Same-Sex Marriage

Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage

Globally, only a relatively small number of states currently recognize same-sex marriage, and the tendency is to legislate some exemptions from the automatic rights and responsibilities afforded heterosexual married couples (for example, with respect to adoption rights). Civil unions and registered cohabitation are more common ways of legally sanctioning same-sex relationships. They offer some of the symbolic and material advantages associated with marriage, but with more restricted legal status. Currently, however, most same-sex partners must rely on affirmation and commitment ceremonies they create themselves, or on spiritual blessings where they can be accessed. The unwillingness of many states to allow same-sex couples to marry their partners of choice—often argued to be a basic human right—is viewed by many as symbolizing lesbians and gay men's second-class status as citizens. Same-sex marriage is therefore an important social and political issue because it raises the significance of marriage as a route to sexual citizenship. But this is also a contentious issue, not least because marriage has historically been bound up with the regulation of gender and the reproduction of gender inequalities.

Political, Social, and Cultural Impacts

There is an ongoing debate in the lesbian and gay literature about the value and implications of same-sex marriage and about the political, social, and cultural significance of marriage. The core debate is articulated around dichotomies of normalization and resistance, and is concerned with the extent to which same-sex marriage is the basis for a radical challenge to heteronormativity or if it represents the hegemony [Page 734]of heterosexual norms and values. Marriage, some argue, is the legitimate aim of lesbian and gay politics and is the most effective strategy for full lesbian and gay citizenship. This view conceptualizes marriage as symbolizing an economic, affective, and psychosocial bond that is freely entered into and understands heterosexual and same-sex relationships as essentially identical in nature. Advocates of this position sometimes argue that the legitimizing same-sex marriage could facilitate the modernizing of the institution of marriage in keeping with gender and sexual equality.

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