6,078 articles
Marriage in Islam
Marriage in Islam (nikah) is a civil-law contract with offer, acceptance, mahr dower, wali, and witnesses. Covers classical fiqh rules, divorce, polygyny, codification, and 2025 state-law changes.
Marriage in Japan
Marriage in Japan is a legal union registered through the koseki family register, requiring a single shared surname and defined by civil law as between a man and a woman.
Marriage in Pakistan
Marriage in Pakistan (nikah) is a family-centered legal contract under Muslim family law: high cousin-marriage rates, 80.5% of women reporting a say in spouse choice (PDHS 2017-18), and evolving child-marriage laws by province.
Marriage in the Catholic Church
Marriage in the Catholic Church (matrimony) is a sacrament: a lifelong covenant between a baptized man and woman, defined in canon 1055 of the 1983 Code, marked by unity and indissolubility, formed by consent, and governed by canon law on impediments, nullity, and remarriage.
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church, or the Mystery of Crowning, is a sacrament joined by God, marked by betrothal rings and crowns, with no vows, a three-marriage limit, and economy-based remarriage after divorce.
Marriage in the United States
Marriage in the United States: a state-regulated legal status governed federally by 1 U.S.C. §7 (as amended by the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act), shaped by Loving v. Virginia (1967), Windsor (2013), and Obergefell (2015), with state variation in minimum age, recognition, and common law marriage.
Marriage license
A marriage license, also known as a wedding license, is a government-issued permission to marry, typically issued by a county clerk, distinct from the marriage certificate that proves the marriage occurred.
Marriage of Charlie Johns and Eunice Winstead
1937 Tennessee child marriage: tobacco farmer Charlie Johns (22 or 25) wed 9-year-old Eunice Winstead near Treadway, performed by preacher Walter Lamb for $1; national outrage led Tennessee to set a minimum marriage age.
Marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience (sham marriage): a union contracted for advantage such as immigration status, tax, or political alliance rather than a genuine relationship. Valid in law, but ground for visa refusal; burden of proof on the state.
Marriage of Daddy and Peaches
The 1926 marriage of Edward W. "Daddy" Browning, 51, and 15-year-old Frances "Peaches" Heenan in Cold Spring, New York; a tabloid sensation that fueled 1920s child-marriage reform and ended in a contested 1927 separation.
Marriage officiant
A marriage officiant (solemniser, celebrant, registrar, or ordained minister) is a person legally authorized to solemnize marriage. Coverage spans US online ordination and notaries, UK celebrant-versus-registrar rules, Ireland's Register of Solemnisers, Australia's celebrant categories, and England and Wales officiant reform.
Marriageable age
Marriageable age: the minimum legal age to marry, set by national law and shaped by the 1962 UN Marriage Convention, CEDAW, and CRC standards favoring 18, with widespread parental or judicial exceptions allowing minors to wed in many countries.
Marry-your-rapist law
Marry-your-rapist laws, also called rape-marriage or marry-the-rapist laws, let a rapist escape prosecution or punishment by marrying his victim. Rooted in the French 1810 Napoleonic Code and Ottoman 1911 Code, they persisted in an estimated 18 countries; Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon repealed theirs in 2017 and Bahrain in 2023.
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson (1945–1992), born Malcolm Michaels Jr., was a New York drag performer, sex worker, and LGBTQ+ activist of the Stonewall uprising, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front and, with Sylvia Rivera, of STAR; her 1992 Hudson River death remains unsolved.
Martha Bernays
Martha Bernays (1861–1951), Hamburg-born wife of Sigmund Freud; married him 14 September 1886 after a four-year Brautbriefe engagement of over 1,500 letters; mother of six children including Anna Freud; emigrated to London in 1938.
Martha Jefferson
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (1748-1782), wife of Thomas Jefferson and Monticello household manager; twice widowed-adjacent heiress, mother of six Jefferson children, half-sister of Sally Hemings, died at 33 after childbirth.
Martin Luther King III
Martin Luther King III, born 1957, eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, American civil rights activist; Fulton County commissioner 1986, fourth SCLC president 1997-2003, founder of Realizing the Dream, voting rights march organizer.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), American Baptist minister and civil rights leader, led the Montgomery bus boycott, Birmingham Campaign, 1963 March on Washington, and Selma marches; won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and was assassinated in Memphis.
Martin Ssempa
Martin Ssempa (born 1968) is a Ugandan Pentecostal pastor, founder of Makerere Community Church and its Prime Time student rallies, an abstinence-focused HIV prevention advocate who testified before the U.S. Congress, and one of Uganda's most prominent anti-homosexuality activists.
Marwari people
Marwari people: merchants and migrants from Marwar (Jodhpur region), Rajasthan, tied to the Marwari language; a business diaspora spread across India from the eighteenth century, dominant in banking, jute, and post-independence industry.
Marxist feminism
Marxist feminism applies the Marxist critique of capitalism to women's oppression, centering unpaid reproductive labor; also called socialist feminism in some uses; key strands include Wages for Housework and social reproduction theory.
Mary Attenborough
Mary Attenborough, born Mary Clegg (1896-1961), Leicester philanthropist, magistrate, and wife of college principal Frederick Attenborough; helped Basque child refugees and adopted Kindertransport sisters Helga and Irene Bejach; mother of Richard, David, John Attenborough.
Mary Daly
Mary Daly (1928–2010), American radical feminist philosopher and theologian, author of The Church and the Second Sex, Beyond God the Father, and Gyn/Ecology; Boston College professor, distinct from economist Mary C. Daly and historian Mary E. Daly.
Mary Harrington
Mary Harrington, British writer and UnHerd contributing editor, author of Feminism Against Progress (2023) and originator of "reactionary feminism," critiquing technological progress and liberal feminism.
Mary Ingalls
Mary Ingalls (Mary Amelia Ingalls, born 1865, Pepin, Wisconsin) was Laura Ingalls Wilder's eldest sister, blinded at 14; the books blamed scarlet fever, but 2013 analysis points to viral meningoencephalitis. She graduated from the Iowa school for the blind and never married, unlike her TV character.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco
Mary Jo Buttafuoco (Mary Jo Connery, born 1955) is the Long Island woman shot in the head in 1992 by Amy Fisher, her husband Joey's teenage mistress; survivor, memoirist, and subject of the 2026 Lifetime film I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969) was an American political worker, RFK staffer and Boiler Room Girl, who died July 18, 1969, when Ted Kennedy's car went off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island; Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene.
Mary L. Trump
Mary L. Trump, American clinical psychologist, author, and niece of Donald Trump, daughter of Fred Trump Jr. Wrote the 2020 tell-all Too Much and Never Enough, which sold over 950,000 copies on day one, and has published further family and political books.
Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois
Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois (1831-1885), also spelled Sylvina or Silvinia, was a Great Barrington, Massachusetts domestic worker, mother of W.E.B. Du Bois, descendant of Revolutionary veteran Tom Burghardt, buried unmarked in Mahaiwe Cemetery.
Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse (1910–2001), British schoolteacher, founded the 1964 Clean Up TV campaign and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association; her morality campaigns shaped UK censorship law and drew lasting satire and reappraisal.