The issue is that you don't get to define what a marriage is based on archaic and religious terms. Marriage is a legal right for all people, not just you. Had I been able to marry my partner 16 years ago, she would be alive today. What gives you the right to say that because she was a woman and so am I that she didn't deserve the same rights as you?
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High stakes as Supreme Court considers same-sex marriage case
- Thread starter leibowde84
- Start date
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
Don't expect gay people to pay the same taxes as you. Why should they if they won't be offered the same legal protections and basic rights you get when they pay the same taxes?
You don't have the right to define marriage for other people - especially since your religion didn't invent the concept.
Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
How about we just don't allow Jews to be married? You can still be together...
Akivah
Well-Known Member
See below
Should these types of unions be allowed? Do you consider them both to be valid "marriages"?
Akivah
Well-Known Member
Because I don't support changes to concepts that have stood the test of time. Marriage among multiple cultures and time periods has almost always meant one man and one woman. The concept obviously works for humanity. Just like the week, a non-astronomical period of time, has worked for humanity for thousands of years. Should we abolish the week if someone is offended by it?
If it makes one other person's life miserable and unhappy and there is no otherwise good reason for keeping it so, then I'd say yes.
It is hard enough to find happiness. Why make it harder for someone else?
I mean, yeah I don't get the need myself but I'm not the one who has to sit here feeling like an outsider to being accepted by my fellow human beings.
What is the problem with relieving another person of the cultural stigma caused just by being who they are? Especially if doing so causes me no harm? Just out of compassion if nothing else.
No one is abolishing the one-man-one-woman marriage approach (which hasn't always been the only one).
It's only being expanded to include another form.
Marisa
Well-Known Member
So understanding something equals condoning it in your world? Please read my signature.
Bull**** it has. Polygamy was the rule, not the exception, until quite recently. And since time immemorial there have been unions between men who served in battle. In societies where women could partake in warfare that also led to women sharing that same kind of union. In fact, those unions are more like modern-day marriage than anything else you see in history. It was between two people who loved & cared for the other, not ways in which to distribute property(wealth in the form of women, land & livestock) where neither the husband or the wife had any real say in who they were betrothed too.
Oh come on. You can do better than that, surely. That isn't even apples & oranges, it's apples & angler-fish.
Marisa
Well-Known Member
You are woefully mis-informed.
Old World
Classical Europe, Middle East and China
Emperor Nero is reported to have married at least two males in different occasions.
See also: Homosexuality in ancient Rome and Homosexuality in ancient Greece
While it is a relatively new practice that same-sex couples are being granted the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly used by mixed-sexed couples, there is some history of recorded same-sex unions around the world.[2] Various types of same-sex unions have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.
A same-sex union was known in Ancient Greece and Rome,[2] ancient Mesopotamia,[3] in some regions of China, such as Fujian province, and at certain times in ancient European history.[4] These same-sex unions continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans, which prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed. [5]
Same-sex marital practices and rituals were more recognized in Mesopotamia than in ancient Egypt. The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favoring on an equal basis the love of a man for a woman and of a man for man.[6]
In the southern Chinese province of Fujian, through the Ming dynasty period, females would bind themselves in contracts to younger females in elaborate ceremonies.[7] Males also entered similar arrangements. This type of arrangement was also similar in ancient European history.[8]
An example of egalitarian male domestic partnership from the early Zhou Dynasty period of China is recorded in the story of Pan Zhang & Wang Zhongxian. While the relationship was clearly approved by the wider community, and was compared to heterosexual marriage, it did not involve a religious ceremony binding the couple.[9]
Some early Western societies integrated same-sex relationships. The practice of same-sex love in ancient Greece often took the form of pederasty, which was limited in duration and in many cases co-existed with marriage.[10] Documented cases in this region claimed these unions were temporary pederastic relationships.[11][12][13][14][15][16][17] These unions created a moral dilemma for the Greeks and were not universally accepted.[18]
Among the Romans, there were instances of same-sex marriages being performed, as evidenced by emperors Nero who married an unwilling young boy [19][20][21] and (possibly - though it is doubted by many historians) the child emperor Elagabalus,[22] who both supposedly married a man, and by its outlaw in 342 AD in the Theodosian Code,[23] but the exact intent of the law and its relation to social practice is unclear, as only a few examples of same-sex marriage in that culture exist.[24]
In Hellenic Greece, the pederastic relationships between Greek men (erastes) and youths (eromenos) were similar to marriage in that the age of the youth was similar to the age at which women married (the mid-teens, though in some city states, as young as age seven), and the relationship could only be undertaken with the consent of the father.[citation needed] This consent, just as in the case of a daughter's marriage, was contingent on the suitor's social standing. The relationship consisted of very specific social and religious responsibilities and also had a sexual component. Unlike marriage, however, a pederastic relation was temporary and ended when the boy turned seventeen.
