Because a big pointless roaring fight over a social issue that only affects a minority group is far more preferable to excessive scrutiny of what Osborne and Lansley are up to.

“So why did the religious base revolt against gay marriage so strongly?”

Seriously?

Obama managed to shift his highly religious African Americans base on the same issue without a fallout

Um, that’s putting it a bit strongly isn’t it? I mean, for a start Obama hasn’t actually pledged to introduce gay marriage or anything, just said that he personally is in favour of it – the stage Cameron was at in 2011 when, as you say, “there was widespread applause in the media”. And for a second, as the piece you link to says:

There is reason to be cautious in interpreting these numbers. First, polling has tended to overestimate support for same-sex marriage ballot referendums by about seven percentage points. In addition, the sample sizes for demographic subgroups like African-Americans are small, producing large margins of error.

Moreover, voters who are newly converted to a candidate or cause may support only tenuously at first and may be persuaded to revert to their prior position. “People should expect a counterargument,” Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, said.

I think if Obama were to take his aspirations and try and make legislation out of them, he’d be faced with precisely the same sort of issues that Cameron is facing here – the strongly held objections of a minority getting more of a hearing than the lightly held support of a plurality.

As for why Cameron’s making a mess of this, I think the answer’s reasonably obvious – while public opinion has shifted markedly even since gay marriage was announced, the areas where it is shifting slower, if at all, tend either to be sort of Conservatives that have never liked or trusted Cameron (like the Daily Mail, which has pretty much hated Cameron from day 1) or the sort of non-Conservatives who also hate him. It’s harder to leverage support among people who don’t really support you anyway.

Because he is incompetent?

Because of his arrogance. Half the time he doesn’t believe what he is saying himself but it don’t half sound good.

Possibly because it’s very hard for a politician to directly take on religious groups, especially if those groups include Christians. It’s difficult to address their arguments without criticising their brand of religion directly (or saying something neutral that the tabloids will spin into anti-religious sentiment).

For example:

Christian Conservative: “Gays should not be allowed to marry as the Bible says it is offensive in the sight of God”.

Cameron: “Yeah, but there’s no proof of God’s existence, and even if he does exist the Old Testament was written by flawed human beings with their own agendas and is out of touch with today’s society”.

[Cue outraged headlines]

@6 Heh, I remember when Clegg answered the question of ‘Do you believe in God?’ with ‘no’, and then back peddled with a bit of a fudge about a week or so afterward because of the fuss it caused.

In the US marriage is the business (as it were) of the states, not the federal government, btw.

Does this mean you’re going to admit you were wrong over all the repeated assertions you made that the government was going to back pedal on this and kick equal marriage into the long grass?

Even the Muslim Council of Britain, which has tried to stay out of such controversies after a former head got burnt on gay rights a few years ago, made a statement aligning themselves with the Catholic church.

Like we hadn’t guessed where they stood on the issue.

Besides, they’ve banged the drum hard for the religious right over the last few years and should have built up some political capital.

Apeasement of religious bodies just encourages them to demand more. When they think eternity is at stake their demands are infinite.

So why did the religious base revolt against gay marriage so strongly?

Because they are frothing loons?

@ 10 Shatterface

“Apeasement of religious bodies just encourages them to demand more”

Appeasement of ANYBODY encourages them to demand more. Human psychology: when you repeatedly do what someone tells you, they start to think they’re entitled to boss you around.

Hundal: So how did he manage to screw this up so badly?

1 – Lack of engagement. Cameron probably thought he’d done all the hard work merely by announcing that he/the government was in favour of gay marriage. The less polite version of that argument is that he was a lazy arrogant sod who underestimated the opposition, especially the ones obsessed with gay sex (don’t worry: links are safe).

2 – He’s not the ‘Teflon Dave’ of two years ago. The economy is tanking, the LibDems trying to look tough, and Ed Miliband is landing more punches. Oh, and he’s busy trying to bullshit Leveson. He’s making mistakes, more people are noticing them, and so gay marriage is a stick to beat him with.

3 – Where’s the rest of the Tories socially liberal policies? The proposed legislation on forced marriages emerged more from Cameron’s ‘women problem’ than from a genuine concern. After that…well, there’s always Pickles and IDS lecturing the poor on their fecklessness.

4 – He’s got a problem selling gay marriage on the grounds that ‘marriage is better.’ Especially given the plans to introduce tax breaks for married couples, since any legislation would have to include civil partnerships as well – which is bound to upset religious groups and Tory moral fundamentalists.

He didn’t make the case. Love is all well and good, but this is really an issue of equallity and justice and no one has really made that cogent argument.

Govt ministers have repeatedly affirmed that this is about love and just makes sense, but considering the stakes and legal matters involved, those answers just fall short. Nice emotion, but doesn’t really tell us how this is going to work, what the implications are in law etc etc. Whether you are for or against, I would have appreciated a legal assesment of what the changes mean. Instead the govt left it to gay groups and religious groups to have a nasty row and it’s hard to understand what marriage actually means (people appear to be arguing at cross-purposes on definitions as well) and what the changes mean in practice, beyond more people committing to one another, while the CoE is painting a picture of a constitutional apocalypse now.

If this is going ahead, the govt should have told us how it envisages that happening, what it means, taken comments and put it to vote. However the defence of their own idea has been feeble. Ironically enough, the govt’s approach has been US-style culture war-baiting. Religious groups were always going to oppose, as is their democratic right, and the govt did little to engage with their oppositions, particularly on legal grounds and the implications in terms of the established church etc.

The govt appears to lack the courage of its convictions though, making the whole thing seem like a bit of a farce and like a previous commenter said, a handy distraction from the rest of the policy clustershambles and sleaze. It seems instead like an exercise designed to burnish the Tory image – but if they don’t back it up with reasoned arguments and cast forth a vision of what society we’re working towards, then rage and confusion fills the gap. Also gives the impression that they’re wavering, and have left gay groups to make the case alone.

Worth mentioning, too that to religious groups, as the govt had already decided it was going to do it, a consultation on “how” just seemed dishonest. To me it just seemed really peculiar. “We’re doing this, but tell us how we’re to do it.” <– You're the one proposing it, why don't *you* tell *us* what your plans are and what they mean and why, then just vote on it. No point discussing it if this is going ahead regardless.

In essence, typical bumbling, but seems disingenuous as well. I feel like this is a bone they threw the Lib Dems to keep them sweet – they've made no efforts to stand behind this with any weighty, coherent arguments at all.

Just shows once again the tories have not changed. They are a reactionary bunch of knuckle draggers. Cameron lied about changing the tory party. Just as he lied about no major changes to the NHS.. And is lying about his dealings with Murdoch

As for the Catholic church they are a revolting organisation full of child molesters,and weirdos. But they are increasingly throwing their weight around on social issues both here and in the US. They should watch their step. It is not long ago Catholics were banned from Parliament such was the concern they were agents of Rome. They still can’t marry our Monarch. Maybe we need to start hanging, drawing and quartering them again.
The Church of England claiming to be for sanctity of marriage is a bit rich since it only came into being being to facilitate a divorce.

Maybe it’s because it’s not as clear cut as some would like to make it.
”Normal people verses knuckle dragging neanderthals” is how Owen Jones described it when appearing on Stephen Nolan’s radio programme.

That gets people’s backs up. Including gay men like the Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce.

I’m a gay man who opposes gay marriage. Does that make ME a bigot, Mr Cameron?

”The truth is that no one has been able to explain to me the difference between gay marriage and a civil partnership. I have asked ministers and friends. None has an answer.

But I do. We already have gay marriage — it’s called civil partnership. Why can’t Mr Cameron just leave it there?”

@ 14 damon

“Maybe it’s because it’s not as clear cut as some would like to make it.
”Normal people verses knuckle dragging neanderthals” is how Owen Jones described it when appearing on Stephen Nolan’s radio programme.”

Unless you’re saying that Cameron followed Jones’s lead and therefore alienated potential converts, I don’t see how this is an answer to the question.

@Damon – calling civil partnerships ‘gay marriage’ is just popular shorthand. Heterosexuals ( e.g. C of E members) can have a wedding (marriage in the eyes of God) or a secular marriage at a registry office. LGBT people get a legally recognised civil partnership – and that’s it, other than a lot of wibble from the Church of England about how it believes in gay equality…but not when it comes to getting married.

No Chaise, I’m saying that perhaps Cameron realises that it’s not such a no brainer after all, and that there might be legitimate oposition to it. That it’s a divisive issue, and that many in the pro-gay marriage side were being rather unnecessarily antagonistic.

You will have noticed that many in the pro side are denouncing everyone who disagrees with them as bigots and homophobes, so maybe the opportunistic Tories lost their bottle a bit.

Hmm might need re-wording for clarity:

@Damon – calling civil partnerships ‘gay marriage’ is just popular shorthand. Heterosexuals ( e.g. C of E members) can have a wedding (marriage in the eyes of God) or a legally recognised relationship via at a registry office. LGBT people get a legally recognised civil partnership – and that’s it, other than a lot of wibble from the Church of England about how it believes in gay equality…but not when it comes to getting married.

I think that’s better.

I don’t think the issue of gay marriage was in either the Tory or Libdem manifesto, not that a manifesto means anything. But it’s a faux pas. The next faux pas was the consultation. It’s pretty clear that the government is going through with it and the consultation is more about how. Indeed, didn’t a Libdem minister say exactly that? So two mistakes right at the start, which unmistakedly say: “We’re going to do this and we don’t care what anyone thinks.” How typically Tory.

In the background somewhere, I wouldn’t mind betting that Cameron is dancing to the EU tune, as he does in so many things without mentioning that some unelected jerk in Brussels says we must do it. Either that or the ECHR is just about to tell him, as happened with votes for prisoners.

@ 17 damon

So you’re suggesting Cameron didn’t put any thought into it before first announcing his policy, and then changed his mind? To be honest, sounds less likely than the theory that he wanted to detoxify the Tory brand, but found home opposition to be harder to quell than he anticipated.

Have to say I agree with Damon here, I’m not seeing much of a distinction between a civil partnership and a marriage. If there is a difference, then what is it or if it’s simply the name then what’s the point of this infighting. I’m happy to be corrected here but as I understood it civil partnerships enshrined the same laws for gay partners as for married couples in terms of finances etc? If they didn’t then of course that needs to change immediately.

If we’re changing this for the name then is this really a big issue? I doubt many people would expect the government to force churches/synagogues/temples to preside over the ceremony therefore this is this fight even worth fighting?

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of equal rights for everyone and I have no issue with gay people or for that matter anyone getting married (as long as nobody tries to force me into it!) but I’m just not seeing the point of the fight in which Cameron is losing so much face.

Firstly, I hate the idea that this is an unimportant issue – it may not be important to a majority, but it is hugely important to the people it affects. And as they are also tax paying law abiding British citizens, and human beings, their rights are no less important because there are fewer of them. If it’s such a triffling minority issue that no one cares about, why not just introduce it – surely no one cares enough to mind?

