ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the law is serving as a semiotic circuit where the basic notions of sexuality, family and kinship are currently being revised. It looks not so much at the legal instruments that are being deployed by legislatures and courts to accommodate a variety of sexual lifestyles and family formations, as at the use of them that is being made by social actors who ask for legal recognition. The chapter shows how the law juridifies by empowering those who have recourse to it. At the same time, it unearths some of the most remarkable socio-political effects of this juridification dynamic. The law functions as a potent mechanism of socio-political visibility as it redresses the conditions of those who suffer from a situation of social marginalization and whose voice fails to reach out to the sphere of politics.
