# data[].attributes.headline
Same-Sex Marriage: History, Status Around the World & Facts

# data[].attributes.subject
Same-Sex Marriage: History, Status Around the World & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Same-sex marriage, the practice of marriage between two men or between two women. Although same-sex marriage has been regulated through law, religion, and custom in most countries of the world, the legal and social responses have ranged from celebration on the one hand to criminalization on the other.

same-sex marriage© Gene J. Puskar-AP/REX/Shutterstock.com

Some scholars, most notably the Yale professor and historian John Boswell (1947-94), have argued that same-sex unions were recognized by the Roman Catholic Church in medieval Europe, although others have disputed this claim. Scholars and the general public became increasingly interested in the issue during the late 20th century, a period when attitudes toward homosexuality and laws regulating homosexual behaviour were liberalized, particularly in western Europe and the United States.

The issue of same-sex marriage frequently sparked emotional and political clashes between supporters and opponents. By the early 21st century, several jurisdictions, both at the national and subnational levels, had legalized same-sex marriage; in other jurisdictions, constitutional measures were adopted to prevent same-sex marriages from being sanctioned, or laws were enacted that refused to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere. That the same act was evaluated so differently by various groups indicates its importance as a social issue in the early 21st century; it also demonstrates the extent to which cultural diversity persisted both within and among countries. For tables on same-sex marriage around the world, in the United States, and in Australia, see below.

Cultural ideals of marriage and sexual partnership

Perhaps the earliest systematic analyses of marriage and kinship were conducted by the Swiss legal historian Johann Jakob Bachofen (1861) and the American ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1871); by the mid-20th century an enormous variety of marriage and sexual customs across cultures had been documented by such scholars. Notably, they found that most cultures expressed an ideal form of marriage and an ideal set of marriage partners, while also practicing flexibility in the application of those ideals.

Among the more common forms so documented were common-law marriage; morganatic marriage, in which titles and property do not pass to children; exchange marriage, in which a sister and a brother from one family marry a brother and a sister from another; and group marriages based on polygyny (co-wives) or polyandry (co-husbands). Ideal matches have included those between cross-cousins, between parallel cousins, to a group of sisters (in polygyny) or brothers (in polyandry), or between different age sets. In many cultures the exchange of some form of surety, such as bride service, bridewealth, or dowry, has been a traditional part of the marriage contract.

Cultures that openly accepted homosexuality, of which there were many, generally had nonmarital categories of partnership through which such bonds could be expressed and socially regulated. Conversely, other cultures essentially denied the existence of same-sex intimacy, or at least deemed it an unseemly topic for discussion of any sort.

Religious and secular expectations of marriage and sexuality

Over time the historical and traditional cultures originally recorded by the likes of Bachofen and Morgan slowly succumbed to the homogenization imposed by colonialism. Although a multiplicity of marriage practices once existed, conquering nations typically forced local cultures to conform to colonial belief and administrative systems. Whether Egyptian, Vijayanagaran, Roman, Ottoman, Mongol, Chinese, European, or other, empires have long fostered (or, in some cases, imposed) the widespread adoption of a relatively small number of religious and legal systems. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the perspectives of one or more of the world religions- Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity-and their associated civil practices were often invoked during national discussions of same-sex marriage.

Perhaps because systems of religion and systems of civil authority often reflect and support each other, the countries that had reached consensus on the issue by the early 2000s tended to have a single dominant religious affiliation across the population; many such places had a single, state-sponsored religion. This was the case in both Iran, where a strong Muslim theocracy had criminalized same-sex intimacy, and Denmark, where the findings of a conference of Evangelical Lutheran bishops (representing the state religion) had helped smooth the way for the first national recognition of same-sex relationships through registered partnerships. In other cases, the cultural homogeneity supported by the dominant religion did not result in the application of doctrine to the civic realm but may nonetheless have fostered a smoother series of discussions among the citizenry: Belgium and Spain had legalized same-sex marriage, for instance, despite official opposition from their predominant religious institution, the Roman Catholic Church.

The existence of religious pluralities within a country seems to have had a less determinate effect on the outcome of same-sex marriage debates. In some such countries, including the United States, consensus on this issue was difficult to reach. On the other hand, the Netherlands-the first country to grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples (2001)-was religiously diverse, as was Canada, which did so in 2005.

