OpenYourEyes wrote:
In response to this member's post:
Dr. Brown really doesn't know what he's talking about. Same-sex marriage has been shown to actually 'strengthen' the institution of marriage, rather than damage it. The marriage rate in MA has stayed basically the same, while the divorce rate has plummeted after legalizing same-sex marriage 11 years ago, and now is amongst the lowest divorce rates in the Nation. Hopefully the following statistics and facts elucidate this subject more clearly for you..
For example, Sweden legalized same-sex civil unions in 1995 and gay marriage in 2009. A 2011 demographic study from researchers at the University of Stockholm reports that since 1999, after decades of falling, both the marriage rate and the fertility rate have trended upward and the divorce rate is down.
You can Google the following to see the PDF on this.
STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY
Dept of Sociology, Demography Unit
Trends in Childbearing and Nuptiality
in Sweden:
An Update with Data up to 2007
By Gunnar Andersson and Martin Kolk
Stockholm Research Reports in Demography
2011:7
From the United States Census Bureau: ‘The 2012 Statistical Abstract, Births, Deaths, Marriages, & Divorces'
Table 133. Marriages and Divorces—Number and Rate by State: 1990 to 2009
(2,443 represents 2,443,000). Based on provisional counts by state of occurrence. Population enumerated as of April 1 for 1990 and 2000 and estimated as of July for 2009
State: Massachusetts
Marriages : Number (1,000)
1990 - 47.7,
2000 - 37.0,
2009 - 36.7
Rate per 1,000 population :
1990 - 7.9,
2000 - 5.8,
2009 - 5.5
Divorces : Number (1,000)
1990 – 16.8,
2000 – 18.6,
2009 – 12.7
Rate per 1,000 population :
1990 – 2.8,
2000 – 2.5,
2009 – 2.2
The fact that for the first 300 years of Christianity, there is evidence of men marrying each other, and that there was no rejection or persecution of homosexuality shows something went very wrong when the bishops at the time finally gained the ear of an emperor, whose word was law. After all, it had been recognized as 'normal' human behavior for thousands of years at the time Christianity burst onto the scene, and they wouldn't have made many converts if they were going to attack or kill (homosexual) people who the majority at the time found perfectly natural.
I begin first with the birthplace of our Western civilization... which is Greek and Roman civilization, and after that, go into a detailed history of the Church on this subject:
The first speech in Classical history praising male-male relationships is that of Phaedrus. The Phaedrus (/ˈfi�drəs/; Greek: Φαῖδ�ος), written by Plato, is a dialogue between Plato's main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. (The Phaedrus was presumably composed around 370 BC, around the same time as Plato's Republic and Symposium.) Phaedrus cites as the ultimate in love and commitment the maxim that "love will make men dare to die for their beloved; and women as well as men."' He goes on to provide as one example of this sacred commitment Alcestis' willingness to die for her husband Admetus, and as another Achilles' willingness to die for his lover Patroclus.
Pausanias next spoke, delivering an impassioned defense of companionate same-sex relationships:
“Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature; any one may recognize the pure enthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing them as companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and to pass their whole life with them, and be with them ..�
The consensus among modem historians is that republican Rome, like classical Greece, was tolerant of same-sex relationships. Moreover, the Romans accorded some same-sex unions the legal or cultural status of marriages. To take one early example, Cicero, the great Roman lawyer and orator, persuaded Curio the Elder to honor the debts that Curio's son had incurred on behalf of Antonius, to whom the son was, in Cicero's words, "united in a stable and permanent marriage, just as if he had given him a matron's stola." (The stola was garb distinctively reserved for a married Roman woman. "Te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et, tamquam stolam dedisset, in matrimonio stabili et certo collocavit.")
