ABSTRACT
Marriage is often seen as a fundamentally private institution, the very bedrock of private life. Yet the highly public nature of the debates over marriage in both Indonesia and the United States in recent years clearly shows that marriage as a social entity is anything but private. Simultaneously a pillar of the family and of society more broadly; a legal institution that is regulated by civil law; and for many people, a religious union that is sanctified by God, marriage lies squarely at the intersection of public and private morality, and is repeatedly subjected to the control of the state as well as the moral scrutiny of the larger public.
