INTRODUCTION

Finally, I will take up the issue of marriage between homosexuals, one that has been under discussion for some while now within both homosexual and heterosexual communities in many countries. Particularly in the United States in recent years marriage rather than partnership has been the focus of this discussion in the gay community. This is because in 1993 the Hawaiian Supreme Court declared the ban on same-sex marriages to be discriminatory under the Hawaiian constitution. At the same time the court became engaged in a further debate in order to assess whether this discrimination was justified by a compelling state interest. If the final verdict declared this form of discrimination to be unjustified, that would mean that Hawaii would lift the ban on same-sex marriages. A wide debate involving legal, gender, and cultural studies has developed around that very controversial verdict, and meanwhile many American cities have extended the same benefits enjoyed by heterosexual partners to homosexual partners, indirectly recognizing such unions. More recently, the state of Vermont has recognized same-sex partnership, extending most of the benefits of heterosexual families to homosexual couples.

In Europe in February 1994, a European Parliament resolution proposed that member states recognize same-sex marriages; since then many countries, followinga verdict of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg,which extended employment benefits fromheterosexual to homosexual partnerships, hence openingthe way for legal recognition of gay couples, have adopted legislation which recognizes same-sex partnership, either explicitly (as in the case of Holland and Scandinavian countries), or implicitly, by means of the legalization of civil unions, heterosexual and homosexual alike (as in France).