While some issues such as access to health insurance and tax benefits for married couples discussed in the article are more pertinent to citizens of the US;  the authors’ points regarding coping with stress of being lesbian, gay or bisexual, and psychological/health benefits of being in a relationship; are probably relevant to non-US contexts as well.

An important issue that is not addressed in this article is the stress  and health implications of keeping a same-sex relationship secret, or dealing with family/social rejection because of being in a same-sex relationship. Given the numerous instances we hear about; of same-sex couples being ostracised, separated and stigmatized; one wonders if the stress faced by same-sex couples who are known to be in a relationship. is more than the stress faced by people who are single and queer in a largely homophobic society.  Of course this would not be an argument against same-sex relationships, but for simultaneously undoing society’s homophobia – something that can’t just be legislated away. It would be interesting to get responses from you, the readers, on this.

Public Health Implications of Same-Sex Marriage
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William C. Buffie, MD. William C. Buffie is with St. Francis Hospital, Indianapolis, IN, and Indiana Internal Medicine Consultants, Indianapolis.

American Journal of Public Health, 10.2105/AJPH.2010.300112
June 2011, Vol 101, No. 6 | American Journal of Public Health 986-990
2011 American Public Health Association
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ABSTRACT
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Significantly compromised health care delivery and adverse health outcomes are well documented for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the United States compared with the population at large. LGBT individuals subject to societal prejudice in a heterosexist world also suffer from the phenomenon known as “minority stress,” with its attendant negative mental and physical health effects.

Reports in the medical and social science literature suggest that legal and social recognition of same-sex marriage has had positive effects on the health status of this at-risk community.

Improved outcomes are to be expected because of the improved access to health care conferred by marriage benefits under federal or state law and as a result of attenuating the effects of institutionalized stigma on a sexual minority group.

Full text is available to subscribers at http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/6/986

Correspondence should be sent to William C. Buffie, MD, 7550 Singleton St, Indianapolis, IN 46227 (e-mail: wcbuffie@aol.com). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints/Eprints” link.–

அனிருத், பிரவீன், ராம்கி, ஸ்ரீ, மற்றும் வேலு இந்த பாட்காஸ்டில் சமீபத்திய TV9 பிரச்சனையை பற்றி பேசுகிறார்கள்.

Between queer ethics and sexual morality: Lesbian and gay activism in New Delhi, India
by Dave, Naisargi N., PhD, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 2006, 0 pages; 3237941

Abstract: The argument of this dissertation is that we can understand activism as a series of confrontations between ethics and morality. The subject of this dissertation is lesbian and gay activism in New Delhi, India and the network of associations between these activists and other people and organizations in India and transnationally. Working and living with activists from two organizations in New Delhi, I came to explore the question of why activists are activists. The answers that I came to, through my everyday ethnographic engagements, were within the realm of the ethical. These activists act, I argue, in and through affective, ethical orientations towards existing, normative moral orders. I attempt to show that the ethical impulse of sexuality activism is to create and enable new forms of human possibility—including of love, sex, and friendship—where strict moral codes for ‘right’ behavior currently exist. The central question of this dissertation is how the political processes that activists must engage in order to turn their ethical aspirations into social reality work to normalize those radical ethics into new and newer moral codes. The affective and political consequences for activists of these confrontations between the ethical and the moral form the ethnographic center of this dissertation. Each chapter of the dissertation seeks to make sense of one primary moral discourse and its normalizing, and productive, relationship to the ethical possibilities of queer activist practice. I move from the imperatives of lesbian community and identity, to the formation of institutions and organizations, to the mandatory forging of alliances between lesbians and other, more established movements, to the imperative of visibility and rights-claims in the public sphere, to engagement with legal reform and the state. In the epilogue, I re-imagine the notion of radical queer ethics as relationships of love and care.

More information is here.