This study concerns the practices of woman/woman marriage among the Gikuyu of Kenya. Though widely practiced, such marriages have seldom been studied, and virtually not at all among the Gikuyu. Such practices had been only lightly, and inadequately, addressed over five decades ago by Leakey (1938/1977). This study, designed as preliminary fieldwork, explores Gikuyu woman/woman marriage practices to gain useful basic information to provide a point of entry for future research. In this study I address shortcomings of previous research on woman/woman marriages, such as the prevalent emphasis on reductionist explanations for their occurrences. On the basis of preliminary fieldwork among Gikuyu women engaged in these practices, and my experiences as a member of Gikuyu society, I assert that women have much greater latitude in choosing how and why they participate in woman/woman marriages than the literature suggests. Such marriages take diverse, and often complex forms that are not adequately addressed by single-explanation definitions or descriptions. Secondly, the study attempts to locate a space for these practices in the feminist and family studies literatures, while questioning the absence of woman/woman marriages from both arenas of discourse. I argue that the exclusion of woman/woman marriages from feminist discourse and the family studies literatures is not an accident, as both discourses have marginalized voices from so-called "third world" locations. / Master of Science

The topic of this thesis is the legislation of cohabitation outside of marriage. The thesis focuses on the treatment of registered partnership in the Czech legal system and its equivalent in the French legal system - Pacte Civile de Solidarité. The thesis describes the historical development and current legal regulation of this issue, discussing the terms of formation of the partnership, the rights and obligations arising from this partnership and circumstances of termination of the partnerships in both Czech and French legislation. In the conclusion, both legislations are compared.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T18:47:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Joelma Higa.pdf: 1026430 bytes, checksum: bb9f321f5901f0d290aaf018ddfd02a7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-15 / This research investigates heterosexual and homosexual marriages in old age. We hypothesized that keep actions invisible protagonists conjugalities strengthens the homogenization and generalization attributes of individuals, increasing prejudice and stereotypical thinking that ignores the dignity and rights of the elderly. The aim is capture the diversity in marriages in old age by mapping profile with the collection of data from IBGE and understand the speech of subjects through a TV show and a movie that address.In the long run, the study may contribute to programs of social policies that consider sexual diversity. The research followed the quantitative and qualitative methods, in view that you want to analyze the data collected, crossing with the discourses of the subject, to enable closer to the reality of those who experience this situation / Esta pesquisa procura investigar uniões conjugais heterossexuais e homoafetivas, na velhice. Temos como hipótese que manter invisíveis ações protagonistas de conjugalidades fortalece a homogeneização e a generalização de atributos dos indivíduos, aumentando os preconceitos e o pensar estereotipado que ignora a dignidade e os direitos dos idosos. O objetivo é apreender a diversidade nas uniões conjugais na velhice por meio de mapeamento do perfil, com a coleta de dados do IBGE e compreender os discursos dos sujeitos, por meio de um programa de TV e de um filme que abordam o tema. A longo prazo, o estudo poderá contribuir com programas de políticas sociais que consideram a diversidade sexual. A pesquisa seguiu o método quantiqualitativo, tendo em vista que se pretende analisar os dados coletados, cruzando com os discursos dos sujeitos, para possibilitar maior aproximação à realidade daqueles que vivenciam a referida situação

Due to social stigma, millions of sexual minorities have concealed their true sexual identities by entering into heterosexual relationships and marriages. Eventually, some transition to same-sex relationships and are able to live authentic lives. This latter group had identified as genuinely heterosexual, never questioning their sexuality until a particular time in their lives when same-sex desires spontaneously appeared. The experiences of transitioning from heterosexual to same-sex partners are not well known, particularly for women who have been legally married to both men and women. Diamond's dynamical systems theory for same-sex sexuality and McCarn and Fassinger's lesbian identity formation model provided the theoretical framework for this qualitative narrative study investigating the life stories of 15 female participants recruited from social media, who had experienced a transition from heterosexual marriage to same-sex marriage. Face-to-face interviews were conducted and data were coded and analyzed to identify emergent categories. The findings revealed that the women experienced shifts in private and public sexual identities over time. Despite external obstacles and personal concerns in transitioning from heterosexual to same-sex relationships, all the women had more positive experiences in their same-sex marriages than they did in their heterosexual marriages. Understanding these women's life stories will allow mental health professionals to better understand and address the needs of this population in more clinical and applied settings. This study will also help educate the general public about women who experience shifts in the desired gender of their relationship.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

In the 2004 Presidential Election social and wedge issues were among the most publicized mobilization tools utilized by the Bush Campaign. Specifically, same-sex marriage has been suggested as a key wedge issue that may have mobilized voters, although research differs on its impact. My contention is that these previous studies miss the point with regard to wedge issues, which is that they are useful on persuadable voters, and persuadable voters live in swing states. I estimate a logit model using 2004 American National Election Studies survey data. I utilize voters’ decisions to turn out as the dependent variable and control for respondents’ positions on terrorism, the economy, same-sex marriage, political interest, party identification, and socio-economic status. These findings demonstrate, consistent with my hypothesis, voters in swing same-sex marriage ballot measure states were more likely to turn out. These voters may not have been persuadable, but rather the Republican base.

