The developers have said that their goal is to maximize player freedom to allow players to tell their own stories. In that spirit, I think that same-sex relationships and all their various implications should be in the base game, but it should be very difficult, unless you change the settings (similar to how you can change the setting so everyone accepts homosexuality). In fact, I think that the default in the base game
should be that it is very difficult--but possible!--to be openly gay, though I also think that there should be a setting in game setup where you can have it accepted. For example, gay characters should gain stress from marrying/sleeping with different-sex characters, from being without a same-sex lover for an extended period of time, and from having to hide having a lover if their religion does not accept homosexuality.
Likewise, it should be hard (in the default setting, but changeable during game setup) to introduce same-sex marriage into places where historically it was not accepted. For example, I can imagine a game where after a couple hundred years my dynasty is relatively well-established and my character is (for example) the Emperor of Hispania. Let's say that character is also gay, and Catholic fervor is very low. I could then create my own branch of Christianity that accepts homosexuality, recognizes same-sex marriages, and allows adoption. Now that I've created my custom religion, I can get myself gay-married. But my life is also now quite hard: all my Catholic neighbors now have a holy war cassus belli against me (probably), I'm vulnerable as the target of a crusade, and I have to deal with a multi-century process of converting the entire Iberian peninsula to a different religion, probably all while fighting populist uprisings in the process. On top of that, I would have to deal with the 'sodomite' opinion hit for everyone who didn't convert to my religion. There would be benefits, though: as a gay ruler, I would lose the stress hits from having to marry a woman and being perpetually without a same-sex lover or having to hide a relationship.
As someone who studied history, this sounds eminently plausible to me, at least as far as the crazy stuff that happens in CK3 goes. One of the things that I think people don't understand is that in the Medieval era, you could do whatever you wanted if you were powerful enough. As I've said a few times in this thread, the king of England
started his own religion just because he wanted a divorce. That wasn't easy--it led to a lot of external
and internal strife within England. But he did get his divorce. That experience more or less parallels creating new religions in CK3, where you can do it, but it makes your life a lot harder.
For the adoption option, if it ever gets into the base game, i think it should be still very hard to do.
E.g. having the head of dynasty accept it (or even somewhat of a elders ruling on it), followed by it needing to be accepted by the lords of the realm and any nessecary head of religion. And if they don't accept you still might be able to do it. But you'll end up with a faction to dethrone you.
Then again, seeing how the current AI acts - i'd still be more in favor of this option staying completly optional. E.g. gamerule that's turned off by default.
I think that adoption (regardless of whether you're single, in a mixed-sex relationship, or in a same-sex relationship) should be possible, but I absolutely agree it should be very difficult. Here are some thoughts on what I think prerequisites for adoption should be. The adoptee (i.e., person to be adopted) must:
- Be a preexisting character in the game (i.e., you can't just conjure one up via a decision that says 'adopt a child')
- Be under 16 years old (i.e., a minor for the purposes of the game)
- Not have living parents or grandparents
If that turns out to be too 'easy'/gamebreaking in beta testing, there are additional ways to make it harder, such as requiring that the adoptee be a member of your dynasty. And, as with all intercharacter interactions in the game, the adoptee
might still say no, for various reasons. For example, if you do a murder plot to kill their parents/grandparents and that secret is revealed, the adoptee could refuse the adoption.