That your cultural bubble. At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions and far more were openly in homosexual relationships. Sodomy was just part of the culture. But cultures change, Same-sex marriage was outlawed on December 16, 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. Of note there’s a significantly longer gap between emperor Nero and 342 AD than between the founding of the US and today.
I personally have some doubts about Elagabalus, the accounts sound like a hatchet job, it’s much closer in time to the actual ban. But, sometimes people are just nuts so we should expect some historical leaders to do some really strange things. The Nero account is both more neutral and the described wedding a public spectacle so it seems unlikely for someone to just make it up whole cloth. Though it’s also been debated extensively, we simply don’t have concrete proof either way.
In terms of legality of marriage in Rome, I mostly agree. Arguably male adoption of other adult men could be largely equivalent to heterosexual marriage as far as the state were concerned. Ie name change, social rank, and property as there’s no kids and no wife possibly leaving her father’s control depending on the type of marriage. To be clear it was often a political tool, but that doesn’t mean it was always a political tool. Just something to think about.
There’s written records of the relationships of Nero and Elagabalus as having a same sex marriage ceremony/relationship.
Some people discredit it for various reasons, but there’s zero direct evidence either of them are false, so by default we’re stuck assuming them accurate. This may bother you personally but ignoring evidence that you disagree with is living in a bubble of your own devising.
> Maybe you should read the Torah. Sodomy is listed as a mortal sin. You sound like an anti-semitic bigot.
That’s a very strong response to a simple factual statement, you may need to seek professional help.
Please don't cross into personal attack on HN, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. You not only did that here, you did it upthread too ("your cultural bubble"). I appreciate that you've been making substantive points but we need you to make them without breaking the site guidelines.
There are several independant accounts of Elagabalus, his behaviour is as well documented as any of those times to be sure.
That said, for context, he was hardly representative being described as "showing a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos", claimed as having replaced "the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity Elagabal, of whom he had been high priest".
Most tellingly he lived fast and was assassinated at just 18 years of age.
I have no axe to grind here, it's a great little story from history; it should be made clear that both Nero and Elagabalus were relatively rare flamboyant exceptions to the norms of Roman leaders.
> How come you people always respond the exact same way?
Look, when multiple people suggest you might need professional help, it's legit a sign something is wrong.
No shit you can debate history, or you can go talk to someone it's probably time.
> roman emperor was executed by their own praetorian guards for degeneracy
> no evidence
If he was thought of a degenerate that's corroborating evidence here. This picking lines of thinking and then not making connections between them is not a good sign. If your thinking ahh it's obviously a conspiracy that's more evidence here.
Your going to ignore what I'm saying, but as one human to another seriously they may be some drugs etc that can help you get better.
PS: I am sorry if you found this post offensive. I had a more direct rebuttal when I reread "Standard M.O" and "it's always the" and I realized you really may think people are you to get you. Try and remember strangers aren't going to randomly focus on you over the other 8 billion people on the planet. So trust in apathy if nothing else.
Governments have been including same-sex couples in marriage laws because same-sex couples wish to get married and have politically agitated for that right.
Marriage, as far as I can tell, is a concept that originated in different places with multiple definitions and the scope of what can or cannot be marriage has expanded and contracted over the years.
The short answer is we don't know but the current best guess is thousands of years ago in the middle-east.
Marriage often has legal and financial implications. Those who want homosexual marriages probably want to also benefit from those. There are also non-trivial symbolic reasons. In this context I am using marriage and civil unions synonymously.
The major religions have had traditions around marriage since antiquity. Arguably it exists today in the form that it does because of religion. Outside of religion, marriage has no real meaning, and to the extent that it is promoted by government, it is a fragment of how everyone had a religion up until the 20th century.
This is probably the best case against gay marriage, because it could easily just be about civil union that is acknowledged by the government and granted the same benefits, without needing to call it marriage, which should be the matter for each religion to decide.
Attachment and partnership between human individuals presdates everything, it's a biological imperative. Many animals mate for life or long term. It has nothing to do with religion.
Religion is a social construct which has co-opted various parts of life, not the other way around. It has no right to dictate to society what is allowable, only government has that right, given to it by the people themselves.
Marriage is a legal agreement that gives the parties certain rights and responsibilities that single people do not have. Historically governments have discriminated against homosexuals just like they've discriminated against other minorities. Discrimination is wrong. That religion promotes discrimination doesn't excuse it.
Some people think homosecuallity isn't acceptable, but it's something that occurs naturally in various species, including humans.
> It has no right to dictate to society what is allowable, only government has that right, given to it by the people themselves.
Arguably religion came before government, with early governments blurring that line. If so, then religion was the first to formalize reproductive union for the purpose of growing your group's population.
I think early humans probably discriminated against sexual activities that didn't promote reproduction and building a family because there weren't that many people back then, so not reproducing could mean the end of your civilization.
