If you've posted in forums you might remember writing some decent responses. I usually spend a lot of time polishing my discussion forum responses depending on the subject or who I am talking to. Often I want to remember what I said about something, but finding the original post can be difficult. So it makes sense to capture the better responses for later review. Welcome to Clint's Reposts.Monday, February 23, 2004
Homosexual Marriage in Earlier Times (Politics Forum)
David Beers in the Politics Forum wrote:
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"It's interesting to me that the debate about same-sex marriage mostly takes place under the assumption that there is a "traditional" view of marriage that is old and rooted in the church and that same-sex marriages are departures from this tradition. Try doing a little research on the history of Christian marriages and you'll discover that same-sex marriage was fairly common in the Middle Ages. The church had an established liturgy for joining men in matrimony (not so much women, I think) and the ceremony matched up very much with the ceremony for joining a man and woman: The couple stands at the alter, joins hands, gets blessed by the priest, accepts communion, makes promises of lifelong love and fidelity, walks around the altar, there's a reception afterward, etc. Sometimes they gave each other crowns during the ceremony much like brides and grooms exchange rings. There were two Holy Roman Emperors who were married in this way to men. Heck, the early church even sainted a couple of martyrs who were felt to be models for same-sex unions. It's not clear that the saints themselves were lovers, but they were incorporated into gay wedding ceremonies by the church to drive home that the ceremony was a bond of fidelity and perfect love."
"The most famous book on this subject is John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. Boswell was the chairman of Yale's history department in the early 90s. He documents gay marriages that took place in the Roman Catholic church as recently as a couple of hundred years ago and also periods when, as now, the church decided that homosexuality is wrong. It seems that ideas about marriage go through cycles and we're just at a particular point in the cycle right now. Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy over his book--not so much over the fact that same-sex unions occurred, interestingly, but over his interpretation that they were sexual unions."
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Response:
The popular reviews for the book Same Sex-Unions in Pre-Modern Europe did not appear all that glowing with one person saying "A fantastic misreading of history". Also, I don't see anywhere in either reference where the word "marriage" is being used. Rather, the word used is "union" - a big difference. The danger here is as one reviewer said is that we all need to be careful in reading into texts and history what would make us feel better about ourselves.
As I understand early Greek inclinations it was considered quite normal in that society for man/boy love to exist as a matter of course. Do you agree that is OK now and would you be OK with that kind of "marriage" in our society? If not, why not? If not, then surely you can have some sort of sympathy for those who feel man/man or woman/woman "marriage" is not OK, and I use the word marriage in what I consider it's original meaning.
As far as I'm concerned, the entire issue is subjective and I'm happy to leave it up to the churches to define religious "marriage" and the state laws to define legal "union". But again, lets not kid ourselves by misusing the "marriage" word as if it were Ozzie and Harriet's union.
Clint
...
"It's interesting to me that the debate about same-sex marriage mostly takes place under the assumption that there is a "traditional" view of marriage that is old and rooted in the church and that same-sex marriages are departures from this tradition. Try doing a little research on the history of Christian marriages and you'll discover that same-sex marriage was fairly common in the Middle Ages. The church had an established liturgy for joining men in matrimony (not so much women, I think) and the ceremony matched up very much with the ceremony for joining a man and woman: The couple stands at the alter, joins hands, gets blessed by the priest, accepts communion, makes promises of lifelong love and fidelity, walks around the altar, there's a reception afterward, etc. Sometimes they gave each other crowns during the ceremony much like brides and grooms exchange rings. There were two Holy Roman Emperors who were married in this way to men. Heck, the early church even sainted a couple of martyrs who were felt to be models for same-sex unions. It's not clear that the saints themselves were lovers, but they were incorporated into gay wedding ceremonies by the church to drive home that the ceremony was a bond of fidelity and perfect love."
"The most famous book on this subject is John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. Boswell was the chairman of Yale's history department in the early 90s. He documents gay marriages that took place in the Roman Catholic church as recently as a couple of hundred years ago and also periods when, as now, the church decided that homosexuality is wrong. It seems that ideas about marriage go through cycles and we're just at a particular point in the cycle right now. Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy over his book--not so much over the fact that same-sex unions occurred, interestingly, but over his interpretation that they were sexual unions."
...
Response:
The popular reviews for the book Same Sex-Unions in Pre-Modern Europe did not appear all that glowing with one person saying "A fantastic misreading of history". Also, I don't see anywhere in either reference where the word "marriage" is being used. Rather, the word used is "union" - a big difference. The danger here is as one reviewer said is that we all need to be careful in reading into texts and history what would make us feel better about ourselves.
As I understand early Greek inclinations it was considered quite normal in that society for man/boy love to exist as a matter of course. Do you agree that is OK now and would you be OK with that kind of "marriage" in our society? If not, why not? If not, then surely you can have some sort of sympathy for those who feel man/man or woman/woman "marriage" is not OK, and I use the word marriage in what I consider it's original meaning.
As far as I'm concerned, the entire issue is subjective and I'm happy to leave it up to the churches to define religious "marriage" and the state laws to define legal "union". But again, lets not kid ourselves by misusing the "marriage" word as if it were Ozzie and Harriet's union.
Clint
