Beards and Gay Marriage

[Prodigal_Son]

Are you familiar with Japan?

Are you familiar with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle…?

How about Plutarch who said that marriage is a special relationship because of the act of coitus? This despite living in a “gay friendly” culture.

Dr. Taffy is under the delusion that gay marriage was a cross-cultural norm, until the Christians ruined everything.

 

[stewstew03]

Dr. Taffy is under the delusion that gay marriage was a cross-cultural norm, until the Christians ruined everything.

Initially, I thought he/she was reasonable – now I’m not so sure.

 

[PRmerger]

Why do you answer questions with questions? Is it because you don’t have an answer?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Initially, I thought he/she was reasonable – now I’m not so sure.

Reasonable, sure. But sometimes delusional.

Aren’t we all?

 

[Ion]

I remember I saw once one guy, dressed like a woman (wig high heels make up etc) who tried desperately to look and behave like a woman but the result was clear for everybody, a man dressed for Halloween.
This guy probably went to the washroom every now and then, but not only there he had the proof right in his face that he is a man.
I think no matter how much of a reason somebody would give him, he’s not going to listen.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I remember I saw once one guy, dressed like a woman (wig high heels make up etc) who tried desperately to look and behave like a woman but the result was clear for everybody, a man dressed for Halloween.
This guy probably went to the washroom every now and then, but not only there he had the proof right in his face that he is a man.
I think no matter how much of a reason somebody would give him, he’s not going to listen.

Context? This thread is about homosexuality, not transgenderism or crossdressing.

 

[Ion]

Context? This thread is about homosexuality, not transgenderism or crossdressing.

Don’t they go together?

 

[GaryTaylor]

Flamingos for example being highly social exhibit all these traits we are talking about, heterosexual, bi-sexual, homosexual and so forth. In the case with homosexual its a predisposition, they merely don’t care for the others and while still part of the whole within the species procreation, they prefer to be with another like male. Yet they still are productive in the whole.

So further with humans as statistics go the homosexual while the less likely on the statistical scale really has no uniqueness about it as it can be normal within the human model. Its a matter of choice, no different than saying I prefer whatever, red-heads over blondes and so forth. Its preference of choice thus comfort. I would think any behavior in the sequence follows from here be it positive or negative. For example the Flamingo homosexual birds have attempted to steal eggs from the others, and so forth. Thus a sequence of negative behavior which is then a moral judgment of right or wrong from the remainder of the flock.

Still what I’m saying is within this bird model, they appear much more responsible as a whole than us. It is so because of understanding.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Don’t they go together?

Not that I know of. Plenty of straight men crossdress, and most gay men don’t. In the vast majority of cases, gay men don’t want to be women.

 

[DrTaffy]

I made a few assertions, and I’m not sure which one you’re having trouble with:

It is true for any assertion: merely repeating it does not make it true. So coming in halfway through a debate on gay marriage and merely repeating the Catholic view on marriage does nothing to explain or justify that view.

The secular justification for opposing same-sex marriage – or, rather, the justification that our public policies should not revise the definition of marriage – is that there is a creative or generative aspect of the conjugal union, and it makes sense to stabilize that relationship.

But marriage does nothing to assist or improve conception. It actually reduces the chances of conception. Certainly same sex marriage does nothing to affect the conception of kids by opposite sex couples, it just encourages same sex couples to conceive children - with outside help, of course, but so what? Many opposite sex couples need such help too.

Marriage does assist in raising children, but same sex couples do that, so this would be an argument in favour of same sex marriage.

And if you look at the various rights and responsibilities involved in marriage, most of them have little or nothing to do with kids, and everything to do with issues and problems facing all couples who choose to share their lives.

Actually, I have no idea what you mean here.

It’s called the golden rule. If you can morally force your subjective views on others when you are in the majority, you cannot complain when they reciprocate when they are in the majority.

Catholics teach sex can and should occur outside of marriage?

The other way around. You can have a valid marriage without sex.

Aside from that, of course I think marriage should have a narrow definition – between one man and one woman – because I believe it makes the most sense from a public policy perspective.

Why? Compare it with sex. We agree, I hope, that incest, rape, child abuse and bestiality are wrong, yet I don’t see you trying to redefine ‘sex’ to exclude those acts. We accept that they are ‘sex’, but simply instances of ‘sex’ that are wrong.

So why do you feel the need to redefine marriage to exclude at least one variety of marriage that you oppose? Why not present objective reasons for why same sex marriage is wrong?

Most proponents of gay marriage (that I’ve encountered) deny that SSM laws will open the door to other forms of marriage – incestuous, polygamous, etc. – so I appreciate your honesty.