The aim of this study is to examine the media coverage of gender-neutral marriage from an intersectional perspective – with particular regard to gender, sexual orientation and religion. By focusing on the spokespeople who appears in the articles we have made an attempt to answer questions regarding who was heard in the debate on gender-neutral marriage and how the homosexual couples are portrayed in relation to the above criteria. The collected material consists of 89 articles, published in 2009, in Swedish newspapers which have been analysed by using quantitative content analysis. Ten articles have also been selected for a critical discourse analysis based on Norman Fairclough’s approach. The study is based on a social constructionist perspective and the assumption that language is of crucial importance when it comes to the creation and maintenance of social categorisation. Theories of gender/queer and intersectionality have furthermore been used to enable us to look at the topic from a multidimensional point of view. The quantitative analysis of the texts shows a great predominance of male spokespersons. Moreover, it appears that religions other than Christianity are largely underrepresented. The same pattern applies to people with homosexual orientation, whom are rarely heard on the issue of gender-neutral marriage. Furthermore, the results show that bisexuals and trans-gendered are almost completely excluded from the debate. The qualitative part of the study points in the same direction. A membership in The Church of Sweden is presented as a natural norm in the case of homosexuality and gender-neutral marriage, and homosexuals with another religion are made invisible or represented as divergent. The texts reveal a tolerance and openness towards homosexuality, but also strong assimilation ideals. The results show that same-sex relationships are portrayed as something the society is expected to accept, but only on condition that they are formed in accordance with the heterosexual norms concerning marriage and relationships, and also follow norms regarding gender and religion.

In the 2004 Presidential Election social and wedge issues were among the most publicized mobilization tools utilized by the Bush Campaign. Specifically, same-sex marriage has been suggested as a key wedge issue that may have mobilized voters, although research differs on its impact. My contention is that these previous studies miss the point with regard to wedge issues, which is that they are useful on persuadable voters, and persuadable voters live in swing states. I estimate a logit model using 2004 American National Election Studies survey data. I utilize voters’ decisions to turn out as the dependent variable and control for respondents’ positions on terrorism, the economy, same-sex marriage, political interest, party identification, and socio-economic status. These findings demonstrate, consistent with my hypothesis, voters in swing same-sex marriage ballot measure states were more likely to turn out. These voters may not have been persuadable, but rather the Republican base.

Marriage is one of the most important socialand legal institutions of humanity. Over time, its concept has varied and has adapted to thesocial and cultural evolution of our societies.In this article, the author proposes a new constitutional concept of marriage, which includes same-sex couples, explaining also the role that the principle of promotion of marriage, protected in the Constitution, plays in its configuration. / El matrimonio es una de las instituciones sociales y jurídicas más importantes de la humanidad. A lo largo del tiempo, su concepto ha variado y ha ido adaptándose a la evoluciónsocial y cultural de nuestra sociedad.En este artículo, el autor postula un nuevo concepto constitucional del matrimonio, el cual incluye a las personas del mismo sexo, explicando también el rol que cumple en su configuración el principio de promoción del matrimonio amparado en la Constitución.

abstract: While acceptance towards same-sex marriage is gradually increasing, same-sex marriage is banned in many states within the United States. Laws that prohibit same-sex couples from marrying have been shown to increase feelings of depression, exclusion, and stigma for same-sex attracted individuals. The intention of this study was to explore the effect both pro- and anti-same-sex marriage advertisements have on heterosexual individuals' implicit attitudes towards same-sex couples. It was predicted that exposure to anti-same-sex advertisements would lead to viewing same-sex couples as more unpleasant and heterosexual couples as being more pleasant. However, heterosexual participants who viewed anti-same-sex marriage ads were more likely to rate heterosexual couples as being unpleasant and same-sex couples as pleasant. It is theorized that viewing anti-same-sex marriage advertisements led heterosexual individuals to report heterosexual stimuli as being more unpleasant compared to same-sex stimuli as a form of defensive processing. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Psychology 2013