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Queer critics talk more and more about a normalization process whereby early lesbian\ud and gay struggles against traditional values and institutions are being replaced by the\ud pursuit of inclusion within mainstream society. The ‘assimilation’ of same-sex practices,\ud critics contend, lowers the critical potential of homosexuals’ claims and marginalizes\ud other less acceptable forms of sexualities. The present article contributes to this literature\ud by tracing the roots and dynamics of normalization. It makes the claim that heteronormative\ud categories infiltrated homosexual culture well before the spread of\ud neoconservative gay movements and produced inner distinctions intended to exclude\ud those who did not fit intergroup classifications. It then maintains that this analysis casts\ud some interesting light on the current quest for gay rights, and in particular for same-sex\ud marriage. By doing so, this article aims to tackle the broader question of how to produce\ud societal changes able to circumvent rearguard reactions from the dominant culture

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Critics of the same-sex rights discourse claim that recent struggles for sexual equality is fostering a process of normalization that exerts both heteronormative and homonormative effects. This article follows this clue and seeks to identify some of the factors and the channels of the "transformation of desire" which is currently affecting the homosexual imagery. By looking at some key judgments both in the U.S. and Europe, it explores how lesbians, gays, and bisexuals acquire socio-political visibility and how the latter impacts on them. By capitalizing on a semiotic view of law, the article explains how the access to the legal field has forced lesbians, gays, and bisexuals to frame the theme of homosexuality in conformity with a categorial grid typical of traditional kinship models.In the past decades, the law has served as a major instrument to bring about momentous changes in the legal and policy framework of most Western states. Courts have been at the forefront of these developments and have served as public venues where previously abject, excluded subjects have acquired political visibility and have sought legal protection and recognition. This is the case of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals

This article advances a new model for family law to address emerging non-conventional family formations, particularly between parents and children. We contend that the conventional model of kinship categories as static, predefined statuses should be replaced with a model whereby the state accommodates kinship categories the law users themselves produce within their fluid and nomadic family assemblages and that they actively revise when negotiating state recognition. We claim that this model would better reflect and govern the emerging kinship system. We corroborate this by drawing on insights from family research that takes issue with the fragmentation of kinship, particularly the fragmentation of motherhood. We then elaborate on a conception of state recognition as the capacity to trace connections and identify normative frameworks, one that valorizes the self-organizing force of social practices but at the same time holds onto the filtering role of the state. 532