Have you ever heard anyone ever give a single 'coherent' reason to be against marriage equality?
I have been waiting for someone to come up with one my entire life and I have never heard one.
Even the bigots who are against it I see on TV never seem to have one. They mention the bible and churches and religion but they are talking about religious rites. Marriage equality is about human rights. Not close to the same thing.
That is about the only one I have heard and it is obviously not coherent. Even the people using that crap don't seem to really have their heart in it when promoting that one because they know its bogus.
Are there any others you have heard or read?
Don
= new reply since forum marked as read
In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus's close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as "erastai,” or "lovers". In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.
Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).
These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiated in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.
Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.
Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.
The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).
so, it looks like the evidence comes from multiple sources in different parts of the world. Yes, there are illustrations that were contemporary with events, but also church documents and church histories from every part of early Christendom.
censorship has been practiced regarding religious history for as long as there have been religions. I didn't know about these before now, but it doesn't surprise me at all considering the dominant cultures of the time and place.
Then there's also the idea of "third gender" among other societies - including Native Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
Two males could be partnered but one of them assumed GENDER role expectations - not the physiology of the opposite sex.
My digression into property, patriarchy and all that was really more about gendered expectations in patriarchy, not really about opposite sexes uniting in marriage. oops.
of material. This goes beyond my field of (quasi) expertise. I only know Boswell through The Kindness of Strangers, and that is but a nodding acquaintance. Doing a brief Internet search, though, I see that this is still an interpretive question, and that dissenters challenge his definition of adelphoiesis as equivalent to marriage. He may have been reaching, certainly he had a stake in the question.
There is some scattered evidence of other same-sex marriages from time to time, as recently as the 17th century, which would cause one to wonder, if there were some sort of systematic suppression of these rites in the modern Church and in history, what triggered it.
The "third gender" article is interesting, much new material to me. What is particularly forceful about it is that the evidence is derived from many different cultures, demonstrating the universality of the behaviors. It does drift off a little from the subject of marriage equality, of course, since there is a great difference between acknowledging the existence of a behavior and sanctioning it.
The linguistic difficulty doesn't go away, though. "Matrimony," after all, presumes the presence of a mater.
-- Mal
just a note b/c I have a hard deadline this week and will have to make myself stay away from DU.
however, I wanted to tell you that I've enjoyed reading what you have to say - you say things in an interesting way. I like it when people counter arguments in kind, thoughtful ways. I should try that more often.
I've long thought that the structure of power and how it is are acted out in society is entirely unsexy in its sexism, to put it bluntly, as a hetero female. No doubt that's one reason I have so many problems with the dominant culture and find too much of it boring. Too much emphasis on competition and not enough emphasis on inclusive pleasure, whether it's your own or someone else's.
I guess that's why I'll never get to meet The Donald. thankfully.
And why I have never understood why anyone should oppose two adults who love one another who want to make a legal statement to that effect. It does me no harm.
years.
