Same-sex relationship

A same-sex relationship is a romantic or sexual relationship between people of the same sex. Same-sex marriage refers to the institutionalized recognition of such relationships in the form of a marriage; civil unions may exist in countries where same-sex marriage does not. The term same-sex relationship is not strictly related to the sexual orientation of the participants. As people of any orientation may participate in same-sex relationships (particularly depending on the legal, social and scientific definition of sex), some activists argue that referring to a same-sex relationship as a "gay relationship" or a "lesbian relationship" is a form of bisexual erasure. The lives of many historical figures, including Socrates, Alexander the Great, Lord Byron, Edward II, Hadrian, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Vita Sackville-West, Alfonsina Storni and Christopher Marlowe are believed to have included love and sexual relationships with people of their own sex. Terms such as gay or bisexual have often been applied to them; some, such as Michel Foucault, regard this as risking the anachronistic introduction of a contemporary construction of sexuality foreign to their times, though others challenge this. Some contemporary studies have found that same-sex relationships can be broadly grouped into at least three categories, though there is no consensus regarding the categories, nor empirical metric which has, or could potentially be applied to strongly validate their existence: Often, one form of same-sex relationship predominates in a society, although others are likely to co-exist. Historian Rictor Norton has pointed out that in ancient Greece, egalitarian relationships co-existed (albeit less privileged) with the institution of pederasty, and fascination with adolescents can also be found in modern sexuality, both opposite-sex and same-sex. Age and gender-structured same-sex relationships are less common (though they are still significant and coexist with the postmodern egalitarian form in Latin America, where male heterosexuals and "butch" i.