The (de)imbrication of religious and (non)religious normativities: The legal debate on same-sex marriage in Argentina

Abstract

The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze the parliamentary debate when same sex marriage was approved in Arentina (2010) to understand the ways in which the religious and nonreligious imaginaries are included during the legislators’ public interventions. The debates on same sex couples’ rights, as other rights recognizing sexual autonomy and freedom, put into question a prevailing hierarchization of sexuality that unequally structures privileges and rights. Same sex marriage can be considered as a new phase of an older controversy: how the state should regulate sexuality, kinship, and reproduction in contexts where religions have a pervasive influence. Same sex marriage eradicates the requirement of sex complementarity, which takes the criticism of the prevalence of a morality tied to the reproductive potentialities of the sex actsex act’s reproductive potentialities towards a new threshold. In many contexts, particularly in Latin America , this debate opens to a critique of the prevailing Christian influences and, as such, it is an important analytical and normative moment for understanding the circulation of religious and non-religious imaginaries emerging from different viewpoints.