Same-sex unions and families

Identifying the aspects that individuals value in a romantic partner has been the focus of extensive multidisciplinary research during the last decades. Numerous studies address the differences between men and women in terms of the criteria employed when searching for a suitable partner. The most cited theoretical viewpoint in this respect is evolutionary psychology, which proposes that there are certain differences between men and women in their choice for a good match. While men focus on physical appeal, women tend to be more concerned with partner’s social status and resources. However, the evolutionary approach is problematic to extend to homosexuals’ mating choices as same-sex couples more than often deviate from traditional models of marriage and childbearing. Moreover, the mate selection criteria of gays and lesbians have rarely been studied across different cultural and societal contexts. The aim of this study is to extend existing research on mating preferences of gay and lesbian daters while taking into account cross-national variations in gender role ideology, legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, and social disapproval of homosexuality, across 11 countries in Europe.

Most West-European countries recognize same-sex marriage and/or partnerships. Taken together as same-sex union registration (SSUR), this paper proposes a comparative study of European SSUR rates. It describes differences between low and high rates, male and female participation, and other contrasts. It brings arguments for understanding the differences using national demographic statistics and in-depth interviews with same-sex couples in twelve European countries.
The paper suggests individualization has paradoxical effects on SSUR: it facilitates legal recognition, but goes with low registration rates. Second, it suggests high feminist values have equally paradoxical effects. Strongly opposed to SSUR at the beginning, lesbian couples took major advantage of it some year later in order to found families. Nevertheless, the overall effect is negative; frequencies remain low in feminist environments. Third, it suggests that high visibility of LGBT communities tends to turn legal recognition into national pride, shared by mainstream media. This “triumphant homosexuality” features high SSUR rates. Only French rates are higher, taking advantage of both homosexual visibility and strong family ties. The non-traditional character of the Pacs seems well adapted to this double-sided adherence.

Despite several recent studies documenting high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) among gay and bisexual men (GBM), the literature is silent regarding GBM’s perceptions of IPV within their community, or the perceptions of the helpfulness of a hypothetical police response to a male victim of male-perpetrated. Data were drawn from a 2011 survey of venue-recruited GBM (n=1,041) and analyzed through chi-square tests and logistic regression. Participants were asked how helpful the police would be in the hypothetical situations of both a gay/bisexual male experiencing IPV and a heterosexual female experiencing IPV. Although the majority of respondents had similar perceptions of the commonness and severity of IPV in GBM compared to heterosexual women, the majority of the sample (58.6%) reported perceiving that contacting the police would be less helpful for a gay/bisexual male victim of IPV than for a heterosexual female victim of IPV. In logistic regression, associations were found between increasing experiences of homophobic discrimination and this comparatively negative view of police response. This learned anticipation of rejection by protective legal forces should be considered as the response to male-male intimate partner violence grows.

This paper aims to analyze patterns in the matching behaviors between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples using educational, race and age traits. First of all, in order to show how each group is composed we use descriptive statistics of the data. In addition to that we make a comparative between the earnings of each couple to show the economic differences between them. This study also uses contingency tables and log-linear models as methods that can help us try to understand which traits influence more the matching behaviors of each partner. The results show that race and level of education are characteristics that influence more heterosexual couples than homosexual couples. The traits that are more important to homosexual couples in choosing their partners are race and age. These outcomes show that there are real differences in the way these couples choose each other and leave room for questioning the reason for those differences.

Same-sex couples are modestly but increasingly contributing to family diversification in many developed societies. In this paper, we present evidence on the demographics of same-sex couples and their families in South America. We focus on Brazil 2010 and Uruguay 2011, the first countries in the region to include an item on same-sex partnerships in their last census questionnaires. We examine how partnered gays and lesbians differ from partnered heterosexual men and women on issues like their geographic distribution, income, education, race and family structure. Inspired by findings from the US, we test the hypothesis of gay and lesbian couples as monolithic and stereotypes of high educated, wealthy, childless and urban individuals. First findings nevertheless seem to fit the stereotypes. We discuss the extent to which gay and lesbian couples may be underreported and whether selection into union formation and into self-reporting accounts for most of the observed socioeconomic profile.

As a hot social concern, the mode and process of matching about the young people is changing. Ten thousand People Blind Date (TTPBD) provides a new type of mating field for urban youths, as our society to make efforts for solving the problem of marriages of them. Empirical Analysis found, as social fields for marriage choosing, TTPBD could be a platform to help communicate for youths, but it failed in gaining any effect. There are several factors influencing it greatly, such as conflict of interest between supply and demand caused by the information asymmetry and public opinion, the restricting of activities of the public welfare due to elite and media conspiracy, the dislocation about the logic of marriage mating leaded by marketization operation and blind date panic, and the fuzzy of choosing from attendances. Although the operation rules by its own influence, it can’t directly solve mating-selection problem for urban youths. Therefore, this field is also useful to them.

Despite a recent focus on intimate partner violence (IPV) among men who have sex with men (MSM), the male-male couple is absent from the IPV literature. Specifically, research on dyadic factors in male-male couples and their influence on IPV is lacking. A subsample of 403 gay/bisexual men with main partners (MP) was taken from a 2011 survey. Models looked at dyadic factors, including racial differences, age differences, and social network characteristics of couples. Findings suggest that men were more likely to report perpetration of physical violence if they differed from their MP on characteristics such as race (OR 0.32, 95% CI: 0.14, 0.73), whereas MP age was associated with receipt of physical violence (OR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.88, 0.99). These dyadic differences within male-male couples may indicate a unique source of IPV risk for MSM with MPs.

The legalisation of same-sex marriages in 12 countries around the world, together with the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in other 21 countries has consider-ably changed the marriage institution worldwide (Cherlin 2004). Some authors consider that same-sex marriage is not only a major legal change but also a real new social phenomenon (Chamie and Mirkin 2011). Nevertheless, the difficulties in enumerating same-sex couples with available official data (Festy 2007) make it difficult to evaluate really the incidence of same-sex nuptiality. In this paper, we focus on Canada and Spain, two countries that legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, just after the two pio-neers, Belgium and The Netherlands. First, we review previous literature in order to discuss the limits of enumerating same-sex couples with census data and marriage records. Second, and taking these limitations into account, we try to understand how prone are gays and lesbians to marry when they have the choice to do so by comparing the incidence of heterosexual and homosexual non-marital cohabitation. Third, we analyse the socio-demographic profiles of same-sex partners and spouses.

In this paper we use the recently released 100 % data from the 2010 Census to analyze patterns of gay male partnering and lesbian partnering in the metropolitan and micropolitan areas of the United States. We first used census method to adjust the number of same-sex household due to the sex miscoding problem and then develop indexes of gay male partnering and lesbian partnering for every one of the 374 metropolitan areas and 581 micropolitan areas of the United States in 2010. We next describe and relate the partnering patterns separately in the metropolitan and micropolitan areas and compare their spatial patterns with those of heterosexual married and unmarried partners. We then test various hypotheses relating characteristics of the metropolitan areas and the micropolitan areas with the gay male and lesbian partnering rates.