Most of the world religions have at some points in their histories opposed same-sex marriage for one or more of the following stated reasons: homosexual acts violate natural law or divine intentions and are therefore immoral; passages in sacred texts condemn homosexual acts; and religious tradition recognizes only the marriage of one man and one woman as valid. In the early 21st century, however, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism all spoke with more than one voice on this issue. Orthodox Judaism opposed same-sex marriage, while the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative traditions allowed for it. Most Christian denominations opposed it, while the United Church of Christ, the United Church of Canada, and the Religious Society of Friends ( Quakers) took a more favourable stand or allowed individual churches autonomy in the matter. The Unitarian Universalist churches and the gay-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches fully accepted same-sex marriage. Hinduism, without a sole leader or hierarchy, allowed some Hindus to accept the practice while others were virulently opposed. The three major schools of Buddhism -Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana-stressed the attainment of enlightenment as a basic theme; most Buddhist literature therefore viewed all marriage as a choice between the two individuals involved.

Sexuality is but one of many areas where religious and civic authority interact; definitions of the purpose of marriage is another. In one view, the purpose of marriage is to ensure successful procreation and child rearing. In another, marriage provides a-and perhaps "the"-fundamental building block of stable communities, with procreation as an incidental by-product. A third perspective holds that marriage is an instrument of societal domination and so is not desirable. A fourth is that relationships between consenting adults should not be regulated by the government. Although most religions subscribe to just one of these beliefs, it is not uncommon for two or more viewpoints to coexist within a given society.

Proponents of the first view believe that the primary goal of marriage is to provide a relatively uniform social institution through which to produce and raise children. In their view, because male and female are both necessary for procreation, the privileges of marriage should be available only to opposite-sex couples. In other words, partnerships involving sexual intimacy should have at least a notional potential for procreation. From this perspective, the movement to legally recognize same-sex marriage is a misguided attempt to deny the social, moral, and biological distinctions that foster the continued existence of society and so should be discouraged.

Because this view considers biological reproduction a sort of social obligation, its advocates tended to frame individuals' legal and moral commitment to one another as a matter of genetic relatedness. In cases of inheritance or custody, for instance, they generally defined the parents' legal duties to their biological children differently than those to their stepchildren. Among groups who feel strongly that same-sex marriage is problematic, there is also a tendency for the legal relationships of spouses, parents, and children to converge. Typically, these societies provide for the automatic inheritance of property between spouses, and between parents and children, and allow these close kin to co-own property without joint ownership contracts. In addition, such societies often allow close kin a variety of automatic privileges such as sponsoring immigration visas or making medical decisions for one another; for those with whom one shares no close kin relationship, these privileges typically require legal interventions. Such legal circumventions are usually more difficult for, and in some cases even prohibited to, same-sex couples.

In contrast to the procreative model of marriage, advocates of the legalization of same-sex marriage generally believed that committed partnerships involving sexual intimacy are valuable because they draw people together to a singular degree and in singular ways. In this view, such relationships are intrinsically worthy while also quite distinct from (though not incompatible with) activities associated with the bearing or raising of children. Sexual partnerships are one of a number of factors that bond adults together into stable household units. These households, in turn, form the foundation of a productive society-a society in which, albeit incidentally, children, elders, and others who may be relatively powerless are likely to be protected.

From this perspective, the devaluation of same-sex intimacy is immoral because it constitutes arbitrary and irrational discrimination, thereby damaging the community. Most same-sex marriage advocates further held that international human rights legislation provided a universal franchise to equal treatment under the law. Thus, prohibiting a specific group from the full rights of marriage was illegally discriminatory. For advocates of the community-benefit perspective, all the legal perquisites associated with heterosexual marriage should be available to any committed couple.

In contrast to these positions, self-identified "queer" theorists and activists sought to deconstruct the paired oppositional categories common in discussions of biology, gender, and sexuality (e.g., male-female, man-woman, gay-straight) and to replace these with categories or continua that they believed better reflect the actual practices of humanity. Queer advocates contended that marriage is an institution of "hetero-normality" that forces individuals into ill-fitting cultural categories and demonizes those who refuse to accept those categories. For these reasons, they maintained that consensual intimacy between adults should not be regulated and that marriage should be disestablished as a cultural institution.