Secondly, he screwed up because he didn’t just do it – he’s been far too concerned with how it might come across or who it might offend.

If Roy Jenkins had waited until the public were pro-gay to decriminalise homosexuality we’d stil be waiting now. Policy can change public opinion as much as public opinion changes policy, and a lot of the reason some think gay people shouldn’t get married is that we’ve not seen a load of happy gay marriages.

If it’s a question of human rights, or a minority issue, then its the reason we elect officials in the first place as opposed to having mob rule – because some issues require a well thought out, unemotive response, and because minorities can’t be forever trampled by a majority prejudice.

If he believes in it he should campaign for it, and answer some of these religious groups directly.

GirlSteve:

You never explained why it’s important though, I’m happy to be educated on this but how will it differ from a civil partnership in terms of legalities?

ActuarialChris

Well, I personally think giving the two things different names is an issue in and of itself. If you had two identical schools with identical resources and said one was for black students and one was for white, it would still be wrong even if their life chances were the same. I personally think singling out the gay community and saying they can’t use the word should be stopped for its own sake. The fact that divorced people can marry the person they left their partner for even though its a far greater biblical sin just proves that its an arbitrary distinction and not a religious one.

Also, civil partnerships are not the same as marriages – they are considered a legal contract, the amalgamation of assets as it were, and not a romantic or sexual union. I don’t have to be in a sexual or romantic relationship with a woman to get a civil partnership, I can do so via fax without being present at the ceremony, and issues such as adultery and lack of a sex life are not considered valid reasons to dissolve a civil partnership. So the two things are neither the same not equal.

@damn #14:

”The truth is that no one has been able to explain to me the difference between gay marriage and a civil partnership. I have asked ministers and friends. None has an answer.

But I do. We already have gay marriage — it’s called civil partnership. Why can’t Mr Cameron just leave it there?”

(Assuming you were quoting this because you agree with it, and not simply because you thought it interesting) – if only it were that simple.

It seems that if you are an evangelical Christian registrar, civil partnership marriage. But if you are a couple of evangelical Christian hoteliers, civil partnership most definitely does not equal marriage. How to decide…

Civil partnership is not gay marriage; it was an expressly-created new legal status; the government’s summary of the response to the consultation paper on civil partnership included the following:

The Government has no plans to allow same-sex couples to marry. The proposals are for an entirely new legal status of civil partnership.

…and that is precisely what was legislated. It is true that gay civil partners are given broadly equivalent legal rights to heterosexual married couples; but that fact speaks volumes as to the whether the status itself is indeed equivalent.

For ActuarialChris, here’s what I’m fairly sure is a comprehensive list of the legal differences between a civil partnership and a marriage:

1) a civil partnership ceremony cannot be held in a religious venue
2) civil partners must be of the same sex, whilst married couples must be of the opposite sex
3) a marriage can be annulled on the grounds that it has not been consummated, whilst a civil partnership cannot
4) married couples can divorce on the grounds of adultery, whilst civil partners cannot
5) some of the legal terms for things differ (e.g. marriages end in divorce, whilst civil partnerships are dissolved)

@Northern Worker #19:

In the background somewhere, I wouldn’t mind betting that Cameron is dancing to the EU tune, as he does in so many things without mentioning that some unelected jerk in Brussels says we must do it. Either that or the ECHR is just about to tell him, as happened with votes for prisoners.

If he doesn’t like an unelected jerk telling him what to do, he and the other democratic politicians can appoint another unelected jerk who won’t do so.

And why would the ECtHR tell him to introduce gay marriage? They’ve only just got through telling Austria that they it has no obligation to do so?

As for prisoners and the vote; why do you object to fly-tippers retaining the vote?

‘If he doesn’t like an unelected jerk telling him what to do’

Strictly speaking Cameron IS an unelected jerk in his role as PM…

As for prisoners and the vote; why do you object to fly-tippers retaining the vote

Personally, I don’t think prison should be used for fly-tippers.

And if anyone thinks that makes me a wooly liberal I should point out I don’t think fly-tippers should be allowed to marry in a church.

Secondly, he screwed up because he didn’t just do it – he’s been far too concerned with how it might come across or who it might offend.

No, that’s not why he hasn’t just done it, instigating and maintaining this big drawn out argument is precisely what he’s after. You see the Tories have looked across the pond and seen just how successful the culture war has been for the right over there, social issues which they’re not really all that bothered about might be very slowly being lost, but the stuff they DO give a shit about, like say rebalancing the economy in the favour of multinationals, well, they’re getting all that shit done in spades.
Which is why we’ve so far seen Baroness Warsi rail against secularism from an exclusively Christian perspective, Nadine Dorries’ campaigns against abortion and David Cameron inviting religious leaders everyone to tell everyone him what they think about the possibility of queers getting married via newspapers and television interviews a consultation.

GreenChristian

> comprehensive list of the legal differences between a civil partnership and a marriage:

One question – regarding parenting rights.

In

In a civil partnership , any children will have required the intervention of 3 adults – the two of the same-sex couple, plus an adult of the gender not represented (a surrogate mother or a sperm donating male).

Does the law reflect that extra complexity of having 3 parties not 2?

At some point in the far future, what will Cameron’s obituary read:

During his first term of office, under a coalition, his biggest mistake was to renege on a pledge to support gay marriage.

Seriously, dudes, seriously, ‘Gay marriage’? Are you guys on glue? Who really gives a toss one way or another?

‘Oh, I, could stomach the merciless attacks on the disabled the wholesale privatisation of the health service, the unemployed used to destroy legitimate jobs, but, when I could still not get married to another bloke, despite being told that I would, well my confidence in the Tories collapsed and I switched to Labour’

Jesus wept.

“Who really gives a toss one way or another?”

The thousands of LGBTQ people who this could directly effect? People like myself who are appalled at an arbitrary prejudice being supported byt the state?

“Oh, I, could stomach the merciless attacks on the disabled the wholesale privatisation of the health service, the unemployed used to destroy legitimate jobs”

It’s not necessarily mutually exclusive – if it’s so unimportant, why not just do it and then we can all get back to the rest of it?

The most important practical difference between civil unions and marriages at present applies to trans people. If a married trans person changes their legal gender, then their marriage is automatically void; if a trans person in a civil union changes their legal gender, then their civil union is automatically void. This reflects the fact that marriages and civil unions are legally distinct things that can’t transition into each other. Cameron’s proposals would change this to the obvious sensible state of affairs where the marriage simply turns from an opposite-sex to a same-sex one, or vice versa.

NW: this is simply false. The UK government is forced to do *almost nothing* by the EU. The ECHR, which is a completely different organisation from the EU with no legal or institutional links and a completely different list of members, works on the principles of British law, having been established by British lawyers at the end of WWII.

On the prison point, the ECHR has found that it is completely legitimate for countries to take voting rights from prisoners, *provided this is done by law as part of their punishment* rather than just as an arbitrary consequence of detention. Rather than pass a very simple law saying “Where a prison term is imposed, deprivation of voting rights will also be imposed for the same period”, the UK government has chosen to grandstand the issue, presumably in order to impress idiots with the idea that it’s STANDING UP to WICKED BRUSSELS EUROCRATS who want to PUT PAEDOPHILES AND TERRORISTS IN CHARGE.

JV: I’m not sure what century you’re living in, but in 2012 a great many heterosexual couples also reproduce with the aid of some combination of sperm donors, egg donors and surrogates. There is no difference whatsoever between their legal position and the legal position of same-sex couples in the same situation.

“a social issue that only affects a minority group”

That excuse could be used for ignoring any number of examples of injustice or inequalities – for instance, anti-black racism ‘only’ affects a minority group.

@ OP:

“How did Cameron manage to screw up gay marriage so badly?”

Probably because the support for it is generally quite badly presented. Gay marriage is literally unprecedented outside of the 21st-century West, and it seems rather sensible when contemplating such a change to try and undertake a careful analysis of the likely results which such a change might have. When proponents of the change start from the position that they’re self-evidently right and that the only motive people could have for opposing them is homophobic bigotry, it’s going to be difficult for them to carry out such an analysis. Hence it seems reasonable to say that, if the potential results of the change aren’t going to be properly considered, it makes sense to follow the safer course of action and not introduce gay marriage.

@ Girlsteve:

“People like myself who are appalled at an arbitrary prejudice being supported byt the state?”

If not having gay marriage is just the result of “an arbitrary prejudice”, how come no culture outside of the modern West has felt the need to introduce it? Is it just a coincidence that they all happened to share the same arbitrary prejudices when it came to defining marriage?

In the grand traditions of Sunny headlines “How did Cameron manage to screw up gay marriage so badly?” is exactly wrong (though for a change it at least reflects the article correctly). Same-sex marriage is in consultation, is going ahead and has a majority in the Commons. It may have trouble in the Lords but it was always going to have trouble in the Lords anyway – all that will happens is that it might make Lords reform a bit easier.

The only threat to religious freedom in the proposals comes from the concessions inserted in a pathetic attempt to placate religious groups. As I pointed out on an earlier thread:

the actual proposals currently up for consultation state:

civil partnership registrations on religious premises will continue as is currently possible i.e. on a voluntary basis for faith groups and with no religious content

but this means that Parliament can and will continue to be able to dictate what can and cannot be included in ceremonies conducted on religious premises

It now looks as if the restrictions, on what those religions who want to conduct marriages between same sex partners do, will have to be dropped on human rights grounds. There may be other changes that the consultation may raise – particularly the extension of civil partnerships to different sex couples (as 95% of CPs in France are now).

The real question that has to be asked is how did the religious groups “screw up gay marriage so badly?” Of all the issues to take a stand over it must be the most inept. They have managed to look bigoted, incoherent, hysterical and detached from reality. They have alienated vast numbers of their own members (especially the young) and sown the seeds for their own internal disputes. And they have managed to convince more of the non-religious that they are unhinged fanatics with weird obsessions.

@ 36 Lamia

“That excuse could be used for ignoring any number of examples of injustice or inequalities – for instance, anti-black racism ‘only’ affects a minority group.”

Agreed. It also begs the question of, if it’s such a minor issue that doesn’t matter to people outside of that group, why are so many people taking the time to oppose it?

Plus, of course, the implication of “I’m not in that minority group myself, so fuck ‘em”.

@36 Oh, it’s a not an excuse, it’s a reason. You see I don’t believe for one second that the man who voted for the retention of section 28 is actually pro-gay. I’m not saying he has any particular animus toward gay people given his later apology for that vote shows that not to be true, what I am saying is that he is indifferent on the matter. He doesn’t actually care one way or the other. He has no real investment in the battle.

