I agree. Relying on historical precedent make for a shaky foundation. The information that has so far been offered by many people is very enlightening. It helps place modern American attitudes about marriage within a broader context. And it cetainly helps to undermine the arguments offered up by defenders of “traditional” marriage who claim that social order is threatened by seme sex marraiges.
However, it does not change the fact that cutural norms and social traditions are subject to change over time. Remember, many people defended slavery and the denial of equal rights to women as historically viable customs. Any effort to change the status quo must also address why such a change is both inevitable and a moral necessity.
Please keep the information coming in this thread, though. It is very interesting and appreciated.
I don’t think anyone in this thread is attempting to lay a foundation of historical precedent. Rather, they are denying the attempt by Bush, et al, to claim such a foundation.
Bush’s absolutes don’t work if there are counterexamples. And, obviously, there are counterexamples.
Not necessarily.
“We have millennia of experience with a culture that condemns cannibalism and child rape, and this leads me to believe such condemnation is a moral absolute.”
“But wait! There are many counterexamples of cultures that thought cannibalism and child rape were hunky dory!”
“Oh. I guess I have to retract my disapproval.”
Nope – I don’t think that’s how the conversation would go. Even if the “millennia of moral absolute” were exaggerated (and I don’t necessarily concede that they are as to heterosexual marriage as the by-far-dominant model), and even if the “moral absolute” had only been “recognized” as such within very recent memory (i.e., the moral absolute held by most of us in Western society that you just don’t execute people for stealing a loaf of bread – which emerged sometime after 1800, if my memory of English capital punishment statutes is right), I do not think you can portray the invoker of the absolute as, necessarily, wrong in toto, or wrong in relying upon what he believes to be the correct strand of tradition/millennia, notwithstanding parallel traditions/millennia he thinks suck.
Because here are the counterarguments:
You: “GWB, you’re a moron! I just thought of lots of (alleged) examples of folks thinking ‘gay marriage’ was copacetic; what’s this ‘millennia of experience’ BS?”
GWB:
A. “Oh, sorry, I meant millennia of experience among the kind of societies we’d want to emulate, not among the FUBAR, failed societies of tribal Africa or provincial China where people can’t emigrate fast enough to get away from the cultural decay.” [Yes, yes, YMMV, but it’s not surprising that a Judeo-Christian Western leader would invoke and be impressed by the Judeo-Christian Western millennia, not the supposed customs of the Wakamba].
B. “Yes, you’ve offered some very touching examples of ‘gay marriage,’ some of which apparently had little or nothing to do with homosexual relations as opposed to clan bonding, and some of which prove my point because they apparently were less marriages of peers and more institutionalized movements for legitimizing ass-sex with little boys.”
You get the point. The counterexamples, even if true, have counter-arguments that allow the “moral absolute” argument to remain a sustainable one.
Exactly right! If the occupant of the White House had the ability and inclination to think about it, he would realize that during HIS OWN LIFETIME, marriage in the United States has changed in many ways, including legalizing contraception, abortion, and interracial unions. In regard to the last of these, after the US Supreme Court found Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional, a poll found 80% of American voters supporting the ban.
Implicit in your discussion is the assumption that change (or socially/morally positive or useful change) is either non-existent (the view of strawman GWB, perhaps), or is a one-way arrow pointing in the direction of “liberalizing” change. Granted that (big) assumption, then the only question becomes the rate of change, at which point, you argue, since “liberalizing change” is invariably good, more and quicker “liberalizing change” must be good.
But the change arrows can (historically) and, many reasonable people believe, sometimes should (ideally) point in either direction, or be static for awhile. For instance, while you could find simplistic portrayals or perceptions of the past as uniformly (and, in linear fashion, increasingly with distance from the presence) “more conservative” on sexual matters than our “liberal” present, that’s just not so. For instance, while there are white, middle class men these days who patronize prostitutes or have full-time mistresses, I would venture to say that acceptance and incidence of casual whoremongering or mistress-having among “respectable” society has waxed and waned in European-American society over, and that some earlier periods were more “liberal,” some less “liberal,” on such issues. And further, I’d suggest, many bien pensant people (as well as me) think it’s probably a good thing that we don’t have a culture whereby it’s completely acceptable for a certain class of gentleman to patronize brothels or sire bastards by multiple courtesans – even though our current norm is “less liberal” than some that have obtained before. Nor is this “good” but “anti-liberalizing” sexual more change inconsistent with believing that the concurrent “pro-liberalizing” change in favor of birth control is also “good.” Confusing, ain’t it?
My point is that birth control liberalization can in theory be a social good without ‘gay marriage’ being one (or vice versa), even though both are “liberalizing.”