A fourth view, libertarianism, had different premises from queer theory but somewhat similar ramifications; it proposed that government powers should be strictly limited, generally to the tasks of maintaining civil order, infrastructure, and defense. For libertarians, marriage legislation of any sort-either the legalization or the prohibition of same-sex marriage-fell outside of the role of government and was unacceptable. As a result, many libertarians believed that marriage should be "privatized" (i.e., removed from government regulation) and that citizens should be able to form partnerships of their choosing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
same-sex marriage | History, Status Around the World, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Same-sex marriage, the practice of marriage between two men or between two women. Although same-sex marriage has been regulated through law, religion, and custom in most countries of the world, the legal and social responses have ranged from celebration to criminalization.

# data[].attributes.body
Each team will get points for:
1. Relevance - speaking to the topic, using strong and persuasive argumen ts.
2. Promptness - quick responses to all questions.
3. Fluency - speaking readily without pauses.
4. Engaging of all members in the debate.       5. Correct grammatical structures.
6. Vocabulary - its richness and width.
7. Pronunciation.

# data[].attributes.headline
You have two weeks to Prepare for the debate. Make two groups of three people. The first group will present the arguments FOR, the second group will present the arguments AGAINST the subject of the debate. 

# data[].attributes.subject
You have two weeks to Prepare for the debate. Make two groups of three people. The first group will present the arguments FOR, the second group will present the arguments AGAINST the subject of the debate. 

# data[].attributes.body
study before the debate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Seating arrangement

The chairperson sits at the head of the table. The two debating parties are seated opposite each other. The audience sit a short distance away from the table, and should be able to see both parties. So if necessary, additional seats for the audience should be arranged in several rows rather than behind one of the debating parties.

Order of speakers

The arrows indicate the order of speakers in the first round of the debate. In the second round, the order of speakers is simply reversed, until the first speaker for the affirmative side has spoken. Then a speaker for the negative side has the last word; the team may choose a member to give this statement - but not their first speaker, as this would give him/her a block of two minutes speaking time, which would be unfair on the other team.

Rules for the debate

1. The first speaker for the affirmative side who is sitting next to the chairperson begins. Then, as indicated by the arrows in the diagram, the first speaker for the negative side responds. In this way, the speakers for both sides speak in turn. When the last speaker for the negative side has spoken, the second round of the debate begins, this time in reverse order.

2. After the first speaker for the affirmative side has spoken, a speaker from the negative team (but not their first speaker) has the last word.

3. The order of speakers must not be changed.

4. Each speaker has a maximum time of one minute. The chairperson checks the time carefully. He/ she gives a sign when the speaker has 10 seconds to go, and after speaking time is over, the speaker may finish his/her sentence and must then stop. Spare time may not be transferred to another speaker.

5. Interrupting a speaker is forbidden.

6. The audience must not participate in the debate.

7. After the debate, the audience has five minutes to share their impressions and opinions. Then they vote by a show of hands.

8. In the vote, yes and no votes are counted. The majority wins the vote.

Tips for debating speakers

1. With the exception of the first speaker for the affirmative side, spend approximately the first half of your statement to rebut an argument of the other side and then present a new point.

2. (For the first speakers.) State your motion - say what decision you want to see.

3. When you prepare for the debate, first brainstorm ideas. Then decide in which order you want to present your points, and assign them to a speaker. Begin and finish with a particularly strong and impressive point (see student handout 8.2).

4. You can repeat or vary a key argument to "hammer it home".

5. The last speakers should sum up their side's argument, highlighting three or four points. What should your audience keep in mind after the debate? If the debate is about a decision to be taken, make clear what your appeal to the audience is when they vote after the debate.

6. Speak freely. Don't read your statement from any notes, but establish eye contact with your opponents and with the audience.

7. Treat your opponents with respect. Never insult a speaker, but work on his arguments.

Tips for the audience (see student handout 8.5)

1. Before the debate, try to anticipate the arguments both sides might, or should, present. This gives you a framework of reference when listening to the debate.

2. Take notes of the arguments presented by either side - in one sentence if possible.

3. Link arguments with rebuttals by lines or arrows, and enter a comment. Which argument con-vinced you? (Steps 2 and 3 can be shared between several listeners.)

4. Indicate which argument particularly impressed you.

5. After the debate, share your results in the group. Then vote on the motions presented by the two parties.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Student handout 8.2: Rules for debating - Living Democracy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Seating arrangement The chairperson sits at the head of the table. The two debating parties are seated opposite each other. The audience...Read More...