Same-sex marriage in Christian history

Jinxiboo's blog reports on Saint Sergius and Bacchus, officers in the Roman army exposed as secret Christians and martyred in the fourth century:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.
...

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.

Same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, "Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union", invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to "vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints". The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded".

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of the Same Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

The evangelical Christian response will likely be to either question whether these were really like "marriage" or reject them as Satan-inspired evil that shows how far astray the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have gone.

Wikipedia has more on Sergius and Bacchus.

Rick Warren caught lying

Last Sunday, Rick Warren recorded a video for his congregation in which he denies ever comparing gay marriages to incest or pedophilia:

I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophila. Now, of course as members of Saddleback Church, you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You've never once heard me in thirty years talk that way about that.

But Rachel Maddow shows that he made exactly that comparison:

I'm opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Q. Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

Oh, I do!

Rick Warren has been caught lying, in addition to being anti-gay and anti-evolution. He should ask to be taken off the agenda for the inauguration, and if he doesn't, Barack Obama should just withdraw his invitation to speak.

ApostAZ podcast #11

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:

Episode 011 Atheism and Feces-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Shyness, Group News,Election Post-Mortem, Email from Shawn of Tough Questions Podcasts, Winter Solstice, Musings on Rhetorical Debate Styles, Ridiculous Marriage Amendment.

My comments: Duane Gish was vice president of the Institute for Creation Research.

Nice listener email on the FLDS members pretending to be truck stop hookers--I like the listener feedback.

Obama opposes same-sex marriage.

On proving a negative, please see this and/or this.

Good and bad news on propositions

Good: Washington joins Oregon in allowing doctor-assisted suicide, South Dakota rejects further abortion limits, Michigan allows medical marijuana and stem cell research, California rejects further abortion limits, Colorado rejects the definition of person as beginning at conception.

Bad: California, Arizona, and Florida ban gay marriage with constitutional amendments, Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children.

(Results at CNN.)

UPDATE: Ed Brayton notes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars that the California result on gay marriage was evidently due to religious bigotry:

In California, exit polls showed that those who attended church regularly voted against marriage equality 83-17%. Those who attended church only occasionally voted for marriage equality 60-40%. Those who do not attend church at all voted for marriage equality 86-14%.

The same was true in Arizona, where exit polling found that:

Protestants generally supported the measure but that Catholics were fairly evenly divided. Nonreligious voters were solidly against it. ... Proposition 102 had slight leads among Whites and among Hispanics.
...
The youngest voters were split for and against, with support for Proposition 102 increasing among voters in older age groups. Voters age 65 or over were solidly for the amendment.

Prop. 102 will ultimately be overturned as the older generation dies off.

Arizona election results

Arizona will now have a majority of Democratic Representatives in the House, as Rick Renzi is replaced by Ann Kirkpatrick in District 1 in a close race. The other close race is District 5, where Harry Mitchell has defeated David Schweikert. This means the Arizona delegation will be Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl (both Republicans), and Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick (D-District 1), Trent Franks (R-District 2), John Shadegg (R-District 3), Ed Pastor (D-District 4), Harry Mitchell (D-District 5), Jeff Flake (R-District 6), Raul Grijalva (D-District 7), Gabrielle Giffords (D-District 8).

Bad news: Andrew Thomas was re-elected as Maricopa County Attorney, and Joe Arpaio was re-elected as Maricopa County Sheriff. And Arizona went for John McCain as president, though he has graciously conceded to Barack Obama.

Some bad results on the propositions: Prop. 102 is passing, amending the Arizona constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Prop. 101 on medical choice is failing. But there's also good news: the payday loan industry-backed Prop. 200 is failing (that would add barriers to entry to new payday loan companies, as well as prevent the current payday loan legislation from sunsetting), and Prop. 100's ban on additional home transfer taxes is passing.

UPDATE (November 5, 2008): Prop. 101 is still too close to call, with "no" votes leading by 2,195 votes (867,924 no, 865,729 yes). There should be a conclusive result tomorrow.

UPDATE (November 6, 2008): Still counting on Prop. 101--it's now a 2,944-vote lead for no, 887,821 to 884,877.

UPDATE (November 12, 2008): Prop. 101 has been defeated, 961,567 no votes to 950,440 yes votes.

