27 May
Proposition Eight
Wow, the reactionaries are really on the march lately.
Californias Supreme Court rules that no more gay marriages can take place.
For an accurate summary of this insanity see this Center For Inquiry post.
Can anyone point to an argument against gay marriage not based on religion. I have looked and looked but can’t find one.
Isn’t marriage itself a fairly religious concept, so nay opposition will have to come from religion. I know pair bonding itself isn’t religious and is actually the norm even in more ‘tribal’ societies etc.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:04 pmIt depends what you mean by religious. Human recorded history doesn’t pre-date any time when there was no religion. In most countries the state and religion were tied together so saying the state authorised it is also in some ways saying the religion did.
What is certain is that the argument used by the Mormons in this case – that marriage is between a man and a woman – has not always been the case. Not long ago in the US it was between one white woman and one white man a while back it became between one white person and one non-white person (of opposite genders) then later still between two people of opposite genders of any race. Before that marriages between one man and several women were legal as were (are?) one man and one pre-teen girl.
Marriages also used to be business arrangements to tie powerful families together. Wives were also bought and sold as chattel to be the property of men. The current traditional marriage has the father of the bride giving away the bride – the wording is no accident. Up until the 70s in the UK wives could be raped by their husbands without it being defined as rape.
Changes to the laws of divorce and re-marriage etc mean that there was probably no year in the last century when the definition of marriage stayed constant in every country on Earth for a year. There is also the fact that marriage is defined differently in different countries throughout the world – and in different states in the US!
May 27th, 2009 at 9:08 pmWhat I mean is that there are many ideas on what is the correct religious teachings etc (different branches of every religion exist) and so all of these different religions and forks in religions will have slightly different views on marriage in terms of what is in vogue or whatever that decade.
I don’t think anyone can disagree with homosexual marriage without coming from a religious point of view, even if it is a semi-institutionalised religious view. I agree with you that the only disagreement comes from religious ideologies.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:00 pm[…] only written a couple of small pieces on this blog about gay marriage, for example around Proposition Eight, but have written scattered pieces around the net for ages on message boards, Facebook walls, […]
December 1st, 2011 at 8:07 pm