One step at a time: from PACS to same-sex marriage

When in 1999 France approved the PACS (Civil Pact of Solidarity) the impression was that the French had found the way to avoid dealing with the serious social problem of same sex- marriage. The PACS seemed to put an end to the dilemmas tormenting modern society, where the concept of freedom has lost its traditional value but has not yet found another to replace it, except the notion of rendering legal everything that is considered possible (Tessarolo, 2000). If we examine the theories that explain our age, we must meditate on some ‘paradoxes’ that strengthen the concept of late-modernity, that is, of a mature modernity that has relinquished some of the points deemed as fundamental at other historical times. Recognition is among the new elements that characterize our era: we don’t exist if we are not recognized, and only regulation renders rights recognizable. Happiness, toward which every individual strives, implies a constant passing to new desires, and thus the universe will never be able to reach a final degree of maturity.