Casamento, casamentos? Representações sociais do casamento heterossexual e do casamento homossexual

Abstract

On the basis of the observation that, nowadays, the attractive power of marriage seems to diminish among heterosexual individuals whereas it increases among homosexual people, we examined the representations of heterosexual marriage and of homosexual marriage of 240 heterosexual adults from Portugal, who answered a questionnaire that was composed of open and close questions. Results suggest that both types of marriage are considered to have the main aim of sealing spouses’ love, but that constituting family is a better justification for heterosexual marriage than for homosexual marriage. Respondents’ discourses about the two types of marriage present only one common dimension, which refers to sharing and companionship. Whereas the representation of heterosexual marriage includes references to family, to romantic relationships and to commitments, the representation of homosexual marriage comes down to the question of rights and prejudice. In line with the findings usually presented in the literature, female participants and respondents with higher educational level have a more positive representation of homosexual marriage, but, contrary to what was expected, this is not the case for the younger respondents.