—They complain that “The New York Times has neither the right or power to redefine marriage” but fail to show why they feel they have the right or power to define marriage.—
Now that’s interesting: if it doesn’t have the power to begin with, then why would they worry that it might be exercising that power?
Anyone can define important things, espcecially contentious things with vauge or multiple meanings. It’s the legal definition that they are legitimately worried about.
Despite the objections of the blue nosed fundamentalist naysayers, The NY times can do whatever they damned well please. There’s something out there called the First Amendment.
This is 21st century america, and people are still trying to dictate what consenting adults should do with their personal lives.
December, if your God wants to strike people dead for who they feel love, affection, and sexual attraction for, he can feel free to do so. But until then, your complaints about the evils of having orgasms unsanctioned by your diety can come to a close.
That ‘december knee’ get hurt when it jerked? december actually agrees with you Blalron…
Sparc
It makes for nice change to defend the old chap
That ‘december knee’ get hurt when it jerked? december actually agrees with you Blalron…
Sparc
It makes for nice change to defend the old chap
**
No culture except-
The Greeks
The Romans
Various Native American/American Indian/Whatever tribes
And that’s without bothering to search. Hmmm, 2 cultures which recognised same-sex unions as full marriages, and which pre-date Sprigg’s religion. So much for “traditional marriage”.
Where do you get the Romans from? John Boswell notwithstanding, (and his “Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe” is both controversial and deals more with Christian Byzantium than with the traditional Roman republic/empire), I don’t know of much evidence that the Romans recognized same sex unions (except for Cassus Dio’s charge that Nero went to Greece and married a male eunuch and girl at the same time, but Dio isn’t really objective, and he does point out that Nero had to go to Greece to do it, and he says that Nero used a traditional wedding ceremony).
It’s true that Rome got more tolerant of homosexuality as time went on. The early republic was pretty homophobic, but it got more tolerant during the late republic and into the empire, but I’ve never heard of actual same sex unions legally recognized.
Like Sparc, I may not agree with much of what december says, but I’ll leap to defend him when he’s unfairly attacked.
Blalron, not only have you completely misread the tenor of december’s post, you’ve also failed to notice that, in a number of threads, he has disavowed any belief in a supreme supernatural authority.
Regarding the issue in the OP, I come down somewhere between pldennison (and the others echoing the Slate article) and Sparc. Yes, the marriage announcements are basically vestigial, a throwback to the days of pince-nez-wearing martini-sipping flappers-n-beaux. But at the same time, the Times didn’t have to make a big deal out of the policy change; they could have simply passed a quiet word on the grapevine and started accepting notices without bothering to announce anything. They’ve taken a stand, and I think that’s a good thing.
I sort of wonder how many Canadian trees will be felled every day in order to provide the space for this new genre of announcements in the NYT.
It appears that I have made an ass out of myself. Since I heard December is conservative, I mistakenly assumed conservative == religious. Yes, it was a knee jerk reaction.
This cracked me up. 
Firstly as others have said, duh.
Secondly, the newspaper is recognising more families than before, isn’t that a sign of being pro-family ? Or don’t same-sex couples qualify as a family ? I’d love to know what their definition of a family is.
Count one more vote for Noah from Slate. Having said that I don’t mind the new NYT policy at all nor would I mind their previous policy because gay unions aren’t yet quite the same as marriages. So I guess to me the whole thing is a non-issue one way or another.
Having just checked my source, Panati’s Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody, I can state with authority and certainty, the passage I thought was in this book is NOT. I’ll have to look further into the Roman view of same-sex marriages. It’s possible I conflated different sources.
I’ve never heard of Boswell. Though a scan of Panati’s bibliography list Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, And Homosexuality as one the sources “On sexual tolerance (or the lack of it) throughout the ages”
Sorry. I thought you were using Boswell’s “Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe” as a source. That book deals with the iconography of SS. Sergei and Bacchus, who are two Eastern Orthodox martyrs, and a medieval “ceremony of brotherhood”, which could be found in the Greek, Russian, and Slavonic Orthodox churches. Boswell claims that Saints Sergei and Bacchus were understood by the Orthodox churches as having a homosexual partnership, and the ceremony of brotherhood, which two men could participate in, and which mentioned the two martyrs as a model, were a form of same-sex union that was seen as the equal of marriage. As you can imagine, this is fairly controversial, and while, in my opinion, the book is entertaining, it’s not something he’s succeeded in convincing most Byzantine historians of.