However he is well aware that there are people who most certainly do, and if he can have gay rights groups and religious lobbies at loggerheads on this issue, the likelyhood of them say uniting in opposition of what’s being done to the disabled as Jim talked about becomes vanishingly small. All of the the three main parties are ostensibly in favour of gay marriage, so he could have just either passed it, or put it to a vote in parliament (where to avoid the worst of any bad press, the vote is likely to have been whipped by all three of them), instead he’s been somewhat weak and plodding on the issue, while still pushing forward with it. It’s practically an open invitation to anti-gay religious leaders to begin losing their shit, stamping their feet and rolling on the floor in public so that a shitload of attention is focused on the issue of gay marriage by religious groups at the expense of everything else. If he’s gonna have religious opposition, where do you think he’d prefer to have it?

@ P Ve M

Firstly, Same-sex marriage is legally recognized nationwide in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden – that seems like a fairly diverse range of countries to agree.

Secondly, just because a prejudice is commonly accepted doesn’t make it right. There was a time when only the ‘modern west’ had maternity leave, but that doesn’t make maternity leave an unnecessary thing, or that a system without it isn’t prejudiced.

Something is either a prejudice or it isn’t – pointing out that lots of other places are prejudiced too is irrelevant. Perhaps gay people are just considered threatenening in many cultures for the same incorrect reasons, as women were once widely considered inferior and slavery was once common.

Robin Levett @26

(Assuming you were quoting this because you agree with it, and not simply because you thought it interesting) – if only it were that simple.

Actually I quoted it because I thought it was interesting. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about gay marriage. Which probably makes me ”for” it …. just because I’m not particularly against it.
Although it is a silly contrived issue IMO, and bound to wind up the more conservative and religious. You could describe the campaign for gay marriage as ”bigot bashing”.

There’s an old Unionist ex-MP in Northern Ireland who was drawn out on this on the radio the other day, who absolutely crucified himself by showing how out of touch with the modern world he was.
http://sluggerotoole.com/2012/06/14/ken-mcginnis-and-the-uup-leaders-problem-with-a-party-elder-statesmen/

@35
“his reflects the fact that marriages and civil unions are legally distinct things that can’t transition into each other.”

Which would seem to indicate an inconsistency in the law, as gay marriages conducted overseas can be, and have been, transitioned into civil partnerships in the UK.

In the case of trans-people who switch gender, if we were to allow their relationship to switch seamlessly between a marriage and a civil partnership (which does seem a sensible suggestion), it would be a good idea to allow the sex change to be valid grounds for divorce/disillusion. Not every partner of a trans-person would be comfortable continuing the relationship post-op.

Girlsteve @ 41:

“Firstly, Same-sex marriage is legally recognized nationwide in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden – that seems like a fairly diverse range of countries to agree.”

All those countries are Western, and the first only introduced gay marriage in XXXX. When you look at the vast range of cultures throughout the world, and the long history of the human race, those countries you listed are actually extremely limited in diversity.

“Secondly, just because a prejudice is commonly accepted doesn’t make it right.”

But what about countries like Ancient Greece or Rome? Not only did they have nothing against homosexual activities, they didn’t even have a concept of “homosexuals” as a distinct group. The chances of them having written their marriage laws to exclude gay people are vanishingly small, not least because they didn’t have the conceptual framework to do so.

Also, “Perhaps gay people are just considered threatenening in many cultures for the same incorrect reasons” — well, maybe, but as it stands you’ve offered no evidence for this. Also, it seems to be contradicted by the existence of societies which neither had same-sex marriage, nor considered gay people threatening, like the Ancient Greeks.

(Sorry, I meant to say that the first country introduced same-sex marriage in 2001.)

@P Ve M

My point was that if a sentiment is shared by Argintina, Canada and South Africa, I don’t think you can say that it’s specific to one part of the world and one culture. Each of those nations have different cultures, different levels of religion, are at different stages of development etc. But they still agree on this.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what your point was – you point out that homosexuality was accepted by many cultures in the past, then you point out that homosexuality isn’t accepted by all cultures now. Is your point that this is a concern unique to the modern west, as you say, or an issue that has been discussed and viewed differently by a variey of cultures throughout history, as you also suggest? What about ancient Greece and Rome? Don’t they just show that our view on homosexuality is down to how it’s presented in society, or that a civilisation can flourish quite happily without persecuting gay people?

My theory on why gay men seem threatening – as a woman, I’m always just a little bit cautious when a guy offers to give me a lift or walk me home. I happen to think that the vast majority of men aren’t sexually aggressive, but none the less I’ve been raised from a young age to remember that I am potentially being viewed as a sexual conquest by someone stronger than me. Now, had homosexuality always been accepted, men would have to do that too – a guy who offered to buy you a drink in a bar MIGHT fancy you, so you would have to live with that same gentle pressure that women do… OR, you could decide that homosexuality is a sin and you’ll be doing the penetrating, thank you very much.

This may explain why the bible and most national law is suspiciously quiet about lesbians, because they aren’t a threat.

This might also explain why men STILL make that stupid ‘don’t go to the bathroom with him!’ joke whenever a gay man walks into a bar. I have never once met a hetereosexual man and said ‘you fancy people of my gender, I bet you’re going to rape me!’ and I’d sound mad if I did. Because as a woman, I’m used to it. Maybe, if i’d been raised in an convent until the age of 18 and known nothing of men other than the image presented in the media, I would also shit myself when I met one for the first time, but I’d get the hell over it. If men didn’t still react to that initial fear of assualt then those jokes wouldn’t get made.

I believe that fear could well have been common to all heterosexual men, and maybe that’s why so many socieities penalised gay MEN particuarly.

@P Ve M

I would add, the false impression of gay men as being especially promiscuous or sexually agressive doesn’t help.

What people forget is, up until very recently, the only way you would know if a man was homosexual would be to see him engaging in homosexual activity. At the time most of these social stigmas came into being, it was hardly as though a gay man could live openly with his monogamous partner, or declare that he was homosexual to his friends. The man living a quiet life as a blacksmith wouldn’t factor into your impression of gay men, because you wouldn’t know he was one. Therefore all the gay men you would have known about were the ones who got caught having sex in an alley. This then feeds into the media messages that we get about homosexuality today, all of which ignore the fact that a homosexual man is no more likely to be promiscuous or agressive than a straight one.

As such, gay men aren’t just as threatening as a man is, they’re super threatening because they’re almost CERTAINLY thinking about sex all the time – after all, that’s what the telly implies…

@44 As I’ve explained to you before, ancient Rome and Greece are not all that illuminating on the subject of gay marriage because the concept of marriage as a union of equals was not around then at the time. Marriage was essentially the formalisation of guardianship of the women. Generally, in societies where women are not equal to men and are expected to play certain roles in life, then gay marriage is a strange concept. Because as a gay man you’d just marry a women because it’s ‘just what you do’, perform your ‘husbandly duties’ every now and then, and fuck around with other guys behind her back with impunity.

Girlsteve @ 46:

“My point was that if a sentiment is shared by Argintina, Canada and South Africa, I don’t think you can say that it’s specific to one part of the world and one culture. Each of those nations have different cultures, different levels of religion, are at different stages of development etc. But they still agree on this.”

Well, they’re not exactly the same, but they’re still part of the modern West, and so share a broadly similar outlook on cultural matters.

And if gay marriage is so widespread, how come you’ve only been able to name eleven countries which have it? There must have been several thousand at least throughout the history of the world. And the oldest example you’ve got is eleven years old (the Netherlands, 2001). What percentage of human history is that? Basically, a tiny fraction of countries have in the extremely recent past decided to introduce same-sex marriage. There are just no grounds for claiming that SSM is or ever has been widely supported in the world.

“Beyond that, I’m not sure what your point was – you point out that homosexuality was accepted by many cultures in the past, then you point out that homosexuality isn’t accepted by all cultures now.”

My point is that there are examples of cultures which (a) weren’t prejudiced against gay people, and (b) didn’t have SSM. Therefore, saying that the only reason we don’t have SSM is because of a few bigots is at best extremely dubious, since it’s clearly possible to oppose SSM and not be prejudiced against gay people.

@P Ve M

As a minor point, I would question whether South Africa could be deemed part of the ‘modern west’, or Argentina for that matter, but it’s beside the point:

“And if gay marriage is so widespread, how come you’ve only been able to name eleven countries which have it? There must have been several thousand at least throughout the history of the world”

Can you name me a single non western country that had maternity leave before 1950? Or a fully functioning welfare state? Can you name more than 11 that believed women were legallly and socially equal, or that disabled people had a right to have ammendments made so that they could engage equally? I suppose therefore that these things are all bad ideas?

It doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from. If you cannot argue as to why we shouldn’t have same sex marriage, it’s irrelenvant that the world has always been in the wrong. Either make a case, or accept that the whole world has a reasonable argument for change – an argument that more and more countries, from every continent, are considering.

Finally, as @Cylux rightly says, Ancient Rome and Greece are not relevant either, because their entire concept of marriage wasn’t comparible to ours – this is why I’m confused as to why you bring them up as examples, or the pont you are trying to make here.

Are you saying that because Greece didn’t have them, we don’t need them? Because Greece had slavery too, and we needed to abolish that even if they didn’t feel the need to?

Are you saying that you don’t need SSM to ensure gay equality because the Greeks didn’t? Because, again, the situation in Greece and Rome wasn’t comparible. Further, just because people didn’t have a problem with men having sex with other men on the side does NOT mean these societies had equality for the homosexual community.

I am not particularly bothered about same sex marriages per se, I’m concerned with equality. If we changed the law so that all non Christians had to have a civil partnership, gay or staight, then I wouldn’t have a problem with that. If we abolished marriage entirely, and said no one could have them, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I don’t think we NEED ssm, I think we NEED equality, and for as long as you’re saying that every other type of legal sexual relationship can be enshired in marriage apart from these ones, I think we have a problem. Perhaps Greece and Rome also had that problem, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a problem. Perhaps it won’t lead to the ending of all life on earth – doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be a problem.

@P Ve M #49:

My point is that there are examples of cultures which (a) weren’t prejudiced against gay people, and (b) didn’t have SSM. Therefore, saying that the only reason we don’t have SSM is because of a few bigots is at best extremely dubious, since it’s clearly possible to oppose SSM and not be prejudiced against gay people.

Your problem is that you’ve bought into your own propaganda about marriage being an institution that has remained unchanged for thousands of years until those nasty gays came along and tried to change the definition. You’ve referred to Greece and Rome without any concept of what marriage was in those societies.

Nicholas’s An introduction to Roman Law, my textbook on Roman Law (which I took as an option in my law degree oh so many years ago) introduces the section on marriage in this way:

There are few Roman institutions which differ so fundamentally from their modern counterparts as marriage. From the legal point of view marriage is to us a status, the creation and termination of which are closely regulated by law, and which not only founds a number of rights and duties between the parties but also to some extent affects the relationship of the parties to the rest of the world. A Roman marriage, on the other hand, was very largely a social fact, about the creation and termination of which the law had very little to say, and which had almost no effect on the legal condition of the parties.

