a religious marriage is performed by a religious institution to recognize and create the rights and obligations intrinsic to matrimony in that religion. he argued that a legitimacy-based definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried. this can be interpreted as a form of plural mating, as are those societies dominated by female-headed families in the caribbean, mauritius and brazil where there is …