Title: same-sex marriage | Legalization, Supreme Court, Equality, History, Status Around the World, & Facts | Britannica
Headings: Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Cultural ideals of marriage and sexual partnership
Religious and secular expectations of marriage and sexuality
Same-sex marriage

Content: 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.