Cicero's legalistic advice shows that same-sex relationships were not only socially accepted among Roman society, but that they also potentially carried with them legal obligations and consequences, and hence were marriages as we understand the term. Records describing Roman social customs during the imperial period survive in far greater number, at least in part because many, if not most, of the emperors enjoyed well-documented relationships, some of them legally sanctioned marriages-with other men. The evidence suggests that during the same general time frame when companionate long-term marriages were being institutionalized for different-sex couples, they were likewise becoming more common for same-sex couples, who were entering into relationships akin to those discussed in Plato's Symposium.
By the time of the early Empire the stereotyped roles of [sexually active] "lover" and [sexually passive] "beloved" no longer seem to be the only model for homosexual lovers, and even emperors had openly acknowledged male lovers or husbands. Many homosexual relationships were permanent and exclusive. Among the lower classes informal unions like that of Giton and Encolpius may have predominated, but marriages between males or between females were legal and familiar among the upper classes.... By the time of the early Empire references to gay marriages are commonplace. The biographer of Elagabalus maintains that after the emperor's marriage to an athlete from Smyrna, any male who wished to advance at the imperial court either had to have a husband or pretend that he did.
Martial and Juvenal both mention same-sex public ceremonies involving the families, dowries, and legal niceties. It is clear that not only aristocrats were involved: a cymbal player is mentioned by Juvenal. Martial points out that both men involved in one ceremony were thoroughly masculine ("The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer") and that the marriage took place under the same law that regulated marriage between men and women. Nero married two men in succession, both in public ceremonies with the ritual appropriate to legal marriage. At least one of these unions was recognized by Greeks and Romans, and the spouse was accorded the honors of an empress .... One of the men, Sporus, accompanied Nero to public functions, where the emperor would embrace him affectionately. He remained with Nero throughout his reign and stood by him as he died.
Same-sex unions were noted in popular Roman culture and literature as well. The novel Babylonica, an early version of the pulp romance, had a subplot involving the passion of Egypt's Queen Berenice for the beautiful Mesopotamia, who was snatched from her. After one of the Queen's servants rescued Mesopotamia from her abductors, "'Berenice married Mesopotamia, and there was war between [the abductor] and Berenice on her account.' " Of even greater renown, the Emperor Hadrian's love for Antinous attained the status of legend, acclaimed for generations in sculpture, architecture, painting, coins, and literature.
The popularity of Hadrian and Antinous as a couple, may have been due in some part to the prevalence of same-sex couples in popular romantic literature of the time. Everywhere in the fiction of the Empire-from lyric poetry to popular novels-gay couples and their love appear on a completely equal footing with their heterosexual counterparts.
There is very strong evidence demonstrating the existence of same-sex unions, including legally recognized marriages, in Native American, African, and Asian cultures, evidence which is especially striking prior to those cultures' domination by Western Europe. The sources include traditional historical records, such as contemporary accounts, artifacts, myths, and stories, though the best evidence tends to be the work of social anthropologists and ethnographers, who, through their fieldwork in non-Western cultures, have been able to retrieve much of these cultures' pre-Western traditions and institutions.
Among the most frequently recurring of these institutions is same-sex marriage.
Native American Cultures:
Although few written records of pre-Columbian Native American cultures are accessible to us, we do have the benefit of histories describing those cultures written by Spanish explorers, missionaries, and bureaucrats.
These sources provide early accounts of same-sex unions in the Americas.
For example, Francisco Lopez de Gomara's History of the Indies (1552), proclaimed that "'the men marry other men who are impotent or castrated and go around like women, perform their duties and are used as such and who cannot carry or use the bow.' Alvar Cabeza de Vaca also witnessed unions between same-sex couples, stating in Narrative of the Expeditions and Shipwrecks of Cabeza de Vaca (1542) that he "'saw a man married to another man.' Juan de Torquemada, in the Monarchia Indiana (1615), described a common custom whereby "parents [gave] a youth to their young son, to have him for a woman and to use him as a woman; from that also began the law that if anyone approached the youth, they were ordered to pay for it, punishing them with the same penalties as those breaking the condition of a marriage."
