Misleading on Marriage: how gay marriage opponents twist history to suit their agenda

Uh, no, that’s not right. It was generally more common for the bride’s family, in patrilineal farming societies such as ancient Greece and Rome, or both families, in bilineal societies, to pay the dowry. I would expect the husband’s family to pay in matrilieal farming societies. I think this was reversed in herding societies.

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You’re right. Generational churn shouldn’t be the method used to bring people up to date on their responsibilities. It’s the backstop, not the vanguard.

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Thanks - the guy isn’t anyone I had any sort of romantic relationship with. I just know both parties, and knew about their arrangement during their marriage.

I think it’s a shame for both people that he won’t take care of the vasectomy because he lives with a lot of anxiety, and now that he’s back on the market it’s one more thing for him to get anxious about. It gives him another excuse to not be social more often, and then makes situations harder when he finally decides to do so.

Foil packets of casual due diligence are too much for him to deal with emotionally? That’s not good. Too many folks are dealing with much more than sexuality and filial urges. It makes for too much weirdness. I suppose that’s what makes me so decidedly single.

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Glad to hear that you’ve changed your mind. “Compromise” is a rather unappealing idea for those seeking equal treatment under the law.

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I’ll raise my Coke to that!

https://www.youtube.com/v/J6hijsqO8H0?start=17&end=32&version=3

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It really annoys me to see people claiming that things that are 50 years old are unshakeable tradition, considering that I’m now over 50 years old myself, and I often remember when they changed. (The usual example I run into is TSA thugs insisting that something has Always Been The Policy, when I remember perfectly well the days that you could still take guns on airplanes.)

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But if they were married, and not just living together, the sky might fall! And while Global Warming is of course a total liberal hoax, having the sky fall because gay people are getting married to each other really happens. That’s why it’s your business, unless you’re one of those pro-sky-fallers.

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The version of that that I’ve heard from actual libertarians is that it’s none of the government’s business to decide who’s allowed to get married to whom, it’s just their business to deal with conflict resolution over property ownership or responsibility for children, and if you want a ceremony, go talk to somebody in the ceremony business, and if you want somebody to say you can’t get married because you’re divorced or because your spouse is the wrong religion, you can go ask a religion to tell you that. The minarchist libertarians (as opposed to the more anarchist ones) are fine with City Hall keeping a register of who’s currently married, in case your insurance company or a prospective future spouse wants to check or somebody who your spouse owes money to wants to sue you as well, but it’s not granting permission for you to get married, it’s just keeping records.

That’s not the libertarian line I’ve heard from any of the Rand-botherers from college that still pop up on Fb. It’s tort law all the way with these guys, though libertarians in general seem to be retreating on questions of the public good. Maybe the ones you know are evolving.

And presumably resulting in some evasion over the identity of Jesus’ brothers and sisters… yes, wikipedia says that is the case.

Never consummating their marriage seems even more unlikely to me than conception via the holy spirit, for some reason.

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Actually, many times there is a marriage penalty for filing taxes together. Depends on the table and incomes, but I had it when I was married.

Having kids though gives you a decent tax credit. That’s the giant gay conspiracy. It will be easier to adopt kids once marriage is accepted, allowing them to suck the country dry through tax credits.

But this isn’t a straw man, it’s actually the strongest possible statement of the case against gay marriage.

Most of the time when people argue against same sex-marriage they say “what about the children” or “ruining a tradition” or some other nonsense that can be factually argued against. Children of same-sex couples do quite well. The tradition existed for only one generation in human history and isn’t really much of a tradition.

An unfalsifiable appeal to sanctity, though, well we can’t really argue with that except to say that we disagree. Basically a person who makes this argument is saying, “I’m immune to any counter-argument aside from generational churn.” (Thanks for the phrase, @andy_hilmer)

It’s certainly possible that @votdephuque was someone just having a bit of fun, or someone dropping in to provide something for others to shoot down, or someone who really believes that. Either way I think by finding an argument that can only be answered by, “How about we engrave that on your headstone so 100 years from now people can decide whether you were right,” they’ve done the best anti-gay-marriage advocates will ever do.

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“If he defiles himself (masturbates), he is to abstain from meat for four days.”

This chart is an inadvertent medieval case for vegetarianism.

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or a wink, nudge way for priests to tell guys to take a few days off between sessions to give the ol’ bishop a break…

The standard lowest tax bracket each year is for “married, filing jointly”. Your individual situation may have created a penalty, but that doesn’t change that basic fact that currently a person may pay as much as a million dollars more for healthcare, taxes, etc. thanks to the favored position married households possess.

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I don’t want to enter into the merits of arguments around DOMA. But
this text is not very well researched and must have been written by
somebody who doesn’t know a lot about church history.

It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1547 that canon law
specifically named marriage unilaterally (and retroactively) as one
of the seven holy sacraments in canon law.