Again, you are trying to equate the definition with what is morally right. And, in the process, you are massively misrepresenting my position.

I would point out that the definitions of ‘marriage’ proposed by Catholics in these debates also do not generally exclude incestuous or polygamous marriages. Does that imply that Catholics support these forms of marriage?

 

[DrTaffy]

Resoundingly false. Your statement assumes, without proving, that knowledge derived from religion is not objective – that is, is not true.
…]
If most citizens thought that the rule that we not engage in cannibalism was a religious imposition, it would nevertheless be justified for us to ban cannibalism – because cannibalism is objectively wrong.

You are confusing the argument with the conclusion. A subjective argument can reach the same conclusion as an objective one, but that does make the subjective argument objective. For that matter, an invalid argument based on utterly false premises can reach a conclusion that happens to be true - this does not make the argument valid or the premises true.

And argument based on your religious beliefs is very obviously subjective.

Don’t assume that we all are convinced by your narrow view of public reason in a secular society.

Back at you.

 

[PRmerger]

It is true for any assertion: merely repeating it does not make it true. So coming in halfway through a debate on gay marriage and merely repeating the Catholic view on marriage does nothing to explain or justify that view.

Well, let’s see you do something different, DrT.

You said you could explain why you call a circle a circle.

We want to see how you explain the “why”, without merely repeating the definition.

This is your claim:

Then I would show him or her why I call that a circle. I would not just repeat the assertion, as you have done.

Let’s see how you do this.

 

[PRmerger]

Back at you.

If you wanted, you could have said, “quid pro quo”, and anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of Latin would have gotten the point.

 

[Ion]

Flamingos for example being highly social exhibit all these traits we are talking about, heterosexual, bi-sexual, homosexual and so forth. In the case with homosexual its a predisposition, they merely don’t care for the others and while still part of the whole within the species procreation, they prefer to be with another like male. Yet they still are productive in the whole.

So further with humans as statistics go the homosexual while the less likely on the statistical scale really has no uniqueness about it as it can be normal within the human model. Its a matter of choice, no different than saying I prefer whatever, red-heads over blondes and so forth. Its preference of choice thus comfort. I would think any behavior in the sequence follows from here be it positive or negative. For example the Flamingo homosexual birds have attempted to steal eggs from the others, and so forth. Thus a sequence of negative behavior which is then a moral judgment of right or wrong from the remainder of the flock.

Still what I’m saying is within this bird model, they appear much more responsible as a whole than us. It is so because of understanding.

Isn’t possible that the diff between male-female flamingos, are so subtle that some of them are actually confused and do not see that the partner is the wrong sex? Somehow both have to be confused, maybe too long shot.

 

[DrTaffy]

Dr. Taffy is under the delusion that gay marriage was a cross-cultural norm, until the Christians ruined everything.

Initially, I thought he/she was reasonable – now I’m not so sure.

Now you are both being rude. And ‘he’

The Arapaho: Alfred L. Kroeber, The Arapaho, 18 Bull. Am. Museum Nat. Hist. 1, 19 (1902)
The Navajo: W.W. Hill, The Status of the Hermaphrodite and Transvestite in Navajo Culture, 37 Am. Anthropologist 273 (1935)
The Mohave: George Devereux, Institutionalized Homosexuality of the Mohave Indians, 9 Hum.
Biology 498 (1937)
Winnebago: Nancy 0. Lurie, Winnebago Berdache, 55 Am. Anthropologist 708 (1953)
The Pima: W.W. Hill, Note on the Pima Berdache, 40 Am. Anthropologist 338 (1938)
Zuni: Elsie C. Parsons, The Zuni La’Mana, 18 Am. Anthropologist 521 (1916)
Matilda C. Stevenson, The Zuni Indians, The Twenty-Third Ann. Rep. Bureau Am. Ethnology 3 (1904)
Will Roscoe, The Zuni Man-Woman 29-52 (1991)
Tahiti: Robert I. Levy, The Community Function of Tahitian Male Transvestitism, 44 Anthropological Q. 12 (1971)

Charles Callender & Lee M. Kochems, The North American Berdache, 24 Current Anthropology 443 (1983)
James S. Thayer, The Berdache of the Northern Plains, 36 J. Anthropological Res. 287 (1980)
Donald G. Forgey, The Institution of Berdache Among the North American Plains Indians, 11 J. Sex Res. 1 (1975)

Francisco Guerra, The Pre-Columbian Mind (1971) :
Cites many reports of same sex marriage, for example:
Francisco Lopez de Gomara, History of the Indies (1552)
Alvar Cabeza de Vaca , Narrative of the Expeditions and Shipwrecks of Cabeza de Vaca (1542)
Juan de Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana (1615)
Pedro de Magdlhaes, The Histories of Brazil (1576)

Siberia:
David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality(1988)

Among the Paleo-Siberians (Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal, Asiatic Eskimo), male shamans were ordered by a female spirit to dress as women. As the spirit often became a supernatural spouse who was jealous of earthly women, many of the shamans acquired male sexual partners who had intercourse with them anally, and most of them married other men.’