At the same time, many of these relationships might be more clearly understood as mentoring relationships between adult men and young boys rather than an analog of marriage. This is particularly true in the case of Sparta, where the relationship was intended to further a young boy's military training. While the relationship was generally lifelong and of profound emotional significance to the participants, it was not considered marriage by contemporary culture, and the relationship continued even after participants reached age 20 and married women, as was expected in the culture.[citation needed]
Numerous examples of same sex unions among peers, not age-structured, are found in Ancient Greek writings. Famous Greek couples in same sex relationships include Harmodius and Aristogiton, Pelopidas and Epaminondas and Alexander and Bogoas. However in none of these same sex unions is the Greek word for "marriage" ever mentioned. The Romans appear to have been the first to perform same sex marriages.
At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions; and in fact, thirteen out of the first fourteen Roman Emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual.[25] The first Roman emperor to have married a man was Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions. First with one of his freedman, Pythagoras, to whom Nero took the role of the bride, and later as a groom Nero married a young boy to replace his young teenage concubine whom he had killed [26] named Sporus in a very public ceremony... with all the solemnities of matrimony, and lived with him as his spouse A friend gave the "bride" away "as required by law." The marriage was celebrated separately in both Greece and Rome in extravagant public ceremonies.[27] The Child Emperor Elagabalus referred to his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, as his husband.[28] He also married an athlete named Zoticus in a lavish public ceremony in Rome amidst the rejoicings of the citizens.[29]
It should be noted, however, that conubium existed only between a civis Romanus and a civis Romana (that is, between a male Roman citizen and a female Roman citizen), so that a marriage between two Roman males (or with a slave) would have no legal standing in Roman law (apart, presumably, from the arbitrary will of the emperor in the two aforementioned cases).[30]
Same-sex marriage was outlawed on December 16, 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law specifically outlaws marriages between men and reads as follows:
When a man “marries” in the manner of a woman, a “woman” about to renounce men, what does he wish, when sex has lost its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed into another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment. (Theodosian Code 9.7.3) [31]
According to Robin Lane Fox, among the unusual customs of the isolated oasis of Siwa (now Egypt, once Libya), one of great antiquity which survived to the 20th century was male homosexuality and same-sex marriage.[32]
And that's just Wikipedia. But it should give you a good place to begin your research regarding the subject of marriage.
History of same-sex unions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marisa
Well-Known Member
And yet, as pointed out to you, marriage can be polyandry or polygamy as well and has been for thousands of years as well. Shall we continue to allow that? All of your bluster and silly counter arguments will not matter as very shortly, as people will be able to marry whomever they wish, including gays. Without your biased objections.
Ooh, like slavery, war, environmental degradation, "might makes right", rape, ......
Tom
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
Well if the concept has to change to better accommodate changing moral attitudes about social equality then it HASN'T stood the test of time, has it?
Keyword: "almost".
The concept obviously works for every heterosexual member of humanity who wishes to get married, yes. Everyone else, not so much.
Nobody is "abolishing" marriage. All we want to do is extend - not even change - the definition to include consenting adults of the same gender. Is that really such a dramatic and drastic change that will fundamentally alter society for the worse?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
It makes me glad that my predictions of legal pot before legal gay marriage may turn to out not be the case. It's an instance in which I am glad I might just be wrong.
Awkward Fingers
Omphaloskeptic
Ok, Maybe they can just call it "Holy Matrimony" then, since no one seems to want that phrase.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Why not? It's very common throughout history, and as long as it's consensual, on what grounds is their to judge them as wrong?
This simply is not true. There is so much variation to what the concept of "marriage" is that the only workable universal definition is a socially recognized ritual the joins people together on some deep and significant way that often revolves around the transfer of property and inheritance (which includes power).
McBell
Unbound
Good thing then that same sex marriage doesn't change the definition of the word marriage.
Of course, I am talking about the legal definition of the word marriage.
And seeing as this whole same sex marriage fiasco is about the legalities of same sex marriage, the legl definition is the only definition that matters.
You do understand that marriage is a legal contract, right?
That all the fluff, ceremony, tradition, ritual, window dressing, etc. that various people attach to marriage does not alter the fact it is a legal contract.
Now, if you happen to have a legitimate legal reason to ban same sex marriage that does not also require the banning of opposite sex marriage, please, by all means, present it.
Exactly.
Like, for example, chattel slavery. Let go of that and pretty soon you have people voting that don't even look like real Americans. For that matter, who the hell came up with that women's suffrage bit. Talk about a cluster muck. Now we have a couple of them running for president. Good grief?
The bottom line is this: ignorant things will stand the test of time so long as people refuse to take a stand against ignorance.
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
Actually, it's most likely been polygamous, a quick read throughout the bible and a look into the lives of early european kings tends to back that up .