Let’s start by pointing out that the texts (from 1563 not 1547) of the
Council of Trent referred to here are not “canon law”. They are mostly
doctrinal texts adjoined by some reform decrees. And if it comes to
doctrine, the teaching that marriage is a sacrament by the time of the
Council of Trent was well established in the Catholic Church. However,
the council saw the need to reaffirm it against the teachings of the
rising protestant churches.

With high scholasticism the doctrine of seven sacraments, including
marriage, became generally accepted and we find it for instance in
texts of the Second Council of Lyon (fourth session 1274):

The same Holy Roman Church also holds and teaches that there are
seven sacraments of the Church: one is baptism, which has been
mentioned above; another is the sacrament of confirmation which
bishops confer by the laying on of hands while they anoint the
reborn; then penance, the Eucharist, the sacrament of order,
matrimony and extreme unction which, according to the doctrine of
the Blessed James, [James 5:14-15] is administered to the sick.

Like the Council of Trent added to the doctrinal decrees some reform
decrees (which legal consequences) also Lyon, having affirmed that
matrimony is a sacrament, entered into legal matters:

As regards matrimony, she holds that neither is a man allowed to have
several wives at the same time nor a woman several husbands. But,
when a legitimate marriage is dissolved by the death of one of the
spouses, she declares that a second and afterwards a third wedding
are successively licit, if no other canonical impediment goes against
it for any reason.nst it for any reason.

So no, the Council did not unilaterally and retroactively “name”
marriage as one of the seven holy sacraments “in canon law”.

Even if we restrict ourselves to canon law (which doesn’t make much
sense, as whether marriage is a sacrament is a doctrinal question)
marriage was named as sacrament in canon law proper. In the Decretals
of Gregory IX (1234) we find (c. 1, X, IV, 9):

Tua vero fraternitas de servorum coniugiis, quae invitis et
contradicentibus dominis contrahuntur, quid fieri debeat, ab
apostolatu nostro, si bene meminimus, requisivit; super quo tibi
duximus taliter respondendum.
Sane, iuxta verbum Apostoli, prout tua
discretio recognoscit
, sicut in Christo Iesu neque liber, neque
servus est, qui a sacramentis ecclesiae sit removendus, ita quoque
nec inter servos matrimonia debent ullatenus prohiberi.

(This text is probably a quotation from a decree of Adrian IV, who was
pope 1154–1159.)

It was another four hundred years or so before the church formally
declared that weddings must be performed in public, by a priest, and
before witnesses.

So here we have the claim, that only around four hundred years after
the Council of Trent the church declared formally “that weddings must
be performed in public, by a priest, and before witnesses”.

Not so. This was declared in the Council of Trent:

the holy Synod […] ordains that, […] before a marriage is
contracted, the proper parish priest of the contracting parties shall
three times announce publicly in the Church […] between whom
marriage is to be celebrated; after which publication of banns, if
there be no lawful impediment opposed, the marriage shall be
proceeded with in the face of the church; where the parish priest,
after having interrogated the man and the woman, and heard their
mutual consent, shall either say, “I join you together in matrimony,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;”
or, he shall use other words, according to the received rite of each
province. But if upon occasion, there should be a probable suspicion
that the marriage may be maliciously hindered, if so many
publications of banns precede it; in this case either one publication
only shall be made; or at least the marriage shall be celebrated in
the presence of the parish priest, and of two or three witnesses:
Then, before the consummation thereof, the banns shall be published
in the church […]

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All this illustrates is that the people who have power, be they priests, kings or senators define marriage to suit themselves.

America is a democracy, in free and fair elections Americans vote for people who specifically say they oppose the forms of marriage you advocate. That’s an uncomfortable truth isn’t it ?

It’s comfortable to blame “them” but actually as the US constitution says “We the people…”

You live in a country where religious observance is the norm, you should be less shocked that bigotry and ignorance pervade the voting choices of people who heard voices in their head and pay 10% of their income to those who say things that in a non-religious context would have them either arrested or put in a secure medical facility.

Do you remember Tony Blair ?

G W Bush’s best friend ?

With no real opposition he passed laws in Britain that enabled gay people to enjoy all the rights of married couples, including tax and inheritance. That’s not unconnected with the fact that religious observance is low and educational standards higher in the UK.

He has been replaced by David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, that’s their name, not just a position.

He has decided that Tony Blair did not go far enough and has pushed through a law that specifically calls the union “marriage”. The churches whined a bit, but since Brits (unlike Americans) see raping children as fatally undermining their “moral authority”, it went through.

The short version is that you can’t have a government that is substantially better than the people it governs. You want better laws, you need to upgrade your education and ignore those who peddle hysterical superstition to fund their crimes against children.

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Are they getting married?!?

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