A librarian responds to a parental challenge

A parent complained about Sarah Brannen's book, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, about same-sex marriage, that was in the children's book section in the Douglas County Library system in Colorado. Librarian Jamie Larue wrote an excellent, kind, and thoughtful response to the library patron about why the library is not going to move or remove the book.

Presidential Prayer Team asks your support for biblical marriage

The Presidential Prayer Team has called for supporters to "Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."

A piece of unattributed email has been going around in support of this proposition, with the following suggested Constitutional amendment to put that into effect:

Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

For some reason Len Munsil's Center for Arizona Policy organization hasn't pushed this amendment in Arizona, instead preferring the unbiblical idea, not even widely recognized yet at the time of Charlemagne, that marriage should only be between one man and one woman.

Dennis Prager on women and sex

Dennis Prager writes, regarding the California Supreme Court's decision to strike down a ban on same-sex marriage, that:

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity - especially females - can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction - until now, accomplished through marriage.

It sounds like he thinks that female heterosexuality is so tenuous that it must be enforced by the power of law. Does he also think this is a justification for denying civil liberties and rights to women?

Ed Brayton gives a good fisking to Prager's entire crazy essay on this subject, showing that his arguments are very similar to arguments that were made against integration and interracial marriage in response to Supreme Court decisions.

Same-sex marriage ban amendment may go to voters again

The Arizona House has passed SB 10242 and sent it on to the Senate. This would put a measure to the voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. A similar proposal was voted down in 2006, but that measure included a provision that would have prohibited state benefits to domestic partners--this one doesn't.

Unfortunately, I think this has a good chance of passing.

Arizona already bans same-sex marriage by statute, but not in its Constitution.

Arizona bill to ban gay marriage fails

A bill in the Arizona legislature to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (which failed via initiative petition in 2006, being rejected by voters) died in the state House after it was similarly amended to ban domestic partner benefits. That's the same reason the initiative, Proposition 107, failed.

Republican San Diego mayor signs resolution for gay marriage

The Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, has signed a resolution supporting gay marriage, stating that:

"In order to be consistent with the position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my position.

"The arrival of the resolution -- to sign or veto -- in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search my soul for the right thing to do.

"I have decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious at the moment -- to do what I think is right, and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. The right thing for me to do is sign this resolution.

"For three decades, I have worked to bring enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.

"As I reflected on the choices I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage -- than anyone else -- simply because of their sexual orientation.

"A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.

"I do believe that times have changed. And with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions. I think that's natural, and it's certainly true in my case.

"Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have changed.

"The concept of a 'separate but equal' institution is not something I can support.

"I acknowledge that not all members of our community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.

"All I can offer them is that I am trying to do what I believe is right.

"I have close family members and friends who are a member of the gay and lesbian community. Those folks include my daughter Lisa, as well as members of my personal staff.

"I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones -- for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life's experiences.

"And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law. In the end, I couldn't look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationship -- their very lives -- were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife Rana. Thank you."

(Via Donna Woodka's blog.)

How conservative opposition to gay marriage has undermined straight marriage

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on how gay parents have relied on the development of new methods to ensure their ability to adopt and serve as guardians of children. Second-parent adoption and visitation rights to adopted children by non-custodial parents (the two examples Ed provides) are also available to unmarried straights. The result is that unmarried couples who previously married solely to obtain such legal protections don't need to do so.

Unmarried partnership benefits overturned in Michigan

As the result of a lawsuit in Michigan based on its 2004 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that domestic partnership benefits in negotiated contracts with public employee's unions are null and void.

The 2004 amendment was written by Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, who wrote in a pamphlet at the time that:

Proposal 2 is Only about marriage. Marriage is a union between husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their lives. This has to do with family, children and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is-for families today and future generations.

The Alliance Defense Fund, which backed the similar constitutional amendment here in Arizona, has made similar statements.

Yet it was Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center who wrote the amendment for CfPM, and he was also behind the lawsuit that eliminated partnership benefits.

Clearly, these people cannot be trusted, and Arizona was wise to reject the similar constitutional amendment here.

UPDATE (May 14, 2008): The Michigan Supreme Court has upheld the denial of domestic partnership benefits as a result of their 2004 constitutional amendment.

