Same-Sex Families

Definitions of Family

The fiercest debates about same-sex families have their roots in a problematic notion and the use of the term family. In general, it is possible to distinguish two, traditional and liberal, mutually exclusive approaches. Within the first one, informed and shaped by traditional, religious, conservative, and exclusive ideologies, definition of a family is restricted to the relationship between man and woman and their children. Ideally, such relationship should be legalized in the form of a marriage, and be recognized—blessed—by a religious organization (church), to which husband and wife belong. There may be variations to this configuration; however, the nuclear family, with its labels (husband and wife), and recognition bodies (legal and cultural), remains the most popular and desirable model of the relationship in the modern Western world. In other words, “a family” is formed by the following: (a) two (b) adults (c) of opposite sex, (d) heterosexual and (e) able to procreate and support each other (f) materially and (g) emotionally. Having defined a family in such terms, same-sex families challenge at least three of these pillars, highlighting the need for the notion to be readdressed. Nonetheless, there are other ways of forming interpersonal relationships present in our society, as well as across the globe in non-Western cultures. Conservative stances will usually disregard nonnuclear families as being impaired forms of the main family type, and non-Western forms of the societal organization as “The Other,” not having much or anything in common with the Western culture. This characteristic strategy, presented often by conservative viewpoints, is also the point of reference for the liberal opponents.

The second perspective, the liberal one, takes a different direction when defining the modern family. Liberal attitudes put more trust into the nonnuclear formations and are willing to see those as legitimate forms of the existence of family. However, these nontraditional families are still recognized as subordinate to the nuclear model—which means that it is still in the center of the ideal. Among others, in Western societies the presence of families without children, extended families, and single-parent families can be observed. They all break the fundamentals of the traditional family organization, and the chain of interdependencies between the number of participants, genders and (het-ero) sexuality—they open a potentially accommodative space for completely new (and as such, queer) family types, such as same-sex or non-kinship-based families (families of choice).

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