Love's rites : same sex marriage and its antecedents in India and the US

This is the first book to examine the same-sex weddings and same-sex couple suicides reported in India over the last two decades.

Ruth Vanita examines these cases in the context of a wide variety of same-sex unions, from Fourteenth-century narratives about co-wives who miraculously produce a child together, to Nineteenth-century depictions of ritualized unions between women, to marriages between gay men and lesbians arranged over the internet.

Examining the changing legal, literary, religious and social Indian and Euro-American traditions within which same-sex unions are embedded, she brings a fresh perspective to the gay marriage debate, suggesting that same-sex marriage dwells not at the margins but at the heart of culture.