It goes on to point out that apart from having capacity to marry, “all that was required for a valid marriage was the manifestation of a common intention to be married”. Divorce was even simpler; marriage was terminated by either party manifesting an intention no longer to be married. Unlike Christian marriage, the requirement of consent to marriage was not exhausted by entry; once consent went, so did marriage.

Such legal effects of Roman marriage as did exist were minimal; so the distinction between a long-term gay relationship and a marriage was pretty insignificant.

I would question whether South Africa could be deemed part of the ‘modern west’, or Argentina for that matter

Based on Argentina’s criteria for “things that get deemed as part of Argentina”, South Africa would fit admirably: it’s quite nearby with a lot of sea in between, and it’s always belonged to people who have no interest in being deemed part of Argentina.

@ girlsteve

“What people forget is, up until very recently, the only way you would know if a man was homosexual would be to see him engaging in homosexual activity. At the time most of these social stigmas came into being, it was hardly as though a gay man could live openly with his monogamous partner, or declare that he was homosexual to his friends. The man living a quiet life as a blacksmith wouldn’t factor into your impression of gay men, because you wouldn’t know he was one. Therefore all the gay men you would have known about were the ones who got caught having sex in an alley. ”

Excellent point, and one I’d rather embarrassingly overlooked until now. I’d always assumed that the reported promiscuity of gay men, when people first started coming out of the closet en masse, was true (though exaggerated) and was down to 1) people halfway out of the closet not being able to have a committed relationship with a single partner, 2) a kind of dam-bursting effect when people first came out, and 3) quite possibly men being more inclined to sleep around than women. Will have to rethink that now.

@ 52 john b

LOL

Girlsteve @ 47:

“the time most of these social stigmas came into being, it was hardly as though a gay man could live openly with his monogamous partner, or declare that he was homosexual to his friends.”

“At the time most of these social stigmas came into being,” a gay man could indeed do all these things, since if the stigmas are coming into being, then by definition they couldn’t already exist. Other than that, I’m not sure what you’re point is, as I’ve never claimed that gay people are more promiscuous than straight ones.

@ 50:

“Can you name me a single non western country that had maternity leave before 1950? Or a fully functioning welfare state? Can you name more than 11 that believed women were legallly and socially equal, or that disabled people had a right to have ammendments made so that they could engage equally?”

No. But then, I’ve never claimed that not having maternity leave, a welfare state, etc., are only explicable in terms of “arbitrary prejudice”.

” If you cannot argue as to why we shouldn’t have same sex marriage, it’s irrelenvant that the world has always been in the wrong. Either make a case, or accept that the whole world has a reasonable argument for change – an argument that more and more countries, from every continent, are considering.”

Erm, you’re the one advocating we change the status quo, so it’s up to you to come up with arguments for it. If your argument is that the current definition of marriage is just “an arbitrary prejudice being supported by the state” (as you said in post no. 34), it’s up to you to prove that the current definition is just based on arbitrary prejudice.

“Are you saying that because Greece didn’t have them, we don’t need them? Because Greece had slavery too, and we needed to abolish that even if they didn’t feel the need to?”

Right. Your argument seems to be (as far as I can tell):

P1: Marriage in the UK being between a man and a woman is the reult of State support for an arbitrary prejudice;

P2: State support for arbitrary prejudices is wrong;

Conclusion: Therefore, marriage in the UK being between a man and a woman is wrong.

Now, maybe I’ve misunderstood you, and if so, please correct me. But the example of Ancient Greece was brought up in relation to P1: here we have a culture in which marriage was between a man and a woman, but which was not arbitrarily prejudiced against gay people. Therefore, the Greek definition of marriage is not explicable by pointing to arbitrary anti-gay prejudice; therefore there must be at least one other reason for defining marriage as being between a man and a woman; therefore there is no reason to accept P1.

Robin @ 51:

“There are few Roman institutions which differ so fundamentally from their modern counterparts as marriage.”

And yet they nevertheless agreed with us that marriage was something which happened between a man and a woman. Funny that.

“Such legal effects of Roman marriage as did exist were minimal; so the distinction between a long-term gay relationship and a marriage was pretty insignificant.”

Well then, you should have no trouble directing me to a few ancient sources which treat long-term gay relationships as marriages.

@P Ve M #56:

Now sit down and re-read what I said. You’re completely missing the point.

P Ve M @ 56

“And yet they nevertheless agreed with us that marriage was something which happened between a man and a woman. Funny that.”

Actually, there have been plenty of cultures that don’t agree with that. In many cultures, modern and historic, it was the norm for a man to have many wives, for example.

@ 55

“since if the stigmas are coming into being, then by definition they couldn’t already exist”

That’s an assertion. For example, a law can cause a stigma as much as a stigma can lead to a law. It only takes an elite to decide they don’t want men to chat them up, and suddenly there is a law against it – the same thing happens with all sorts of moral panic that disturb a voal minority. Now homosexuality is illegal, it’s driven underground, hence the stigma evolves. Just as you don’t have to wait for a stigma to disappear to repeal a law – chances are, you’ll have to legalise homosexuality before people are okay with it, rather that waiting for people to decide they’re okay with it.

“No. But then, I’ve never claimed that not having maternity leave, a welfare state, etc., are only explicable in terms of “arbitrary prejudice”.”

No, but they address an arbitrary prejudice. Every generation before considered it was okay that your chances should be fewer because you happened to be economically disadvantaged or a mother. We then these things had no baring on whether you deserved to succeed, so we amended things so that they were less of a barrier. Simillarly, although we’ve always accepted you should get fewer benefits if you so happen to be gay, there is not reason that subsequent generations cannot question that.

“Erm, you’re the one advocating we change the status quo, so it’s up to you to come up with arguments for it”

And I’ve outlined them clearly above. Now you can either accept them or counter them. My argument is that it’s arbitrary because it applies only to gay people, not to divorced people, hence it can’t be a religious argument. I’ve yet to be presented with a single argument for why gay people can’t marry that shouldn’t also have applied to divorced people, or women who aren’t vigins for that matter (it’s against the teaching of the bible/it would represent a change from how we’ve always seen marriage). Applying a rule to a specific group without a specific reason is the definition of a arbitrary prejudice. I have made my point, is there an answer to it beyond ‘it’s an arbitrary distinction that’s always existed’ or ‘its an arbitrary distinction everyone agrees with’.

“Now, maybe I’ve misunderstood you, and if so, please correct me. But the example of Ancient Greece was brought up in relation to P1: here we have a culture in which marriage was between a man and a woman, but which was not arbitrarily prejudiced against gay people”

Again, marriage in Ancient Greece was an entirely different thing, and our current stucture represents a major restructuring since then, so I don’t accept this parallel. Also, I do think Ancient Greece was arbitrarily prejudiced against gay people, and I reject your assertion that it wasn’t. Just because men were free to have sex with one another, does not mean that gay people were equal. In Ancient Greece, gay men were not allowed the exact same rights as their heterosexual counterparts based purely on their sexuality, which again is my definition of an arbitrary distinction, and lesbians were not considered to exist at all, as far as I can tell. Unless there is a moral or practical reason for this distinction, other than the fact it’s existed a long time, then feel free to share it. But if there isn’t, it’s arbitrary and its wrong.

But the example of Ancient Greece was brought up in relation to P1: here we have a culture in which marriage was between a man and a woman, but which was not arbitrarily prejudiced against gay people.

Actually they were, though in a rather complicated way. I presume you are aware of the practice of Athenian pederasty? While ancient Greeks certainly encouraged pederastic relationships between men and boys aged 14-18, they heavily frowned upon such sexual relationships continuing past that age threshold. It was expected that from that point onward the relationship would remain platonic. Indeed the whole point of ‘homosexual relationships’ in Greek antiquity was as a means of teaching the young and conveying to them important cultural values, such as bravery and restraint. As such no long term, binding homosexual relationships would have been tolerated, thus why gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar.

Ancient Rome on the other hand, being a heavily patriarchal society, granted the freeborn male citizen political liberty and the right to rule both himself and those of his household. The conquest mentality inherent in patriarchal societies and the Roman “cult of virility” shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free.
So while Roman men were allowed to be gay, it was very conditional, their choices of partners limited by social standings, and given that men had the right to rule himself and those of his household, what consequences do you suppose that would hold for the very nature and concept of marriage? And why that might lead to no one even conceiving of same sex marriage?

Robin @ 57:

“Now sit down and re-read what I said. You’re completely missing the point.”

What point? Marriage might have been less precisely defined in Roman law than it is in English, but they still considered marriage to be something that happened between women and men. Hence ancient Rome cannot be used as a counter-example to the idea that marriage has historically been defined as something between a man and a woman.

Girlsteve @ 58:

“Actually, there have been plenty of cultures that don’t agree with that. In many cultures, modern and historic, it was the norm for a man to have many wives, for example.”

Even in those societies, marriage is between a man and a woman. A man might get married to several women at once, of course, but the bond is still between two people. I can’t think of any cultures where a man’s wives would be considered married to each other, for example.

“For example, a law can cause a stigma as much as a stigma can lead to a law. It only takes an elite to decide they don’t want men to chat them up, and suddenly there is a law against it – the same thing happens with all sorts of moral panic that disturb a voal minority. Now homosexuality is illegal, it’s driven underground, hence the stigma evolves.”

Do you have any evidence for this idea?

“No, but they address an arbitrary prejudice. Every generation before considered it was okay that your chances should be fewer because you happened to be economically disadvantaged or a mother. We then these things had no baring on whether you deserved to succeed, so we amended things so that they were less of a barrier.”

So what, no generations before about 1900 tried to help the poor? That’s somewhat doubtful, I must say. As for maternity leave, past generations generally regulated labour much less than we do today (which, before you start accusing them of prejudice, was probably due to lack of resources rather than anything else). They didn’t have legally enforced paternity leave, either; were they all prejudiced against men?

“it’s arbitrary because it applies only to gay people,”

And people who want to marry their siblings, parents, children, pet cats, items of furniture, people under the age of sixteen…

“I’ve yet to be presented with a single argument for why gay people can’t marry that shouldn’t also have applied to divorced people, or women who aren’t vigins for that matter (it’s against the teaching of the bible/it would represent a change from how we’ve always seen marriage).”

Actually, I think you’ll find that quite a few societies have allowed divorced people to remarry, such as (for example) Robin Levett’s Romans. And people who’ve already been married tend not to be virgins, so that’s women who aren’t virgins covered. So actually, neither of those things you mention would represent a change from the traditional definition of marriage in the same way that gay marriage would.

“In Ancient Greece, gay men were not allowed the exact same rights as their heterosexual counterparts based purely on their sexuality, which again is my definition of an arbitrary distinction, and lesbians were not considered to exist at all, as far as I can tell.”

Are you refering to Ancient Greece’s lack of gay marriage here? Because if you are, that’s just begging the question.

“Unless there is a moral or practical reason for this distinction, other than the fact it’s existed a long time, then feel free to share it. But if there isn’t, it’s arbitrary and its wrong.”