UPDATE (November 16, 2008): Patrick Gillen was also lead counsel for the Dover Area School District in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which he defended the failed attempt to inject intelligent design into the public schools.

John McCain the inconsistent flip-flopper

This video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage. Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn't look like he actually contradicted himself to me.



Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Telecoms behind gay marriage--and UAT can help stop them

These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT&T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a "Christian-based telephone company," with a "Faith, Family, and Freedom" campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage.

Mirman really gets them going--they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example.

These calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal.

United American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from "Faith, Family, and Freedom," a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma's Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia's entry on United American Technologies.

(Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.)

Global state of gay marriage

From the December 2, 2006 issue of The Economist (subscription required for full article):

Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. (Massachusetts).

Gays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont).

Gays have civil unions or partnerships with lesser rights than heterosexual marriage in Argentina (1 state), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3 states), Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United States (Hawaii, Maine).

UPDATE (December 18, 2006): Stephen Frug has pointed out that even in U.S. states which have legal gay marriage or legal gay civil unions, they are still not equivalent to marriage, in part because of the U.S. federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of a provision in this law, the spouse of former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay federal lawmaker, has been denied his pension benefits.

UPDATE (December 19, 2006): The December 9 issue of The Economist (p. 66) points out that the inclusion of Hong Kong on the list of countries with gay civil unions is a mistake. Hong Kong "is reviewing its laws in this area," but doesn't currently allow them.

The effects of same-sex marriage

Opponents of same-sex marriage claim that it will somehow destroy the institution of marriage and cause damage to heterosexual married couples. But a book that examines the data from Scandinavian countries that have had legal same-sex marriage for the last 17 years suggests otherwise--rather than destroying heterosexual marriage, those countries have seen higher heterosexual marriage rates, lower divorce rates, lower rates of out-of-wedlock births, lower rates of sexually transmitted disease, and more monogamy among gay couples.

Arizona election results

The good news: Arizona did not elect aspiring theocrat Len Munsil (who was soundly defeated by incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano), got rid of corrupt Congressman J.D. Hayworth (replacing him with former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell), narrowly voted down an amendment to the state Constitution to ban gay marriage and anything "similar to" it, and voted in favor of greater protections against eminent domain abuse.

The bad news: Arizona re-elected Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Rick Renzi, approved the creation of a new bureaucracy to continually raise the minimum wage (the main effect of which is to reduce teen employment; it has negligible positive effects for low wage earners, versus something that would genuinely be effective like reducing payroll taxes), passed the worse of the two anti-smoking measures, banned probation for methamphetamine abuse offenses, and passed all of the anti-illegal immigration measures (declaring English the official language, prohibiting illegal immigrants from posting bail or being awarded certain kinds of damages in court, and limiting educational services to illegal immigrants).

Teenager Jarrett Maupin (Al Sharpton, Jr.) was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board in Ward 2. Maupin, who was a member of the Republican club at Brophy College Prep before switching schools to St. Mary's and becoming a Democrat and protege of Sharpton, charged that Brophy students demonstrated their racism by referring to "blackboards."

A bad argument in support of the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment

Gun rights advocate and "uninvited ombudsman" Alan Korwin has sent out a checklist of his recommendations on the Arizona ballot propositions. I disagree with him on several of the propositions, perhaps most significantly on his recommendation of a yes vote to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and any legal arrangements that are "similar to" marriage. Here's his argument for 107:

107 YES Protect marriage amendment. If people want gay unions, polygamy, bestiality or whatever, I say let them, but not under government sanction and funding. I'd like to see us return to "holy matrimony" without any government involvement. Getting married for tax breaks is so wrong.

But this argument presumes the effect of 107 is to get the government out of the marriage business, which it isn't. Rather, 107 has the effect of enshrining existing statutory prohibitions on a form (or multiple forms) of legal contract between consenting adults into the Constitution, and going further to restrict any such arrangement "similar to" marriage. It isn't pro-liberty, it's anti-liberty. It isn't eliminating special privileges, it is adding them to the Arizona Constitution.

