Fierce and often ugly battles are being waged, especially in the United States, over who is allowed to marry, what marriage signifies, and where marriage is headed. Kathleen Hull examines these debates, and data from interviews with over seventy people in same-sex relationships, to explore the cultural practices surrounding same-sex marriage and the legal battle for recognition. Arguing that the cultural and legal dimensions of marriage are closely intertwined, she shows how same-sex couples use marriage-related cultural practices, such as public commitment rituals, to assert the reality of their commitments despite lack of legal recognition.

This volume explores the realities and representations of same-sex sexuality in France in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, the period that witnessed the emergence of "homosexuality" in the modern sense of the word. Based on archival research and textual analysis, the articles examine the development of homosexual subcultures and illustrate the ways in which philosophes, pamphleteers, police, novelists, scientists, and politicians conceptualized same-sex relations and connected them with more general concerns about order and disorder.