Waldemar Bogoras, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition: The Chukchee 451 (Franz Boas ed., 1904-1909)

The marriage [between a soft man and his husband] is performed with the usual rites, and I must say that it forms a quite solid union, which often lasts till the death of one of the parties. The couple live much in the same way as do other people. The man tends his herd and goes hunting and fishing, while the “wife” takes care of the house, performing all domestic pursuits and work. They cohabit in a perverse way, modo Socratis, in which the transformed wife always plays the passive role.

Similar traditions in Vietnam, India, Burma, Korea, Nepal, the Austral Islands, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands

Africa:
Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society 48-49 (1987)
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Sexual Inversion Among the Azande, 72 Am. Anthropologist 1428-34 (1970)

David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality(1988)

The mugawe, a powerful religious leader of the Kenyan Meru, is considered a complement to the male political leaders and consequently must exemplify feminine qualities: he wears women’s clothing and adopts women’s hairstyles; he is often homosexual, and sometimes marries a man.

Melville J. Herskovits, A Note on “Woman Marriage” in Dahomey, 10 Africa 335 (1937)
Eileen J. Krige, Note on the Phalaborwa and Their Morula Complex, 11 Bantu Stud. 357 (1937).
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer 108-09 (1951):

What seems to us, but not at all to Nuer, a somewhat strange union is that in which a woman marries another woman and counts as the pater [father] of the children born of the wife. Such marriages are by no means uncommon in Nuerland, and they must be regarded as a form of simple legal marriage, for the woman-husband marries her wife in exactly the same way as a man marries a woman

Denise O’Brien, Female Husbands in Southern Bantu Societies, in Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View 109 (Alice Schlegel ed., 1977)

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

Egypt:
Sifra Aharei Mot 8:8–9]

What did they do? A man married a man, and a woman married a woman, a man would marry a woman and her daughter, and a woman married two men.

(Supported by burials of male same sex couples with stela depicting them in intimate poses. Including one king, Akhenaten)
See also the Siwa Oasis where same sex marriage traditions persisted into the modern era.
Walter Cline, Notes of the People of Siwah and el Garah in the Libyan Desert (Leslie Spier ed., 1936)
Edmund Leach, Marriage, Legitimacy, Alliance, in Social Anthropology 176, 210 (1982)

Hittite code of law covering male same sex couples:
Ephraim Neufeld, The Hittite Laws 8-11 (1951)

Rome:
Martial, Juvenal and Cicero all mention same sex (male) marriages taking place with the same rites and under the same laws as opposite sex marriages.

 

[DrTaffy]

If you wanted, you could have said, “quid pro quo”, and anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of Latin would have gotten the point.

No, anyone who understood latin would realise that I didn’t understand that phrase!

 

[PRmerger]

No, anyone who understood latin would realise that I didn’t understand that phrase!

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You are confusing the argument with the conclusion. A subjective argument can reach the same conclusion as an objective one, but that does make the subjective argument objective. For that matter, an invalid argument based on utterly false premises can reach a conclusion that happens to be true - this does not make the argument valid or the premises true.

And argument based on your religious beliefs is very obviously subjective.

(1) All arguments are subjective. Give me an example of an objective argument.

(2) Can religious beliefs be true? If so, then truths embodied in religious beliefs DO have a role in public policy.

(3) Do you know of any non-religious justification for the view that all people are of equal worth?

 

[DrTaffy]

Flamingos for example being highly social exhibit all these traits we are talking about, heterosexual, bi-sexual, homosexual and so forth.

Or Black Swans. 25% of pairings are male-male, they will use surrogate mothers to produce chicks, then raise those chicks with a 70% success rate, compared to 30% success rates in heterosexual pairs.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The Arapaho: Alfred L. Kroeber, The Arapaho, 18 Bull. Am. Museum Nat. Hist. 1, 19 (1902)
The Navajo: W.W. Hill, The Status of the Hermaphrodite and Transvestite in Navajo Culture, 37 Am. Anthropologist 273 (1935)

etc.

Thank you for the citations, which prove that the practice is not unheard of, maybe even not abnormal. But you made several statements that suggested that same-sex marriage was a normal aspect of most cultures, until Christians came onto the scene. Those statements are unsubstantiated.