Same-sex is a relatively recent coinage that arose to refer to activities and arrangements that involve one gender but not the other. Thus, it has appeared in phrases like same-sex friends (as opposed to one’s friends of the opposite sex) and same-sex support system (in which members of one gender help each other in the manner of an “old boy network"). The single-gender usage continues today, especially in reference to education: A same-sex school is all-male or all-female. More recently, same-sex has been used as a substitute for homosexual in contexts that do not warrant explicit reference to sexuality. It occurs frequently in phrases like same-sex couples, same-sex dating, and same-sex marriage. Both usages are acceptable to the Usage Panel.
