Same-sex partnerships and gay marriages became the core of LGBT politics in America and worldwide in the second half of the 1990s. The distinction between legally recognized partnerships and marriages is not linguistic but also has symbolic meaning. The use of the term gay marriage denotes not only the plea for legal regulation of homosexual relationships but also highlights inequalities in the social regulation of homo-and heterosexuality. As such, advocates of gay marriage do not want “just like marriage” same-sex partnerships, because this still dialectically places heterosexual marriage as the ideal. But rather, the use of the term ...