| Summary: | This chapter provides a background on the issue of same-sex marriage that come to prominence in many countries around the world in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It recounts the granting of the right of two women or two men to marry by the nations of the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina. It also mentions other states that instituted alternative forms of civil union or domestic partnership, conferring all or some of the same legal benefits of marriage. The chapter focuses on the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex that has appeared in a wide variety of texts during the early modern period in Europe. It looks at references to the classical world and ancient sources that tell of emperors marrying their favorite male slaves.
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