I suppose I would say that heterosexual marriage is a part of human nature, whereas gay marriage is something which only arises in very specific circumstances, and hence isn’t part of human nature in the same way. So the two institutions are separate, and hence gay people cannot get married in the same way that straight people can. (That’s “cannot” in the sense of “it is literally impossible”, not in the sense of “it would be awful if they did”.)

Cylux @ 59:

Ancient Greek and Roman views of sexuality were different to ours, certainly, but that doesn’t prove that they were arbitrarily prejudiced. (Unless of course you want to take the view that our modern ideas of sexuality are so obviously right that anyone who doesn’t agree must be a bigot.) The fact that they had no concept of “gays” vs. “straight people” would make it unlikely that they would exclude gay people from getting married as a sort of slap in the face to them.

59. Cylux

I presume you are aware of the practice of Athenian pederasty? While ancient Greeks certainly encouraged pederastic relationships between men and boys aged 14-18, they heavily frowned upon such sexual relationships continuing past that age threshold. It was expected that from that point onward the relationship would remain platonic. Indeed the whole point of ‘homosexual relationships’ in Greek antiquity was as a means of teaching the young and conveying to them important cultural values, such as bravery and restraint. As such no long term, binding homosexual relationships would have been tolerated, thus why gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar.

This manages, in an interesting way, to combine pro-pederastic propaganda about Sparta with Athens. No, the ancient Greeks certainly did not encourage pederastic relationships between men and boys. There is an evidence-free allegation that the Spartans did so. Although no actual evidence they did. The Athenians did not. Indeed allowing yourself to be penetrated by another male was grounds for loss of citizenship rights altogether. In so far as Athenians had any views, it is true that some pro-Sparta intellectuals viewed homosexuality this way. Which gives us Platonic after all. But the Athenian public did not – such intellectuals were ruthlessly mocked for their “aberrant” sexual preferences in Greek plays for instance. Gay marriage was not on the horizon because Gay as a concept did not exist. Men had sex. Some men had sex from time to time with other men. Perhaps even some exclusively preferred other men – although I can’t think of an example. But homosexuality as a concept and an identity is a product of the 19th century.

Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free.

Really? So Caesar’s soldiers did not sing of his pleasure in taking the passive role in homosexual intercourse as they marched through Rome at his Triumph then? Despite the very well documented attestation to that fact. And not with slaves either but with citizens.

So while Roman men were allowed to be gay, it was very conditional, their choices of partners limited by social standings, and given that men had the right to rule himself and those of his household, what consequences do you suppose that would hold for the very nature and concept of marriage? And why that might lead to no one even conceiving of same sex marriage?

Again there were no Gays because the concept had not been thought of. And Roman men could do pretty much what they liked. Nor is it true in either case that no one thought of same sex marriage. There are cases where it is mocked as an idea. They just did not take it seriously.

27. Green Christian

1) a civil partnership ceremony cannot be held in a religious venue

Yet. Denmark is moving to force Churches to marry Gay people. Britain cannot be far behind – which probably explains why so many people are so determined to fight this. We can’t all get along. Because one side is determined not to respect the other side’s views. It is a them-or-us situation.

Denmark’s parliament has voted for its state church to conduct same-sex weddings. All other churches in Denmark remain free to conduct gay weddings, straight weddings, man-and-horse-weddings, or whatever weddings they wish.

It’s possible that gay marriage in the UK would ultimately lead to the CoE either being forced to conduct same-sex weddings or disestablish. Either way, this is a positive outcome. Meanwhile, churches without the privilege of being part of the government get to do as they wish.

It is not fair to say that Primeminister Cameron “has screwed up the issue of gay marriage”. His intervention has achieved exactly the effect he and his supporters wanted which is to divert attention away from other issues and to feel self good about themselves without altering the way political power is exercised in society.

On the question of rights and diversity, churches, mosques and synagogues should no more be required to entertain ceremonies that go against their beliefs, anymore than any religious group is entitled to demand the right to hold its services in a gay club. The fact that such unfortunate clashes of rights are conceivable results from the flawed thinking underlying the Equality Act 2010, in attempting to afford sexuality and sexual orientation the same equal status in law as gender or ethnicity. Such thinking takes no account of the realities of sexual diversity which, as Kinsey demonstrated nearly 60 years ago, show that sex is the one area in life where we are all unequal. What may be right for one individual will be completely wrong for another person.

Unfortunately, the promoters of the Equality Act seem to have overlooked this essential aspect of human diversity, by taking an ideological position that seeks to level down all aspects and expressions of human sexuality to a notional equality, whilst ignoring other important human characteristics such as emotion, conscience and belief. At worst, this ideological standpoint is comparable to other political doctrines that focus upon specific characteristics e.g ‘white pride’, ‘black power’ and extremist politics in the sphere of gender.

Frankly, when did a Conservative leader care so much about issues like equality?
The gay marriage issue has enabled Cameron to clothe himself in liberal-left cloak, it has seen off women’s rights and feminism as a pollitical force, diverted attention away from black and ethnic minority issues and has focuses attention on an issue which has no economic implications whatsoever for changing the status quo in society. In fact the whole issue sits quite comfortably from an ideological standpoint on the libertarian right which does not believe in society, only property rights. Neither the libertarian right or the Marxist left back the traditional family as a unit in society.

Meanwhile in the recession hit UK at least three million people will be being taken to court for non-payment of council tax this year alone. Many will face bailiffs banging on the door, their benefits will be deducted, some will be bankrupted and some will go to prison. That is the experience of three million people in Britain today who face the basic problem of being poor. No wonder David Cameron wants gay marriage to be a political priority and endlessly discussed instead.

@ P Ve M #60:

What point? Marriage might have been less precisely defined in Roman law than it is in English, but they still considered marriage to be something that happened between women and men. Hence ancient Rome cannot be used as a counter-example to the idea that marriage has historically been defined as something between a man and a woman.

You continue to miss the point. “Marriage” as you understand it, and which you are trying to “defend” did not exist in Roman society. It was not a legal status; it was a social description. What did however exist was committed cohabitation. The only legal consequences of committed cohabitation between a man and a woman were not denied to a gay couple – they were simply irrelevant to a gay couple.

The closest parallel to Roman marriage that exists in UK society is what is colloquially called common-law marriage – again, a social (quite definitely not legal) description of committed cohabitation. Guess what – we already have that.

@SMFS #62:

1) a civil partnership ceremony cannot be held in a religious venue

Yet. Denmark is moving to force Churches to marry Gay people.

No it isn’t. The Danes are moving to allow gay couples to get married in all churches. Within the Danish State Church (of which the Danish Parliament is the equivalent of the General Synod of the Church of England) the measure permits individual priests to opt out but requires bishops to provide a priest who will perform the ceremony. A majority of Danish State Church priests will perform the ceremony.

Any attempt to force non Danish State churches to conduct gay marriages would run into difficulties with the ECtHR.

Britain cannot be far behind

Parliament will have to legislate the General Synod out of existence and take direct control of governance of the Church of England first. I can’t see that happening in the remainder of my lifetime – can you?

@61

No, the ancient Greeks certainly did not encourage pederastic relationships between men and boys. There is an evidence-free allegation that the Spartans did so. Although no actual evidence they did. The Athenians did not.

Er, t’other way round there SMFS, noted Athenian Aristotle, whom being Athenian had intense dislike of Sparta, actually thought it worthwhile to criticise Sparta for not being pederastic enough, because he thought it caused them to give undue power to women because they were beholden to women for sexual gratification. Notably, Spartan women were educated to be literate and numerate and granted considerably more rights of ownership than their Athenian counterparts.

Really? So Caesar’s soldiers did not sing of his pleasure in taking the passive role in homosexual intercourse as they marched through Rome at his Triumph then? Despite the very well documented attestation to that fact. And not with slaves either but with citizens.

He also denied the allegations under oath once, his soldiers were taking the piss, and apparently accusing your political opponents of taking it up the arse actually was used as a method to discredit them at the time.

@60

Ancient Greek and Roman views of sexuality were different to ours, certainly, but that doesn’t prove that they were arbitrarily prejudiced.

Their views on sexuality were based on their views of masculinity as such they were the very definition of arbitrary when it came to gay sex. Topping was fine, being a top was no problem whatsoever. Bottoming, on the other hand, not so good, carried a stigma it did. Though ‘arbitrarily discriminated’ is probably more correct than ‘arbitrarily prejudiced’.

The fact that they had no concept of “gays” vs. “straight people” would make it unlikely that they would exclude gay people from getting married as a sort of slap in the face to them.

Well, wouldn’t the fact they had no concept of gays or straights be entirely the bloody reason why they wouldn’t have thought up same sex marriages in the first place? Which is why bringing up ancient Greece and Rome as societies which allowed some homosexual practice but didn’t hold any same-sex marriages as some sort of knock down argument against same-sex marriage today is an exercise in pointlessness.

Plus marriage is a social institution that reflects the social attitudes of the time, as I’ve said before if you have societies where men have dominance over women, then marriage becomes the formalisation of a man’s dominion over the women and any children she produces. In that context same-sex marriage does not make sense because it would be a union of equals, which wouldn’t really gel all that well with what marriage was about. Fast forward to today where marriage is now a union of equals, generally undertaken for love and companionship rather than stamping a surname on your property, and suddenly same-sex marriage begins to make sense.

P Ve M @ 60

“A man might get married to several women at once, of course, but the bond is still between two people”

I think you’re clutching at straws here. How on earth can you argue that changing marraige from multiple partners to monogamy doesn’t redefine it?

“And people who want to marry their siblings, parents, children, pet cats, items of furniture, people under the age of sixteen…”

No, because it’s not legal to have a sexual relationship with any of those people, for reasons of consent. Therefore the distinction is not arbitrary, it has a definate reason – we believe these relationships are wrong and dangerous in and of themselves, for specfic reasons. Gay relationships are perfectly legal. We don’t think there is any danger in allowing a man to live with and have sex with another man. But we don’t let them marry their partners, for no specific reason.

“Actually, I think you’ll find that quite a few societies have allowed divorced people to remarry, such as (for example) Robin Levett’s Romans. And people who’ve already been married tend not to be virgins, so that’s women who aren’t virgins covered. So actually, neither of those things you mention would represent a change from the traditional definition of marriage in the same way that gay marriage would.”

When Henry VIII decided that people could get divorced, and that those divorced people could remarry, he didn’t just redefine marriage he had to set up a whole new religion, cut political ties with Europe and restructure the entire legal and political system of his country. Do you really believe tha allowing SSM would represent a bigger redefinition than that?

“Are you refering to Ancient Greece’s lack of gay marriage here? Because if you are, that’s just begging the question.”

I’m not only referring to that – I’m also referring to the right to live openly with a partner, share legal rights with heterosexual counterparts and the right to live in dignity. However, I do believe a society that has unequal marriage laws is BY DEFINITION unequal, which I have argued all along. I’m not ‘begging the question’ because I didn’t bring Greece or Rome up and I’ve maintained that those exampled are irrelevant. You seem to assume that Rome and Greece were equal, but you need to offer me some evidence or argument for this before you can go on to say ‘ergo we don’t need gay marriage for equality’. As many previous posters have said repeatedly, Greek and Roman marriage were entirely different and homosexual people were not equals in either society, so I don’t see the need to repeat it.