Same-sex unions between women were also reported. Pedro de Magdlhaes' The Histories of Brazil (1576) describes Native American women in northeastern Brazil who "give up all the duties of women and imitate men, and follow men's pursuits as if they were not women.... “Each has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."
What these (and other) accounts describe is the berdache tradition in the Americas, which was institutionalized in the Indies and throughout what is now the United States, as well as in the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations.
The Native American berdache is a person-male or female-who deviates from his or her traditional gender role, taking on some of the characteristics and perceived responsibilities of the opposite sex. The berdache does not, however, cross gender lines so much as mix them. Indeed, many Native American cultures considered berdaches to be a third sex. Most important, berdaches (like the account of We'wha) married individuals of the same sex, and those transgenderal marriages were well recognized by Native American laws and cultures.
Outsiders' depictions of the Native American berdache have often been colored by their anti homosexual attitudes. The accounts of Spanish authors such as those quoted above usually expressed shock, invoking Native American same-sex unions as evidence of these cultures' barbarism, which they sought to correct. Until the twentieth century, accounts by Western anthropologists suppressed the tradition.
The first detailed academic study focusing on Native American same-sex unions was George Devereux's article on the Mohave berdaches. Devereux reported that gender-crossing, homosexual men (alyha) and women (hwame) had long been tolerated by the Mohave, and that their same-sex marriages were institutionalized and socially accepted. Thus, under tribal custom and law alyha married (and divorced) men, and hwame married (and divorced) women.
African cultures:
Krige (Eileen J. Krige- Note on the Phalaborwa and Their Morula Complex, Bantu Stud. -1937) describes woman marriage as "the institution by which it is possible for a woman to give bridewealth for, and marry, a woman, over whom and whose offspring she has full control, delegating to a male genitor the duties of procreation." Krige suggests that woman marriage is "closely bound up with rights and duties arising from the social structure" of the culture, a "flexible institution that can be utilized in a number of different ways to meet a number of different situations." For example, in African cultures where women occupy a high position and can acquire property or other forms of wealth, woman marriage is one way that a woman may strengthen her economic position and establish her "household."
Ifeyinwa Olinke, whose tale was recounted in the introduction, was a powerful and prosperous woman who advanced her position by taking many wives. Woman marriages were not uncommon in Africa. "The term female husband ... refers to a woman who takes on the legal and social roles of husband and father by marrying another woman according to the approved rules and ceremonies of her society. She may belong to any one of over 30 African populations," writes Denise O'Brien. (Denise O'Brien- Female Husbands in Southern Bantu Societies, in Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View -Alice Schlegel ed., 1977). She reports that the institution is most popular in three parts of Africa: West Africa, especially Nigeria and Dahomey, South Africa, including the Southern Bantu upon whom O'Brien reports, East Africa, and the Sudan.
For those with any historical interest, I'd like to make a point that Greek culture, the birthplace of our own civilization, flourished for over 1,300 years. I'm not talking about the rise or fall of a particular city state or federation, or after it was absorbed into the Roman Empire, in which it still flourished for almost 900 years.. I'm talking about the culture itself. Our nation has only been around for 238 years.
Homosexuality was a large part of that civilization, and not considered 'perverted'. I'm not advocating pederasty either; I'm simply showing that accepting homosexual people as equal citizens, and the person they wish to love and possibly marry, does not destroy a civilization.
In the Symposium, Plato argues for an army to be comprised of same-sex lovers. Thebes did indeed form such a regiment, the Sacred Band of Thebes, consisting of 300 paired soldiers. They were renowned in the ancient world for their valor in battle. Greece importantly influenced Western knowledge in many ways. Homosexuality was a major part of Greek culture, and yet the ancient Greeks especially contributed many things to the world, from science, to medicine, to advanced architecture, to advanced mathematics, to advanced military tactics, and to astronomy.
