Healthy (Heterosexual) Marriage Initiatives, Public Policy, and the Religious Right

Between 1996 and 2008 the federal government, supported by many state governments, launched far-reaching programs to "promote healthy marriage," often by attaching premarital education programs and "marriage enrichment" centers to public assistance provisions. This paper explores how the rationale linking marriage and welfare evolved and what it has meant to the ways in which Americans debate marriage as a right of citizenship.