This article revisits the personal stories that younger male civil partners told about their sexual practices, in what most termed their ‘marriage’, to generate insights into the extent to which they succumbed to the dangers that critics of same-sex marriage foretold. It provides a baseline analysis against which the findings of future studies of both heterosexual and same-sex marriages and civil partnerships can be compared. The data we discuss are comprised of joint (n = 25) and individual (n = 50) interviews with couples. Participants’ stories about ‘public’, ‘private’ and ‘exclusive’ sex can appear to support the predictions of some key critics. Participants tended to make commitments to sexual monogamy and link their sexual practices to deepening couple intimacy. However, viewed as stories of socioculturally shaped and biographically embedded sexual practices, they offer insights into the more complex relationships between civil partnership, marriage, sexual exclusivity and intimacy. On closer examination, they suggest it is not simply the case that civil partnership or same-sex marriage (and marriage more generally) ‘imposes’ heteronormative sexual conventions but that relational biographies are significant in shaping simultaneously conventional and deconstructive approaches to married sexuality. Partners in formalized same-sex relationships do not simply follow heterosexual norms. Rather, they juggle the often contradictory norms of mainstream and queer sexual cultures. Understanding the implications for marriage as an institution requires approaches to analysis that do not pose heterosexual marriage as the ‘straw man’ of queer analysis.

这篇文章回顾了年轻男性民事伴侣讲述他们性行为的个人故事，在大多数情况下，他们被称为“婚姻”，以深入了解他们屈服于同性婚姻批评者所预言的危险的程度。它提供了一个基线分析，可以将未来对异性恋和同性婚姻以及民事伴侣关系的研究结果进行比较。我们讨论的数据由联合 ( n = 25) 和个体 ( n= 50) 对夫妇的采访。参与者关于“公开”、“私人”和“独家”性的故事似乎支持了一些关键评论家的预测。参与者倾向于对性一夫一妻制做出承诺，并将他们的性行为与加深夫妻亲密关系联系起来。然而，被视为社会文化塑造和传记嵌入性行为的故事，它们提供了对民事伙伴关系、婚姻、性排他性和亲密关系之间更复杂关系的见解。仔细研究后，他们认为这不仅仅是民事伴侣关系或同性婚姻（以及更普遍的婚姻）“强加”异性恋性习俗的情况，而且关系传记在同时塑造传统和对已婚性行为的解构方法。正式的同性关系中的伴侣不仅仅遵循异性恋规范。相反，他们在主流和酷儿性文化中经常相互矛盾的规范之间进行调和。理解婚姻作为一种制度的含义需要分析方法，不要将异性恋婚姻视为酷儿分析的“稻草人”。