Tackling Inequality in the Intimate Sphere: Problematizing Love and Violence in Same-Sex Relationships

The campaigns for same-sex marriage currently being fought across the world rely (increasingly successfully) on two arguments: that love between adults is a universal sentiment, goal and human right; and that marriage, being based on love, should, therefore, be open to any adult couple, regardless of sexuality or gender identity (e.g., Osterlund 2009; Grossi 2012). Love, in these arguments, is constructed both as a universal feeling and state of being and a socially constructed set of behaviours and regulatory mechanisms. Whereas the former is understood in essentialist terms as part of the human condition, the latter is seen to be flexible, changeable and responsive to changes in societies. Thus are governments exhorted to change with the times and make marriage more inclusive (see Osterlund 2009). In this chapter, love is problematized, and by extension marriage, in order to draw attention to a gap that has appeared in the debates about equality for those in same-sex relationships