same-sex marriage
Same-sex couple exchanging rings during their marriage ceremony in Pittsburgh, 2014.
same-sex marriage
society
Also known as: same-sex partnership, same-sex union
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. 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,...