“I suppose I would say that heterosexual marriage is a part of human nature, whereas gay marriage is something which only arises in very specific circumstances, and hence isn’t part of human nature in the same way.”

I could not disagree more. Homosexuality is perfectly natural, it has occured in every society throughout history and even in the animal kingdom, people are born with the inclination to do it and God provided everything they needed to act on that – if God didn’t want you to stick stuff up there it wouldn’t feel good when you did.

@ P Ve M #60:

Sorry, missed this gem:

Actually, I think you’ll find that quite a few societies have allowed divorced people to remarry, such as (for example) Robin Levett’s Romans.

The Romans didn’t have divorce in the same sense as us, because they didn’t have marriage in the same sense as us. They allowed people to cohabit with others after leaving previous partners – but that is not the same thing at all.

Indeed True Christians (TM) even now would not permit divorced people to remarry, because they believe that would be bigamy, since divorce can have no effect on commitments entered into before God. The dear old CofE, even, has only allowed divorced people to remarry for 10 years.

Now you could of course avoid this problem by distinguishing between civil and religious definitions of marriage – but since your claim is that there is only one definition of marriage, I suspect you won’t want to do that.

“Marriage” as you understand it, and which you are trying to “defend” did not exist in Roman society. It was not a legal status; it was a social description. What did however exist was committed cohabitation.

I don’t see that you have established this, even if it made sense. Which, as far as I can fathom, it does not. Roman marriage was “a social description”…?

The argument for gay marriage seems to be: we’ve already radically altered institutions that have been with us since time immemorial; therefore, what does this additional radical and totally novel alteration matter?

“at least three million people will be being taken to court for non-payment of council tax this year alone.”

I call hirsute posterior on this one. Councils take over 10% of households to court every year? As fucking if.

Plus marriage is a social institution that reflects the social attitudes of the time, as I’ve said before if you have societies where men have dominance over women, then marriage becomes the formalisation of a man’s dominion over the women and any children she produces. In that context same-sex marriage does not make sense because it would be a union of equals, which wouldn’t really gel all that well with what marriage was about. Fast forward to today where marriage is now a union of equals, generally undertaken for love and companionship rather than stamping a surname on your property, and suddenly same-sex marriage begins to make sense

And it would help reinforce the idea that marrage was based on equlity and so benefit heterosexual couples as well.

Chaise

> Excellent point, and one I’d rather embarrassingly overlooked until now. I’d always assumed that the reported promiscuity of gay men …. was true …. Will have to rethink that now.

Unlike you Chaise to do a U-Turn on one of your views?
And with no evidence behind it. Just based on a comment on LC?

The question of whether homosexuals are more promiscuous than heterosexuals is more nuanced – with studies with contrasting outcomes.

There may well be better sources that overview this apparent discrepancy, but it’s one I found by googling:

http://www.corningmennonite.org/gaymatter/monog.htm

PS – sorry to use you as a test case Chaise, hope you don’t mind! (You are usuaully one of the more evidence-based debaters here, so this was just an unusual slip I guess)

The above does provide a good example of the ‘un-evidence based’ approach we all to some extent use, to decide what we believe is true.

In this case the new-truth is that ‘homosexuals are not more promiscuous than heteros’.

Because the ‘new truth’ fits in with Chaise’s existing world-views – it is taken on board without any checks – zero effort is spent in getting evidence of the actual facts.

The U-turn on this small issue is made instantly.

And in this case, it is a truth that is amenable to facts and statistical analysis of facts. But no attempt to get facts was made.

Whereas, a potential new-truth that does not fit in with our existing worldviews, would be rejected by Chaise, or any of us, without a lot more effort being put in to find out whether it really is true or not.

This is known of course as Confirmation Bias.

Like I said, this is not to criticise Chaise – but as a lesson to all of us when posting on LC – to check each time that we are not guilty of Confirmation Bias – because if we don’t check, then likelier than not some of what we post will be.

67. Cylux

Er, t’other way round there SMFS, noted Athenian Aristotle, whom being Athenian had intense dislike of Sparta, actually thought it worthwhile to criticise Sparta for not being pederastic enough, because he thought it caused them to give undue power to women because they were beholden to women for sexual gratification. Notably, Spartan women were educated to be literate and numerate and granted considerably more rights of ownership than their Athenian counterparts.

No it isn’t. Allegedly, and I stress the allegation as most of the evidence is from hundreds of years after the system ended, the Spartans encouraged older boys in their education system to look after the younger ones in a sexual relationship. In Athens not so much. Where, as I said, being the passive male partner was legal grounds for total loss of civil rights. Yes, Aristotle criticised the Spartans for being too nice to women, but that does not mean heterosexuals like women and Gay men hate them. It means that the Spartan system allowed women to inherit land. Which they accumulated presumably by restricting births. Separate issue.

He also denied the allegations under oath once, his soldiers were taking the piss, and apparently accusing your political opponents of taking it up the arse actually was used as a method to discredit them at the time.

I am sure the Mediterranean world, then as now, viewed the passive role as shameful. Caesar would deny it under oath and it would be a good way to attack opponents – very common in Athens as well. But his soldiers liked him. They were not trying to smear him. They were simply stating a fact as they saw it. Something, oddly, they seem to have been quite proud of.

65. Robin Levett

You continue to miss the point. “Marriage” as you understand it, and which you are trying to “defend” did not exist in Roman society. It was not a legal status; it was a social description. What did however exist was committed cohabitation. The only legal consequences of committed cohabitation between a man and a woman were not denied to a gay couple – they were simply irrelevant to a gay couple.

Sorry but no. Where are you getting this from? The Romans from the earliest times had a form of marriage – Marriage in Manu. By the late Republic this was increasingly unpopular and Romans tended to prefer cohabitation instead. After the Empire the Romans began to legislate and regulate this too. There was a legal status called marriage. This is not hard to discover because in virtually every treaty the Romans made with the Italians, they included the right of inter-marriage – each side recognised people from the other side could make a legal marriage. The Latin War was largely over denial of this (and two other typical) right.

This also should not be hard to work out given the entire legal language of marriage in English is Roman. Latin even. Funny that we should be using their words to this day if they did not have the concept. However if there was a demand for same-sex marriage in Rome, why was it irrelevant to same-sex couples? You claim it is a social status. It has no legal consequence. So two Gay people could set up household together. Do you have a single example?

The closest parallel to Roman marriage that exists in UK society is what is colloquially called common-law marriage – again, a social (quite definitely not legal) description of committed cohabitation. Guess what – we already have that.

For a brief period in the late Republic and early Empire. Although presumably cohabitation existed before. It just was not that common. Remember that the Romans had these odd laws. Like a ban on soldiers marrying. Hard to do if the only form of marriage is a committed cohabitation.

Robin Levett

No it isn’t. The Danes are moving to allow gay couples to get married in all churches. Within the Danish State Church (of which the Danish Parliament is the equivalent of the General Synod of the Church of England) the measure permits individual priests to opt out but requires bishops to provide a priest who will perform the ceremony. A majority of Danish State Church priests will perform the ceremony.

So yes it is. They may not be forcing each and every priest to perform such a marriage but they are forcing the Church and each individual Church building within the larger Church to perform such marriages. As I said.

Any attempt to force non Danish State churches to conduct gay marriages would run into difficulties with the ECtHR.

Why? They have a opt-out. That opt-out cannot last. As we have seen in the US with Obama trying to force Catholics to fund abortion for their staff. The Left simply has no tolerance on this issue. The opt-out will be removed.

Parliament will have to legislate the General Synod out of existence and take direct control of governance of the Church of England first. I can’t see that happening in the remainder of my lifetime – can you?

Or they can wait until they have a Synod on their side. Or, more reasonably, they can expect the Church will fold and do as they are told.

Girlsteve

I could not disagree more. Homosexuality is perfectly natural, it has occured in every society throughout history and even in the animal kingdom, people are born with the inclination to do it and God provided everything they needed to act on that – if God didn’t want you to stick stuff up there it wouldn’t feel good when you did.

There is no evidence homosexuality is natural. None. There is some evidence that some animals will engage in some same-sex behaviours which modern researchers tend to claim is homosexual. But by that standard, they would call prison rape homosexual behaviour. Do you think it is? Nor do I think you are on strong ground claiming it has existed in every society throughout history. Not even some level of same-sex sex can be documented in *every* society. But even if we accepted that in the main most societies have some level of same-sex behaviour, it does not follow that this is homosexuality. Being an invention of the 19th century and all. Nor do I think you are going to get far with the “born to feel good” argument. As it also applies to rape.

Robin Levett

The Romans didn’t have divorce in the same sense as us, because they didn’t have marriage in the same sense as us. They allowed people to cohabit with others after leaving previous partners – but that is not the same thing at all.

Sorry but that is not true either. The Romans had a clear category of divorce. They had laws for divorce. Those laws were entirely one sided originally – giving the man more or less freedom to divorce his wife as he chose. They became more fair for women over time so that women could sue for divorce too. People like Augustus and Claudius passed laws on this subject.

This is well documented and we have the actual texts of the actual laws. You can look them up. Not to mention, yet again, our legal language is entirely derived from Latin. Making anyone think that, you know, perhaps they invented the language for a reason.

Shatterface

And it would help reinforce the idea that marrage was based on equlity and so benefit heterosexual couples as well.

Exactly how would that benefit heterosexuals? All the evidence seems to be that every change to the marriage laws has made people even more miserable after all.

67. Cylux

Their views on sexuality were based on their views of masculinity as such they were the very definition of arbitrary when it came to gay sex. Topping was fine, being a top was no problem whatsoever. Bottoming, on the other hand, not so good, carried a stigma it did. Though ‘arbitrarily discriminated’ is probably more correct than ‘arbitrarily prejudiced’.

Sorry but where is the arbitrariness in that? Surely that is a well grounded distinction? To serve as the means of someone else’s pleasure is effeminate. To be penetrated is to play the female role. That is not an arbitrary distinction at all. You may think it unfair but that is different.

Plus marriage is a social institution that reflects the social attitudes of the time, as I’ve said before if you have societies where men have dominance over women, then marriage becomes the formalisation of a man’s dominion over the women and any children she produces.

That is to say, in every society on the planet, marriage is an institution between a man and a woman which formalises, in some sense, the man’s domination over the woman and any children she produces. Seems a perfectly workable definition of marriage to me.

In that context same-sex marriage does not make sense because it would be a union of equals, which wouldn’t really gel all that well with what marriage was about.

We have already established that they did not see same-sex sex as a relation between equals. The passive partner was socially shamed. The active partner was not. Thus it ought to make perfect sense. The relationship is between an active partner and a passive one.

