. It was a significant step towards a clear separation of church and state and advance toward a secular society when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced the Zivilehe (civil marriage) in 1875. This law made the declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration (both spouses affirming their will to marry) the procedure to make a marriage legally valid and effective, and reduced the clerical marriage to a private ceremony.
Most of the world's major religions tell couples they should marry before having sexual intercourse.[105] They teach that unmarried people should not have sex, which they refer to as fornication. Fornication is sometimes socially discouraged or even criminalized. Sex with a married person other than one's spouse, called adultery, is generally condemned by most religions and has even been criminalized in some countries. Despite this condemnation, it is a widespread practice. About 10-15% of women and 20-25% of men in the U.S. engage in extramarital sex.[106][107][108]
For the most part, religious traditions in the world reserve marriage to heterosexual unions but there are exceptions including the Unitarian Universalists and Metropolitan Community Church.{[ref|Columbus2002}}
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