Regarding Gay Marriage

[kurto]

This is excerpted from my goofy post with Jax. Since it was the one 'serious' part, I thought I would separate it.

Many continue to repeat the seemingly made up idea that marriage has always been (and defined as) between a man and a woman.

To counter another false myth that so many repeat verbatim (I don't know WHY so many repeat these things when they're very easy to research)

FIRST: excerpts from (from http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/marriage.htm)

Consulting my Grand Larousse – and the Oxford English Dictionary for good measure – I discover that the word "marry" comes from the Latin term for "a husband" (maritus), which comes from the Latin word for "a man" (mas, maris). The notion of "marriage" therefore doesn't seem to refer to "wives".

Theoretically a person who gets "married" may take either a husband or a wife. But if we look at the history of "marriage" ceremonies, we will note that the most common meaning is, indeed, "to take a husband".
This provokes a number of conclusions: (1) a woman may "marry" a husband; (2) a man may "marry" a husband; and (3) a woman may not "marry" a woman. That is, lesbians cannot "marry" one another without violating the laws of linguistics, but gay men can.

So much for words. Let us now peruse the tarnished pages of history. Gay men seem to have frequently married one another throughout history. In fact, in some societies marriages between gay men were officially recognized by the state, as in ancient Sparta, and on the Dorian island of Thera.

Much later, in 2nd century Rome, conjugal contracts between men of about the same age were ridiculed but legally binding. Such marriages were blessed by pagan religions, particularly sects of the Mother Goddess Cybele (imported from Asia Minor). At the ceremony, the bridal party consists entirely of men, who enter the temple and deck each other with "gay fillets round the forehead . . . and strings of orient perals." They light a torch in honor of the goddess and sacrifice a pregnant swine. One man gets up and chooses a husband for himself, and dances himself into a frenzy. Then he drinks deeply from a goblet in the shape of a large penis, flings the goblet away, strips off his clothes, and "takes the stole and flammea of a bride" and the two men are married.

AND

Let us now leap ahead to early 18th century London, where gay men also got married, but without legal sanction. In the 1720s there were about 40 "molly houses" in central London, disorderly pubs or coffee houses where gay men (called "mollies") socialized, singing bawdy songs and dancing country dances while someone played the fiddle. Many of these gay clubs had a "Marrying Room" or "Chapel", where, according to witnesses, "They would go out by couples into another room on the same floor, to be married, as they called it, and when they came back they would tell what they had been doing." These marriages were not monogamous, and 18-year-old Ned Courtney was "helped to two or three Husbands" in the Marrying Room of the Royal Oak at the corner of St James's Square, Pall Mall.
AND

Let us now leap across the waters to look at gay marriages among the American Indians, particularly the Sioux and the Cheyenne. In most such marriages one of the two men was a berdache, a transvestite/medicine man who wore men's clothes only when he joined a war party, where he cared for the wounded. The berdaches were especially popular with young people, for they were excellent matchmakers – in a sense they personified the very concept of marriage – and fine love talkers. They got married to either the loafers of the village, or would become the second or third "wife" of the chieftain. Usually their husbands were more ridiculed than they themselves were, not because of homosexuality, which Indians generally tolerated, but because such husbands usually abandoned their economic status in society, and let the berdache do all the work to create the model household.

And so that I can multisource: FROM http://www.waf.org/familyarchives/ma...20marriage.htm
We know this because we know that marriage is a timeless institution, and it has always been a union between a man and a woman. As marriage is the very foundation of society, tinkering with something so fundamental is surely foolhardy.

This is the sort of language we hear in debates on whether we should legalize same-sex marriage.

But let's just pause for a moment so that some facts can creep into this discussion.

The truth is that same-sex marriage has a long and distinguished history. Judaic scripture, for instance, indicates that same-sex marriages were recognized in ancient Egypt. Of course, it's no secret that the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized homosexual marriage, not to mention imperial China and some Native American tribes and a host of other peoples living around the world.

But here's a curveball for you.

There's even evidence that the Catholic Church recognized same-sex marriage in the early Middle Ages. Scholars dispute whether these unions should actually be called marriages, but there is no doubt that the Church conducted formal ceremonies to recognize the bond between same-sex partners. The Church endorsed sexual union between members of the same sex!


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So, my point is simple. Debate marriage all you want, but try to be accurate. Marriage has NOT always been simply between a man or a woman. Nor has it been strictly defined that way.

(*On another point... I haven't searched for this article, but there was another one about the history of the word; they looked at old dictionaries and found that many never defined gender. Many legal definitions as well gave the definition as follows:
The legal union of two people. Once a couple is married, their rights and responsibilities toward one another concerning property and support are defined by the laws of the state in which they live. A marriage can only be terminated by a court granting a divorce or annulment.

Many dictionaries CHANGED the definition to specify gender only after pressure from outside groups.

Enough said.