I think this view that “change is invariably good, and good change is invariably liberalizing” is not just shortsighted, it leads to weird thinking and pronouncements. I’ve heard a lot of talk in recent months about the “conservative backlash” against “gay rights” or “gays” or the “institutionalizing of prejudice.” In a world in which only gains for “liberalizing” are imaginable, I suppose that GWB’s (lukewarm) endorsement of an anti-‘gay marriage’ amendment is a horrifying “step backward.” But looking back one year (before the Supreme Court decided that sodomy laws were suddenly unconstitutional), or eight weeks (before politicians/judges decided to make a show of enacting “gay marriages”), or three years (before “civil unions” were possible anywhere), or thirty years, or whatever, there is no net measure by which homosexuals are experiencing a “step back” or a meaningful or effective backlash – because on balance, they have far more than they did a short time ago. You can’t lose what you never had, and “gay marriage” in the U.S. has simply not been even a theoretical option until S.F. and Mass. began their stunts all of, oh, five minutes ago. You can believe that these were good stunts, but it’s a bit hysterical to wail about the possibility of their being reversed as though one were losing a long-treasured property right.
In sum: of all the “liberalizing” or “anti-liberalizing” changes that could have occurred for homosexuals, the past month/year/decade have contained a multitude pointing in the liberalizing direction, and a small (reactive) handful in the other direction. For those who recognize that uniform liberalizing is not historical destiny (nor necessarily an absolute good), I’d say the team is doing pretty good. 80 yard pass to the goal line, five yard illegal procedure penalty; you’re still pretty close to the end zone (as it were . . . .).
“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.”
He didn’t say all the millennia of human experience were positive or of the pro-heterosexual variety. He could well have been referring to every one of the Greek pederasty-based unions or alleged Fujianese practices, in tandem with the experience that he believes points to the better way.
Nor did he say that all humans, or only “true humans,” had engaged in or favored heterosexual marriage. Is heterosexual marriage (per Bush) the only aspect of our civilization (or the only institution that an imaginable civilization could have) , or even the only fundamental aspect or ours? Not per what he said. Do you disagree with his judgment that heterosexual marriage is the most fundamental institution of civilization? Go right ahead – just don’t claim to have caught him in a fallacy, as opposed to a subjective disagreement with you.
Also on my note of how lack of historical perspective leads to embarrassing and ridiculous statements – see:
I would not describe my flip through the book as in any way thorough, so yes, I’m sure I missed a hell of a lot. I was looking for datapoints, not really reading it, and am perfectly willing to believe that my failure to find such datapoints on certain subjects has more to do with my methods than the content of the book. Now I’m hooked, though.
As for what these datapoints mean in the context of what Bush said, I was just answering the question as written (‘Has there ever been a culture that recognized same-sex marriages?’) and will stay out of the rest of the discussion.
Well... let's say that the new civil code allows for the legal formalization of long lasting relationships. So basically you can enjoy more or less the same benefits as married people without actually getting married. (Yep you get the obligations too).
Apparently they forgot to put in the law heterosexual exclusiveness too... and in some places gay couples are using this backdoor to gain legal advantages. Inheritance laws also.
Needless to say this is being done on an individual basis... our congressmen are also pretty conservative and gay marriage is pretty unlikely. The Vatican still gets to meddle alot in this kind of stuff and would certainly bombard Congress with menaces of voters going crazy on gay agenda.
But you can condemn cannibalism by murder and forcible child rape by first principles (of ethics,) whereas to comdemn same-sex marriage the most basic principle you would need to assume would be inherent, relevant gender differences.
I didn’t endorse changes (or, for that matter, anything, nor did I characterize the changes I wrote about as “liberalization”).
MY point is that “marriage” has changed substantially–and not just in Christendom (becoming a sacrament more than a millennium after Christ) but in the United States in the lifetime of George W. Bush. The changes have had opponents and there are still people who think that information about contraception should be illegal, that interracial marriage is contrary to “natural law,” etc. “Marriage” has been evolving in the West and elsewhere from being an arrangement for the ownership of wives and children by husbands in the direction of chosen intimacy (“companionate marriage”) and this evolution is extremely unlikely to be reversed.
By the way, Mr. Murray, I read your fascinating book, Islamic Homosexualities, and I’d be curious as to your thoughts about where would be the most likely place in the Islamic world where gay marriage would occur? I recognize that fundamentalism - of the Islamic variety - holds sway over much of that area, but given homosexuality’s/bisexuality’s rich (and wonderful) tradition in the arab/muslim world, I’m just curious what you think. The UAE? Morocco? Lebanon? Thanks.
This is clearly disingenuous. The relevent question is, were these boy-men “marriages” meant to be life-long?
I note with interest that you did not directly answer my question. Further, you might note that I excluded cases in which one partner of a “same-sex” union was considered socially to be a sex different from the one he or she was born with, as it is questionable whether it is proper to call such a union a same-sex union, and in any case they do not provide a good analogy for same-sex unions as we understand them today. Were these African and Balkan instances such cases?
And while you’re here: If you are indeed someone who has written a book on the subject, you ought to know…looking back on the history, in various cultures, of socially sanctioned same-sex unions involving men, what percentage of these unions typically involved an older man and a very young man or even a boy, in a relationship we would today consider to be pederasty, and what percentage of them involved unions between two men who were considered to be social equals? I’m very curious.