Fast forward to today where marriage is now a union of equals, generally undertaken for love and companionship rather than stamping a surname on your property, and suddenly same-sex marriage begins to make sense.

Which is to say marriage no longer exists in the West and no one much wants it. Once you cut it off from its historical, biological, religious, legal and normative roots, it become meaningless. Hence the idea of same-sex marriage begins to make sense. Having destroyed it as an institution, no one can see what it is for anymore.

@SMFS #77:

Sorry but that is not true either. The Romans had a clear category of divorce. They had laws for divorce. Those laws were entirely one sided originally – giving the man more or less freedom to divorce his wife as he chose. They became more fair for women over time so that women could sue for divorce too. People like Augustus and Claudius passed laws on this subject.

This is well documented and we have the actual texts of the actual laws.

You did see the quote I gave above, didn’t you? Here’s another one:

Divorce was equally free: a marriage was terminated by any manifested intention by either party no longer to be married. The resulting uncertainty in some cases as to whether a union was (or was still) a marriage would seem to us intolerable, but would be of much less importance in Rome where the legal consequences of marriage were, as we shall see, very few.

And another:

In particular the Roman law, unlike the old Common Law, gave to the husband no rights over the wife’s property (apart from dos [the dowry]) and no rights over her person. If she were sui iuris she retained her independence and her property, if she were alieni iuris she remained in the potestas of her father. In neither case, according to the agnatic principles of the civil law, was she related to her husband’s family, nor even to her children.

Now it is very true that I learned Roman law several decades ago; but I am not quoting my flawed recollection, but my textbook (“an acknowledged classic” and “a standard text in the study of Roman Law”).

Perhaps you could explain why I should accept the word of a pseudonymous commenter on an Internet blog over the considered teaching of the Reader in Roman Law and (then) Principal of Brasenose College in his specialist subject? I’m happy to do so, of course, if you can refer me to actual sources supporting your argument, rather than assertions about ill-digested gobbets from Wikipedia. Go for it.

@SMFS #77 (again on Roman Law):

Sorry – missed this:

The Romans from the earliest times had a form of marriage – Marriage in Manu.

They did indeed; but as you yourself point out:

By the late Republic this was increasingly unpopular and Romans tended to prefer cohabitation instead.

A commitment to which itself was considered to be marriage; even in the Republic.

Remember that by “the late Republic”, we still mean pre-Christian times. The Republic was nominal only after Julius Caesar’s coup in 44BC, and was certainly dead by the time Augustus became princeps in 27BC.

When we refer to Roman Law, we tend to refer to Imperial Roman Law – not least because of the uncertainty in establishing exactly what pre-Imperial Roman Law actually was in any specific instance.

So yes, you can have your marriage in hand; but be aware that throughout Christian times it barely existed, and even in the Republic it was additional to marriage. Nicholas points out that manu could arise by usus – that if a woman married without coemptio, manu would arise after a year’s cohabitation – although by Gaius’s time manus could only be created expressly by coemptio. He goes on to say that:

usus makes clear the nature of manus as something added on to marriage: the wife is married for a year before she passes into manus. In the same way, at least in the mature law, the marriage itself could be broken by repudiation by the wife, but she would still be in manu until her husband emancipated her, though she could require him to do so.

@SMFS #77:

They may not be forcing each and every priest to perform such a marriage but they are forcing the Church and each individual Church building within the larger Church to perform such marriages. As I said.

Let’s see what you did actually say;

Denmark is moving to force Churches to marry Gay people.

I rather assumed that by “Churches” you were not simply referring to individual buildings within the established state church – and that that was why you capitalised “Churches”. If you only ever intended to refer to Danish State churches belonging to the Danish State Church, then your comment needs some modification. What you meant was that the Danish State Church has decided (since the Danish legislature decides what the DSC does) to allow its priests to marry gays in church, while allowing priests with doctrinal problems with this to opt out.

The Danish legislature has also, of course, allowed other churches to opt into carrying out gay marriages; which is where we come to your next comment:

Any attempt to force non Danish State churches to conduct gay marriages would run into difficulties with the ECtHR.

Why? They have a opt-out. That opt-out cannot last. As we have seen in the US with Obama trying to force Catholics to fund abortion for their staff. The Left simply has no tolerance on this issue. The opt-out will be removed.

Firstly, the ECtHR has consistently placed a higher value on religious freedoms than on gender and sexual orientation discrimination. Secondly, it has only recently told Austria that it is perfectly fine with provisions preventing gay marriage.

And the other churches do not have an opt-out. They have an opt-in. They are now free to do what they were formerly prohibited from doing; but what is not prohibited is not thereby made compulsory.

You might want to explain the claim that Obama is forcing Catholic employers to fund abortions for their staff; while also explaining your position on abortions on the NHS.

Which is to say marriage no longer exists in the West and no one much wants it. Once you cut it off from its historical, biological, religious, legal and normative roots, it become meaningless. Hence the idea of same-sex marriage begins to make sense. Having destroyed it as an institution, no one can see what it is for anymore.

Marriage is not destroyed as an institution, it is what it always has been, whatever the fuck we want it to be.

Not arguing with anyone specifically, but I would like to make the following points:

1. Male homosexual behaviour is an emprical matter: there’s no evidence (as yet) that male homosexuals are more promiscuous than a control group of heterosexual males. Google for confirmation, please.

2. No-one (or very few) has any objection to civil partnerships, which give (rightly) all the rights of marriage to homosexualists; and they are able to describe themselves as ‘married’ in common parlance.

3. ‘Marriage’ is a sacramental term for the religious – and not just for Christianity. It is also a legal term, with significant legal implications…

4. Religious groups are a minority in our secular society, but their views – particularly when already embodied in law and in ordinary language – deserve respect

5. The demand for civil partnerships to be recognised as marriage is not one I see. I know three gay couples, and one well. All think that they have all they want with civil partnerships, and they don’t want to stir up controversy with religious groups. OK, anecdotal, and not metropoltan; but what I have to report.

6. Given (3) above, enshrining ‘gay marriage’ in law is (a) unnecessary and (b) liable to have far reaching legal and constitutional consequences…

7. So the legal status quo is to be preferred…

Marriage is not destroyed as an institution, it is what it always has been, whatever the fuck we want it to be.

In other words, marriage cannot be destroyed, because it has no inherent meaning, i.e. is meaningless.

@84 If that is your opinion of change, go with it. Though you’re going to have to apply that way of thought to each and every word in the English language (and indeed others) that has changed it’s meaning throughout time due to popular usage.
Lets start with ‘gay’ shall we? Given it’s relevance.
Please argue how no one knows what the meaning of gay is due to the word not having any inherent meaning.

What I wrote follows directly from your assertion that marriage “is what it always has been, whatever the fuck we want it to be”. If marriage is whatever we want it to be, then it can have no inherent meaning. If it has an inherent meaning, it cannot be whatever we want it to be.

@86 Ah, but you are confusing ‘meaning’ with ‘inherent meaning’.

Robin @ 65:

“You continue to miss the point. “Marriage” as you understand it, and which you are trying to “defend” did not exist in Roman society. It was not a legal status; it was a social description. What did however exist was committed cohabitation.”

Erm, the Romans most definitely did have marriage. Ancient Latin texts have plenty of references to marriage and related concepts such as adultery, wives, husbands, gods and goddesses of marriage, and so forth, and there are even some surviving Latin hymns written specifically for marriages. That they didn’t have as many laws relating to marriage as we do doesn’t change the fact that the institution was still found in Roman society; indeed, if anything it strengthens the argument that marriage exists independently of the government’s say-so.

Girlsteve:

“I think you’re clutching at straws here. How on earth can you argue that changing marraige from multiple partners to monogamy doesn’t redefine it?”

Because the big difference in polygamous societies isn’t the nature of the marriage-bond, it’s the number of people who someone can be bonded with at any one time. Marriage was still a bond between a man and a woman. If we introduce SSM, OTOH, this will no longer be the case; hence SSM will change marriage in a way that abolishing polygamy wouldn’t.

“When Henry VIII decided that people could get divorced, and that those divorced people could remarry, he didn’t just redefine marriage he had to set up a whole new religion, cut political ties with Europe and restructure the entire legal and political system of his country.”

Actually, Henry VIII decided nothing of the kind. He decided that his marriage with Catherine had never been valid in the first place; hence, he couldn’t get divorced, as he’d never been married in the first place. The Pope refused to recognise this obvious fact, so Henry had to find some way of ensuring that sanity prevailed.

“Homosexuality is perfectly natural, it has occured in every society throughout history and even in the animal kingdom, people are born with the inclination to do it and God provided everything they needed to act on that – if God didn’t want you to stick stuff up there it wouldn’t feel good when you did.”

First of all, I never disputed the idea that homosexuality is natural. That’s why I said “gay marriage” instead of “gay marriage”.

Secondly, “it’s natural” and “it feels good” aren’t particularly strong arguments. Racism is natural, and looking down on a particular racial group often feels good, so I suppose you think that racism must be OK then?

Cylux @ 67:

“bringing up ancient Greece and Rome as societies which allowed some homosexual practice but didn’t hold any same-sex marriages as some sort of knock down argument against same-sex marriage today”

I never said it was “some sort of knock-down argument against SSM”, I said it was an argument against the idea that gay marriage is somehow the natural state of affairs, and the only reason it hasn’t been more widespread is because of those nasty homophobic bigots ruining it. If marriage is an institution present in every human society, whereas gay marriage is something which people only want in certain specific social and intellectual circumstances, then that would suggest that the two are in fact different things, and the government shouldn’t be trying to claim otherwise.

“That’s why I said “gay marriage” instead of “gay marriage”.”

Sorry, that was obviously meant to read “‘gay marriage’ instead of ‘homosexuality’”.

@XXX #88:

Erm, the Romans most definitely did have marriage. Ancient Latin texts have plenty of references to marriage and related concepts such as adultery, wives, husbands, gods and goddesses of marriage, and so forth, and there are even some surviving Latin hymns written specifically for marriages. That they didn’t have as many laws relating to marriage as we do doesn’t change the fact that the institution was still found in Roman society; indeed, if anything it strengthens the argument that marriage exists independently of the government’s say-so.

Consideration of the whole of my answers would have revealed that my point was that yes, the Romans had marriage; but the institution to which the Romans referred as marriage was not the same institution as that which we refer to as marriage. Roman marriage had far fewer legal consequences, and neither marriage nor divorce had any legal formalities. That point was backed up by my decades old memory of Roman Law but supplemented by the treatment of it in my undergraduate Roman Law textbook. I quoted the following, way back at #57:

A Roman marriage, on the other hand, was very largely a social fact, about the creation and termination of which the law had very little to say, and which had almost no effect on the legal condition of the parties.

That the legal treatment differed doesn’t necessarily imply that the social fact of marriage differed in any substantial way.

