Professor under fire for calling marriage an ‘element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy’ 

A professor at George Mason University has sparked a firestorm with a paper she wrote claiming marriage is an “element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy.”

Professor Bethany Letiecq’s previous work on marriage and family as a vehicle of oppression won a 2023 award from the American Sociological Association as “Article of the Year” in the society’s “family” section. 

Writing in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in February, Letiecq said that since colonization, “marriage fundamentalism has been instantiated through laws, policies, and practices to unduly advantage [White heteropatriarchal nuclear families] while simultaneously marginalizing Black, Indigenous, immigrant, mother-headed, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) families, among others.” 

Rather than assume the role of a dispassionate scientist, Letiecq instead proudly claims to be an activist, promoting a point of view.  

In her article, she identified herself first as a feminist scholar, and admitted it’s important to “locate myself and my motivations for engaging in this theoretical work.”  

Writing more in the style of a memoir, than as theoretical research, Letiecq wrote, “I come to this work with my own complex family narrative of marriages, divorces, and remarriages across generations of my family, and my own experiences of interracial marriage, divorce, cohabitation, motherhood, single-parenting, and step-mothering.”  

She then comes to the crux of her argument about why marriage and White heteropatriarchal nuclear families, benefits “those racialized as White.”  

Her life choices, she wrote, have denied her access to resources, benefits, rights, financial and legal protections, and her choices deny her “cultural validation.”  

Then she warns ominously that “unless and until we commit to understanding, disrupting, and dismantling White heteropatriarchal supremacy and the ways in which modern iterations of laws, policies, and practices continue to perpetuate it at a structural level, it will remain an enduring feature of American society.” 

Some are standing against Letiecq even as the ASA gives her awards.  

“Marriage is an institution that has advanced the common good in many civilizations, from Europe to the Americas, and from Asia to Africa. Marriage benefits children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds,” University of Virginia sociologist and director of the National Marriage Project, Professor Brad Wilcox, told the College Fix.  

Terry Schilling, president of American Principles Project, told The Fix that Letiecq ignores the longstanding evidence of the benefits that marriage has on individuals and society.  

“Although the social science on the immense benefits of strong, intact families is unimpeachable, this author simply waves them away,” Schilling said. “She ignores the extreme harm that has come to minority Americans as a result of family breakdown in their communities.” 

Other papers authored by Letiecq also include radical themes, which mingle racial activism with academic argument.