Abstract Same-sex registered partnership, marriage, and adoption open up the family as an institution to same-sex couples and, therefore, constitute a pathway to a broader definition of what is family. In the last 2 decades, a majority of Western countries have experienced an unprecedented institutional trend toward the provision of new rights to same-sex couples in the family. This swift process of institutional change has been, for the most part, accounted for in the literature by attitudinal changes expressing greater openness toward minorities, and a greater sensitivity to human rights (Engeli et al., 2012). By contrast, we propose an explanation featuring structural features of societies in the early 21st century. We hypothesize that a series of macrostructural conditions account for the precocity versus lateness of legislation favorable to the inclusion of same-sex couples into the family. Also, we expect that normative sex regimes opened to sexual activity between same-sex persons to have been favorable to such inclusion.

中文翻译：

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家庭中同性伴侣早期与晚期机构融合的宏观结构条件：国际比较

摘要同性登记的合伙关系，婚姻和收养打开了家庭成为同性伴侣的机构的大门，因此，它为更广泛的定义家庭定义了一条途径。在过去的20年中，大多数西方国家经历了前所未有的体制趋势，即向家庭中的同性伴侣提供新权利。在制度上，这种制度变迁的迅速过程在大多数情况下是通过态度变化来表示的，这种态度变化对少数民族表现出更大的开放性，对人权的敏感性更高（Engeli等，2012）。相比之下，我们提出了一种具有21世纪初期社会结构特征的解释。我们假设一系列宏观结构条件解释了立法的早熟与迟到，有利于将同性伴侣纳入家庭。同样，我们希望对同性之间的性活动开放的规范性政权有利于这种包容。