Ancient Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. It had an extremely important influence on modern philosophy. The art of ancient Greece also has exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries from ancient times until the present. If homosexuality were so detrimental to civilization, none of this would have been possible.
The very foundation of Democracy itself, in the birthplace of Western Civilization itself.. was started by two males who were in love with each other.
The association of homosexuals with democracy and the military was intense and widespread, extending from Harmodius and Aristogeiton, a pair of lovers who founded Democracy by overthrowing the last tyrant of Athens, to the noted generals Pelopidas and Epanminondas, to the great military genius Alexander the Great and his male lover Hephaestion.
Of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, no less acute a mind than Plato’s observed that: “Our own tyrants learned this lesson through bitter experience, when the love between Aristogiton and Harmodius grew so strong that it shattered their power.
Wherever, therefore, it has been alluded to be shameful to be involved in sexual relationships with men, this is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice in the part of the governed.�
For hundreds of years, larger-than-life statues of these founders of Democracy towered above Athens, as impossible to disconnect with the city as the Statue of Liberty is impossible for us to disconnect with New York.. and young male lovers from England to Egypt, and across the entire Classical world would journey there to pledge their faith and love to each other, underneath those statues.
Gorgidas, the leader of Thebes created the Sacred Band, composed of 300 men, who were all paired lovers. They were one of the most feared armies at the time, known as the ‘sacred band’ because as Plutarch later explained, “even Plato calls the lover a friend inspired of God.�
Philip of Macedon and Plutarch recounted how the greatest heroes in the Greek’s own history were all known to prefer other males rather than women: Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, Epaminondas, Asopichus, and Caphisodorus.
Even Hercules was famous for his male lover, Iolaus, who fought by his side. In Plato’s ‘Symposium,’ he noted the eagerness of the great warrior Achilles to join his lover and military partner in death as an explicit parallel to a wife’s being willing to die for her husband. Their bones were burned and mixed together in a gold amphora, as was done in the case of married heterosexual couples.
Aristophanes said that “..males who prefer other males are the finest men because they have the most manly nature. Their behavior is due to daring, manliness, and virility, since they are quick to welcome their like.�
Plato and numerous other classical authors attested to the military value of armies made up of lovers. When Epaminondas fell in battle at Mantineia, his lover died beside him. One of the most formidable and feared Theban warriors of the early Classical Era was Kaphisodoros, who was part of the Sacred Band.
GREEKS:
Here, then are textual references for long-term (in some cases life-long) homosexual relationships in the Greek texts.
Orestes and Pylades, -Orestes is the hero of the Oresteia cycle. He and Pylades were bywords for faithful and life-long love in Greek culture. -see Lucian (2nd C. CE): Amores or Affairs of the Heart, #48
Damon and Pythias -Pythagorean initiates -see Valerius Maximus: De Amicitiae Vinculo
Aristogeiton and Harmodius -credited with overthrowing tyranny in Athens. -see Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Book 6
Pausanias and Agathon -Agathon was an Athenian dramatist (c. 450-400 BCE). It was in his house that the Dinner Party of Plato's Symposium takes place. -see Plato: Symposium 193C, Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae
Philolaus and Diocles -Philolaus was a lawgiver at Thebes, Diocles an Olympic Athlete -see Aristotle, Politics 1274A
Epaminondas and Pelopidas -Epaminondas (c.418-362 BCE) led Thebes in its greatest days in the fourth century. At the battle of Mantinea (385 BCE) he saved the life of his life-long friend Pelopidas -see Plutarch: Life of Pelopidas
Members of the Sacred Band of Thebes -see Plutarch: Life of Pelopidas
Alexander the Great and Hephasteion -Atheaneus, The Deinosophists Bk 13
As proven by Greek and Roman culture, homosexuality does not cause downfall to a civilization.
For a more detailed review, please go here:
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/ ... fss_papers 