> Outside of religion, marriage has no real meaning, and to the extent that it is promoted by government, it is a fragment of how everyone had a religion up until the 20th century.
I think this is making too much of a distinction between religion and government.
For most of human history, most humans were not privy to clearly-defined centralized institutions (like our modern state bureaucracies). Religious traditions were decentralized emergent phenomena that codified ways of perpetuating a functioning society in a low-trust, low-organization environments.
As far as marriage specifically goes, it evolved as a practice in order to make the process of material inheritance simple, nonviolent, and easy for anyone to execute. This is where the notion of "legitimate" children comes from: legitimate in the sense of being eligible for inheritance, specifically because your parents were married. When strong centralized states started emerging, they codified this practice and built new structures on top of it.
Changing language causes changes in culture, which may have catastrophic consequences at the civilization level. Personally, I think this is were the wisdom of thousands of previous generations have converged on religious practices and beliefs, which we are dismantling at our own risk. We are already seeing reports of population replacement problems across the developed world, which are also increasingly secular.
At a personal level, I have zero pressure from society to reproduce and I suspect this is the case for millions, and because the problem spans across generations, it becomes invisible to people who are currently alive. This is what religion addresses that science may be incapable of. Now in post-modernity, we are embracing this miopic perspective at the risk of our civilization. Maybe 200 years from now the world will be 100% Muslim, and the Enlightenment will need to re-emerge, only to restart this cycle once again.
ChatGPT is wrong a lot. I love AI, but it still in its early stages. Also, I think we're going back even before the time of all of the current major religions. During those times religion was different, and the line between religion, culture and government were much blurrier. Romans would definitely have religious beliefs, but probably didn't see it as a separate institution. So I would be surprised if the marriage rituals of the Romans were completely empty of any religious symbolism or traditions. Same with Greeks and Babylon. Religion was much more embedded in the identity of every individual, as being secular is a relatively new "option" in society.
According to Peter Berresford Ellis, for Celts, marriages were a legal agreement before being even an economic one, and wasn't supervised by any gods. Multiple marriage type existed, depending on who brought most to the house, whose house was used for the union... Marriage weren't all monogamous, it us unclear what kind of relationship it brought, but it's very clear that it wasn't a religious affair,but a legal one.
Romans and Greeks probably had rite concerning the marriage in city state and big cities, but the majority of Roman estates did not have priests.
I would question the line between government, society, and religion back in that time. I don't think people were secular, with myths and superstitions being an integral part of how people lived (no source here, but I'm pretty sure secular societies are fairly new). It wouldn't be much different than how people today might not be going to church every Sunday but they still get married in a church with a priest. Maybe there weren't priests but people might had certain beliefs and myths associated with marriage that drove their incentive to carry out the ritual. Without these shared beliefs, it's hard to for me to imagine people just got married because they were consciously trying to increase the population.
Bear it mind that Celt marriage wasn't necessarily about increasing the population, they weren't monogamous. It was about sharing and dividing ownership. They were merchants (mostly), women could be richer and earn more than the man they married, and one type of marriage handled that case (because the divorce was handled differently depending on who owned/earned the most). Marriage might have been about reproduction in civilization with huge gender gap, but for Celts it do seems it wasn't.
Just look at causes for divorce in Celtic law, disrespect is clearly more represented than fertility. Maybe it was due to the polygamous nature, idk.
Celt priests were druids and did not left a lot. Druidism was an oral, masculine tradition, handled birth and death, as well as medecine. They might have been involved, but we can't know, because they left no texts. The laws we found however were quite clear about administrating a marriage, and did not require the presence of a druid. I'm not sure Celt gods can represent civil aspect like greco-roman gods did (justice, city, household). At most they were fertility and healing, but like I said, marriages weren't about fertility (they even had concubinage contracts, for how children outside marriage will receive resources).
Sure, interesting. I guess it may come down to what the majority of civilizations did in regards to marriage, and maybe it's a toss up. If we limit it to the West, then its more clear that current traditions originate with monotheistic practices.
Only because Celtic tradition were eradicated. Early witch hunts probably ended the last remnants of our Celt heritage, and those happened after marriage was taken over by priests in the early middle age, at least in France.
The non-merchand role a celt woman with money could have was teacher, arms teacher (weirdly, we have text about that, probably because it was rare enough to be written about) or healer. That last tradition probably survived longer than druidism in my area (it is also linked to being a midwife, which was a part of life that Christian priests ignored), and was the initial target of witch hunts.
(Also, poisoning people, and especially rapists, would be something Celts women would have been very happy to do, considering Boudicca's reaction to her daughters' rape)
I would argue that nobody does. Which is why people can have different definitions of what marriage means.
Governments can decide that a homosexual union can be called marriage.
Religions can decide that a homosexual union isn’t marriage.
But Religions can’t expect others to accept their definition. They don’t get to demand that the government accepts their definition, unless they can get the votes.
