Divorcing Love and Marriage from Organized Religion

Nov 3, 2023

Marriage, family, and domestic bliss are popular topics of discussion and debate in the United States. Thanks to the battles about marriage equality, the nuclear family, divorce rates, the rise of feminism, and conservative Christian insistence that traditional marriage is the bedrock of society, the discourse around intimate relationships is fraught with social, religious, and moral notions of love.

Further, conservatives such as the new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in particular, have used scriptural views of family and marriage as cover for homophobia and transphobia.

Now, clinical psychologist Enrico Gnaulati brings decades of experience, both professional and personal, to readers in a new book about sustaining long-term relationships while rejecting organized religion’s view of morality. Gnaulati spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about Flourishing Love: A Secular Guide to Lasting Intimate Relationships.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.