It's perfectly reasonable to argue that nobody should have tax breaks or special privileges under the law, but it's not reasonable to say that because such privileges are wrong we should restrict them to a particular set of people. That's not only unfair, it's unconstitutional--a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. It's like arguing that the government shouldn't confer support on religion, so we should vote yes on an amendment that limits government support to the Christian religion, and keep it from supporting Islam or other religions. (No doubt there are many Americans who would, quite wrongly, support such a law.)

Now, some advocates of Proposition 107 have argued that there is no violation of the equal protection clause because a gay man has the same right to marry a woman as a heterosexual man does. But this is just like arguing that a prohibition on interracial marriage doesn't violate the equal protection clause because a black man has the same right to marry a black woman as a white man has to marry a white woman--the description of the right is being crafted to exclude the category of person who is being discriminated against.

As Ed Brayton has pointed out on numerous occasions, the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on same-sex marriage are of the same form as the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on miscegenation, just replacing "different race" with "same sex." If you think that the Supreme Court ruled correctly in Loving v. Virginia, you should also think that Arizona's Proposition 107 violates the U.S. Constitution for the same reasons.

See also my previous post on the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment. You may also find David Friedman's economic analysis of marriage arrangements to be of interest.

UPDATE (October 21, 2006): Just to make it clear, THeath has enumerated some specific examples of what opponents of gay marriage are actually endorsing (there are several more if you follow the link)--these aren't hypotheticals, these are real people:

• There was the friend I wrote about recently who was turned away from from the emergency room, where his partner had been taken after suddenly collapsing at work, and told he could not be given any information because he was not next of kin. He had to leave the hospital and retrieve their legal documents before he could gain admittance to see his partner when a married spouse would have been waved through without question.


• My friend was luckier than Bill Flanigan. When his partner Robert Daniel was hospitalized in Baltimore, the couple had their legal documents with them, including durable power of attorney and documentation that they were registered as domestic partners in California. But those documents were ignored by hospital staff and Flanigan was kept from seeing his partner until Daniel’s mother and sister arrived and by then Daniel was unconscious, with his eyes taped shut and hooked to a breathing tube; something Daniel had not wanted.


• Even having a will didn’t help Sam Beaumont when his partner of 23 years, Earl, died. Oklahoma requires a will to have two witnesses, but Earl didn’t know that and his will leaving everything to Sam had only one. So Earl's cousins, who disapproved of his relationship and most of whom never spoke to the couple or even came to Earl’s funeral, successfully sued to take away the home and ranch Sam an Earl had shared for 23 years. A married spouse, even in the event of a will lacking enough witnesses, would’ve had the right to automatically inherit at least some of the estate.

Further Update (October 22, 2006): Ed Brayton takes apart the Alliance Defense Fund's white paper on these marriage amendments here.

ADF lies about "marriage protection" amendments

Recent amendments and proposed amendments to state constitutions like Arizona's Proposition 107, which "preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage," have been backed by the Alliance Defense Fund. These constitutional amendments will not just be used to block same-sex marriage (already prohibited by multiple Arizona statutes, as I've pointed out here), but to prevent things like domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners. In response to these claims, the ADF denies it, calling this a "false argument" used to "confuse":

Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex "marriage" argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people...

Same-sex "marriage" advocates argue that eliminating domestic partnerships or other counterfeit marital institutions is hateful and mean spirited, because it will undermine benefits granted to unmarried people. Unfortunately, many people (including some so-called "conservative" politicians) have bought into this fallacious argument.

But the ADF is just lying. They themselves, once such amendments have been passed, have been leading the legal efforts to do exactly that, as they have in Wisconsin (and other similar groups have done in Michigan and Ohio):

Conservative lawmakers in Wisconsin also are seeking to block gay state employees from winning the right to employee partnership benefits. That state's Legislature last month approved sending a constitutional amendment to a statewide vote in November that says "a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state."...

The Wisconsin amendment passed partly in response to a lawsuit filed by several gay state university employees seeking health insurance for their partners. The Legislature also has retained the services of a conservative evangelical law firm, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), in an attempt to intervene in the workers' lawsuit...

I suspect what the ADF really meant to say in their blog entry quoted above is that they are OK with domestic partnership benefits for unmarried persons of the opposite sex, but not if they are the same sex.