Robin @ 90:

Basically, what Vimothy said. Just because the Romans didn’t have registry offices and divorce courts doesn’t mean that the actual institution of marriage was fundamentally different. It was still a union between a man and a woman, for example, partners were still expected to be faithful, and so on.

Given the whole point of the argument is the legal recognition of same sex marriages Robin’s points are quite valid. Of course if merely establishing ‘social facts’ is all that is required I could point out that same sex marriages have been going on since before the Stonewall riots. Course, since they weren’t recognised by law, though they were by their community, they apparently don’t count.

GirlSteve 68

> I think you’re clutching at straws here. .. Homosexuality is perfectly natural, it has occured in every society throughout history and even in the animal kingdom

In the animal kingdom we also find not uncommonly rape, incest, infanticide…
Should they also be allowed in human society too ?

Others here have also shown the emptiness of your other statements (people are born with the inclination to do it …;… if God didn’t want you to … it wouldn’t feel good ..)

Overall, I’m not sure that you’re not weakening your own camp ?

79. Robin Levett

You did see the quote I gave above, didn’t you? Here’s another one:

I did and I assume that either the author is an idiot or more likely you quoted him out of context.

Divorce was equally free: a marriage was terminated by any manifested intention by either party no longer to be married. The resulting uncertainty in some cases as to whether a union was (or was still) a marriage would seem to us intolerable, but would be of much less importance in Rome where the legal consequences of marriage were, as we shall see, very few.

Hang on. This refers to the specific form of cohabitation that existed briefly after the traditional form of marriage in manu declined in popularity. Even calling it a marriage is probably a mistake. People lived together freely and they could stop doing so any time they liked. The traditional Roman marriage – and even this form of living together once the Roman government saw a need to act – did not allow divorce so freely. Except for men. Legal consequences of marriage were, naturally, many and important. It transmitted citizenship for one thing. Not a minor issue. It determined inheritance. Find a new source.

In particular the Roman law, unlike the old Common Law, gave to the husband no rights over the wife’s property (apart from dos [the dowry]) and no rights over her person. If she were sui iuris she retained her independence and her property, if she were alieni iuris she remained in the potestas of her father. In neither case, according to the agnatic principles of the civil law, was she related to her husband’s family, nor even to her children.

This is Wikipedia? Again this refers to cohabitation. People chose to live together and the law originally ignored it. Later the government realised that the State had a compelling interest in regulation and they regulated even this form of marriage. Perhaps for a few short decades this was true. But not of Roman marriage. Of Roman free love.

Perhaps you could explain why I should accept the word of a pseudonymous commenter on an Internet blog over the considered teaching of the Reader in Roman Law and (then) Principal of Brasenose College in his specialist subject?

I can’t to be honest. But the evidence is still the evidence even if a Reader in Roman Law says otherwise.

Robin Levett

They did indeed; but as you yourself point out: …. A commitment to which itself was considered to be marriage; even in the Republic.

So you’re now claiming that far from having no form of marriage they not only started out with something a lot like Victorian marriage, they ended up with something very like 1960s marriage? Indeed a Common Law marriage which is legally valid in many Common Law jurisdictions? How is this remotely like them having no form of marriage at all? If cohabitation was considered a marriage, how can you claim that they had nothing like a modern marriage and in fact nothing like marriage at all?

When we refer to Roman Law, we tend to refer to Imperial Roman Law – not least because of the uncertainty in establishing exactly what pre-Imperial Roman Law actually was in any specific instance.

I am not sure what you are referring to by Roman Law but I can work with that. In which case far from having no laws on divorce they had legislation from both Augustus and Claudius directly regulating marriage. And that is just off the top of my head.

So yes, you can have your marriage in hand; but be aware that throughout Christian times it barely existed, and even in the Republic it was additional to marriage.

So it existed. Thus the Romans did have something like Victorian marriage. Romans preferred to live together thus giving something like the traditional British Common Law (as you get in places like Australia and you’re about to get in Canada as well as several American states) de facto marriage. This is a lot of legal recognition for marriages just like ours.

Nicholas points out that manu could arise by usus – that if a woman married without coemptio, manu would arise after a year’s cohabitation – although by Gaius’s time manus could only be created expressly by coemptio. He goes on to say that:

usus makes clear the nature of manus as something added on to marriage: the wife is married for a year before she passes into manus. In the same way, at least in the mature law, the marriage itself could be broken by repudiation by the wife, but she would still be in manu until her husband emancipated her, though she could require him to do so.

So faced with the need to regulate a more permissive urban society, the Roman jurists tried to force people into the traditional form of marriage by deeming any cohabitation to be a proper marriage. This sounds a lot like the Romans thought marriage was important to me. And they had lots of laws covering it. One year is not that different from Australia which assumes a marriage after two years. I also note that they had laws covering divorce – an in manu marriage, like Jewish and Muslim law, was only able to be ended by the male. The Emperors gave women more rights to seek a divorce, but like Jewish law, if a man did not give his wife a proper divorce, the Courts would have to force him.

All of this sounds remarkably like modern marriage and divorce to me. In many ways we are closer to them than to the Victorians.

81. Robin Levett

I rather assumed that by “Churches” you were not simply referring to individual buildings within the established state church – and that that was why you capitalised “Churches”.

Does it matter? That they are moving that way, both ways, is a fact for the State Church and undeniable for the others.

The Danish legislature has also, of course, allowed other churches to opt into carrying out gay marriages; which is where we come to your next comment:

For now.

Firstly, the ECtHR has consistently placed a higher value on religious freedoms than on gender and sexual orientation discrimination.

The European governments get to appoint people to the Court. People sit on Courts for a long time. They tend to be more conservative than most. The fact that some older Catholics, appointed by long gone Christian Democrats, still hold out for religious freedom does not mean they will last.

And the other churches do not have an opt-out. They have an opt-in. They are now free to do what they were formerly prohibited from doing; but what is not prohibited is not thereby made compulsory.

Yet. Europe having a long tradition of making compulsory that which is not forbidden. And the modern British Left tends to agree with them.

You might want to explain the claim that Obama is forcing Catholic employers to fund abortions for their staff; while also explaining your position on abortions on the NHS.

I don’t need to explain the claim. It is self evident. Nor is my position on the NHS remotely relevant.

90. Robin Levett

Consideration of the whole of my answers would have revealed that my point was that yes, the Romans had marriage; but the institution to which the Romans referred as marriage was not the same institution as that which we refer to as marriage.

Consideration of what you meant as opposed to what you said?

Roman marriage had far fewer legal consequences, and neither marriage nor divorce had any legal formalities.

Neither of these claims is true. Even your own sources show this is not true for the Empire. Roman marriage had *more* legal consequences as it was needed to transmit citizenship and social status. It was necessary for proper inheritance. Even freed slaves could not escape the legal consequences of marriage given their on going legal obligations to their former owners.

A Roman marriage, on the other hand, was very largely a social fact, about the creation and termination of which the law had very little to say, and which had almost no effect on the legal condition of the parties.

Which is just not true. Adultery was a crime. A woman given in manu was almost entirely under the authority of her husband – who could, in early times, kill her without legal consequence. That is a pretty big legal effect.

Cylux

Of course if merely establishing ‘social facts’ is all that is required I could point out that same sex marriages have been going on since before the Stonewall riots. Course, since they weren’t recognised by law, though they were by their community, they apparently don’t count.

Are they marriages? That has yet to be established. Whatever their own community may call them.

@SMFS passim:

Please, please, learn some Roman Law. Unlike you, I don’t get it from Wikipedia, but from someone who knew of what he spoke.

One of my quotes refers to Gaius; he wrote in the late 2nd century AD – not ” a few short decades” after the end of the Republic, but more than 2 centuries. By then manus had gone, save only (Nicholas suggests) for priests. Justinian’s Institutes (6th centiury AD) largely draw from Gaius.

For most of what we think of as Roman (as opposed to Byzantine) history, therefore, the majority form of marriage was essentially cohabitation. Your conclusion that apart from a few short years a Victorian form of marriage was the norm in Rome is simply the reverse of the truth.

I’ve looked at your own source, for the first time this morning – Wikipedia’s article on Marriage in Ancient Rome (a lot of which is questionable), and find the following, referring to the supposed right of a husband to kill his wife found in adultery:

it…probably only applied to those in the manus form of marriage, which had become vanishingly rare by the Late Republic (147–27 BC), when a married woman always remained legally a part of her own family.

See that “vanishingly rare” in there?

The Julian leges to which you refer did not affect marriage one iota. They attached penalties to divorce – but did not affect the effectiveness of the divorce to dissolve the union.

No ground was necessary for divorce; the divorcing party simply manifested an intention to cease cohabitation. It was, after all, the ease and ubiquity of divorce that led to the leges in the first place.

@XXX #92:

Basically, what Vimothy said. Just because the Romans didn’t have registry offices and divorce courts doesn’t mean that the actual institution of marriage was fundamentally different. It was still a union between a man and a woman, for example, partners were still expected to be faithful, and so on.

Of the two features of marriage you cite, only one was fully true of Roman free marriage; at least, in any modern sense.

A modern marriage is for life – once you have consented to marriage, that’s it. The commitment to faithfulness lasts for life. A Roman marriage lasted only while both partners consented to its continuance. It is true that adultery was possible, and a wife’s adultery could be prosecuted by her husband; but only up to a point. If the wife left her husband and moved in with another man, that could not be adultery; because she has thereby manifested an intention that the marriage not continue. Contrast that with modern Christian marriage, where the lifelong commitment to marriage and faithfulness survives civil divorce.

One point you do not claim for Roman marriage is that marriage is for procreation – which is something of a major issue for those who say that SSM involves redefinition of marriage because procreation isn’t possible in an SSM.

Food for thought perhaps: consummation was not necessary for – indeed irrelevant to – a Roman free marriage.

Further thought; the basic buikldign block of Roman society was not the family; it was the patriarch. Nicholas also says that “It is significant that marriage finds a place in Gaius’ arrangement only as a source of patria potestas“.

Gaius also points out that if a man still in patria potestas married, this had no effect on his status; but that if the “marriage was accompanied with power of hand (manus), marital power over the wife, this vested not in the husband but in the husband’s father.” (Manus is what SMFS is banging on about as being equivalent to Victorian marriage).

With all this in mind: would you please define what you mean by marriage in a way that includes all the essential features both of Roman marriage and of modern Christian marriage?

@XXX re my 98:

The quotation from Gaius’s Institutes in the paragraph starting “Gaius also points out…” is in fact from the commentary on the English translation available at:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1154

The commentary does however in a later passage provide cites to both Livy and Tacitus for the proposition:

In early Roman law a woman on marriage necessarily passed out of her own agnatic family into that of her husband, taking the place of a filiafamilias in it. If her husband was paterfamilias, she came into his hand, if he was filiusfamilias into that of his father. This power (manus) was the same in its nature as patria potestas. By manus the husband, or the husband’s father, had power of life and death over the wife, Livy, 39, 18; Tac. Ann. 13, 32

(See the emphasised part).