Wilfried Rault

Interview with sociologist and INED researcher Wilfried Rault ten years after France legalized same-sex marriage.

(Interview updated in May 2023)

From 2013 to 2022, there have been slightly over 70,000 same-sex marriages. In 2022, the average age of same-sex male couples is around 44; for female couples it’s slightly over 38. This is compared to around 40 and 37, respectively, in different-sex couples married the same year.  So the average age at marriage has fallen among same-sex couples (while rising among different-sex couples). But it was quite high immediately after same-sex-marriage legalization. This probably reflected a logical catch-up process: the first couples to be married after legalization had waited a long time to be able to do so. But it could also mean that, on average, those couples formed later on in life, possibly because homosexuals still frequently go through a heterosexual phase—a sign that homosexuality is still far from being an accepted aspect of social life. The age-related difference between men and women is also probably related to the question of parenthood: more women than men live with children. 

While more same-sex marriages than civil unions were registered soon after legalization, civil unions pulled ahead among same-sex couples in 2017. With age bracket controlled for, same-sex couples are more often in civil or free unions and less often married than different-sex couples.

It’s always interesting to find out more about what makes people get married—the subject of sociologist Gaëlle Meslay’s PhD thesis. As with different-sex couples, same-sex couples get married for different reasons. Some cite legal concerns—for example, benefiting from inheritance rights that don’t exist for couples in a civil union. Couples with children but in which only one person is legally recognized as a parent—the situation of women having chosen assisted reproduction in one of France’s neighboring countries—may have chosen to get married because they can then start adoption procedures for the person not recognized as a parent.
Other reasons are more symbolic. Gays and lesbians have at times been stigmatized and even explicitly rejected. Marriage can represent a form of social recognition, signifying to others the respectability of their private lives. The law has considerable legitimating potential, even though changes in the law are not enough to bring an end to hostile behavior.
It is also instructive to take a closer look at how marriage celebrations are organized. When studying different-sex marriages, you see how trends in contemporary marriage are reflected in changes in ritual. Same-couple weddings offer another opportunity to apprehend transformations of matrimonial ritual. 

The legalization of same-sex marriage should not just be seen from the standpoint of the women and men who get married. For gays and lesbians, the important thing was being free to choose and not to be treated differently from heterosexual couples. The point was for homosexuality to be recognized as a lifestyle like any other, and to be able to choose marriage—or not! Historically speaking, opening marriage up to same-sex couples was part of an ongoing transformation of the marriage institution. Marriage is no longer a given, and couples sometimes marry after a long period of cohabitation or the birth of two, three, or four children. This contrasts sharply with the traditional model, whereby people got married even before forming a couple, certainly before having children, and even before beginning their sexual lives. Marriage has also become a possibility for same-sex couples because today that institution can be appropriated by everyone and is less about a single and unique model of private life.

On the issue of sexual minorities in general and same-sex couples in particular, we still have a lot to learn in terms of demography and sociology, despite the progress research has made in the last 40 years.
The legal recognition of same-sex couples that began at the end of the 1990s shifted the paradigm: it is now politically and socially expected that humanities and social sciences research will be conducted on this issue, whereas earlier it was seen as “exotic.” In this respect, the adoption of same-sex marriage has made things easier, among other things because it created a new statistical category and has systematized the inclusion of same-sex couples in surveys. For example, INSEE has worked hard to encompass same-sex couples in the national census and improve the quality of data on this group. And in addition to respondents being able to state having a same-sex spouse or partner in surveys, we see that, overall, data collection and analytic tools have been or are being adapted to take sexual minorities into account. In Great Britain, for example, a question on sexual orientation has been included in the census, opening the way for entirely new analyses. 

One of the main limitations of the new data is that they are cross-sectional, meaning they inform on individual situations at time of survey. In fact, we lack both longitudinal data, which would enable us to apprehend individual trajectories in greater detail, and retrospective data, which would tell us more about people’s trajectories by telling us more about their pasts. Another limitation is that the new data generally concern cohabiting couples often neglecting other arrangements and situations. The fact is that sexual minority are particularly likely not to fit into the cohabitation framework. The surveys currently under development will enable us to study all these points.