Separation of religious and civil marriage

[PRmerger]

Indulge me while I switch to a different scenario of the close to one half million kids in foster care many of whom do not fare well. Rather than expend rhetoric, time, money and energy on condemning SS parenting why not put our rhetoric, efforts, time and money to promoting good families for those in real need.

We are perfectly capable of doing both, frobert.

I typically find these “rather than doing [A], shouldn’t you be doing **” arguments a bit odd.

Why create a dichotomy where none exists?**

 

[frobert]

We are perfectly capable of doing both, frobert.

I typically find these “rather than doing [A], shouldn’t you be doing **” arguments a bit odd.

Why create a dichotomy where none exists?**

A valid point which I believe will come in handy for me in future discussions.

I brought the idea up for 2 reasons, the first is selfish in that I am partial to feeding the hungry and helping kids in foster care.

The second is I believe a page out of Pope Francis book when he encourages us to pay more attention to those in need and less to what divides us. And also his hope expressed in the Synod regarding the “gifts and qualities” gay people can offer. He probably didn’t have SS parenting in mind but I find the potential intriguing.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Let’s go back 100 years and ask people: what is marriage?

Go back and read anything from 100 years ago in English. You’ll find that the meanings of several words have been evolving and drifting. Our modern usage of many words has changed from earlier usages of those words and their root forms. But as we discussed before there have often been disagreements over these changes. “Marriage” is another one of those words that is changing reflecting changes in law and culture. I don’t expect there to be a time in the near future in which there won’t be some disagreement in how the word is applied.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Well, the confusion today is due to folks trying to re-define it.

Let’s go back 100 years and ask people: what is marriage?

No one would tell you: it’s a legal commitment recognizing 2 men who love each other sexually.

…

Or back 150 years, or 300, or 500, or 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 or as far back in human history as you wish across the planet. You will find that every society recognized an institution involving publicly acknowledging a relationship between members of the opposite sex, with no equivalent recognition of the same type of institution between members of the same sex. In some cultures this involved polygamy, but it was reserved for opposite sex relationships and a from of exclusivity. Others outside that bond were prohibited from intruding, and if they did faced publicly acknowledged and enforced consequences. Even in societies more accepting of, and with more widespread existence of homosexual relationships than ours today. The push to recognize a similar institution involving same sex couples is peculiar to our generation.

This institution exists even in societies/cultures which accept the idea of sexual slavery as being valid and different than marriage. It involves far more than just a sexual component. It is in the interests of society as it contributes to social and civil stability, assures the care and upbringing of the young in accordance with the societies values.

Now, in the US where we adhere to the concept that civil government will not interfere with religious observance/practice we have a problem with continued use of the term marriage to cover legal obligations as the definition changes. And it is changing, we have embarked on a huge social experiment. If some religious organizations recognize marriage between same sex couples, we can’t really refuse that and the same time uphold the civil doctrine of freedom to practice religion. I don’t want to be forced to use the term for unions I believe are invalid. I don’t want my organization forced into participating in them. But if my freedom to practice my religion is to be respected, I do have a problem with saying some other religion can’t practice their beliefs as they see fit.

Standards of morality change. Back and forth. Used to be polygamy was considered legal and valid as a form of marriage. We might get back to that as some folks are already suing to have their polygamous relationships recognized using the same type of legal arguments as gay marriage.

If some forms of relationships are not to be allowed legally than a compelling argument needs to be made on a non-religious basis as to why they are detrimental to society. Some single mothers (like my grandmother) do a fantastic job raising kids. Statistically, however, kids from single mother households are far more likely to suffer from emotional, physical, and psychological abuse and far more likely to be involved in substance abuse and violent crime. Yet, we’re not using those statistics to prohibit/discourage no-fault divorce or to prohibit/discourage single mother households. So, given that all we have right now are studies (often biased one way or the other) on how kids are affected being raised in gay households, we’ll have to wait and see what really occurs. It would have to be far worse-- and be shown to be related specifically to being raised by same sex parents vice the result of being the product of a surrogacy. I.E. it’s not the parents they have, but the affect of knowing they were just a product/commodity to at least one of their biological parents.

I’m actually more interested in individualized legal contract arrangements vice a pre-defined set of obligations/benefits to marriage as a response to the problems caused by no fault divorce on kids than as a response to gay marriage.

 

[_Abyssinia]

I think the study you are referring to is the one sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics which spans 3 decades.

Siegel, a School of Medicine professor of pediatrics, coauthored a report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics the week before the court case, arguing that three decades of research concur that kids of gay parents are doing just fine.

“Many studies have demonstrated that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents,” Siegel writes with coauthor Ellen Perrin, a Tufts University professor of pediatrics and director of developmental and behavioral pediatrics.

In an interview with BU Today, Siegel acknowledges the limits of all this research: none of the studies has been a randomized, controlled trial—the Holy Grail of scientific investigation—and all studies of gay parenting are necessarily small, since there aren’t many gay parents. The report cites estimates that gay couples and single parents are raising almost two million American children.

Granted, samples are small and the nature of science is to be skeptical but it is an excellent start. I have come across many people here on CAF who believe that the ONLY credible parent are legitimately married man and woman and have made up their minds that SS sex parenting should be stopped if not eliminated. The study referred to spans 3 decades and does not falsify that SS parents are incapable of providing quality parenting and a suitable environment to raise children. If fact the implications are that it is the quality of the parents and not the orientation that is the important condition.

Indulge me while I switch to a different scenario of the close to one half million kids in foster care many of whom do not fare well. Rather than expend rhetoric, time, money and energy on condemning SS parenting why not put our rhetoric, efforts, time and money to promoting good families for those in real need.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I would guess that the majority of children that homosexual couples are adopting are babies or very young, not the children who are in foster care who are neither babies nor very young. There may not be many situations where there would be a choice between a child staying in foster care vs being adopted by a homosexual couple, if not many homosexual couples want to adopt a child of a considerable age.

American Psychological Associated cited 59 studies in a 2005 brief. Researcher Loren Marks’ remarks on this:

[N]ot one of the 59 studies referenced in the 2005 APA Brief compares a large, random, representative sample of lesbian or gay parents and their children with a large, random, representative sample of married parents and their children. The available data, which are drawn primarily from small convenience samples, are insufficient to support a strong generalizable claim either way. Such a statement would not be grounded in science. To make a generalizable claim, representative, large-sample studies are needed—many of them.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000580

Since 2005 some more studies have come out, but I doubt there are many that aren’t open to social desirability bias, large samples etc.

Why should children be put with homosexual parents when the research is lacking large representative studies etc.

Frank Ligtvoet and his male partner are raising children; check this out:

By FRANK LIGTVOET
Published: June 22, 2013

SOMETIMES when my daughter, who is 7, is nicely cuddled up in her bed and I snuggle her, she calls me Mommy. I am a stay-at-home dad. My male partner and I adopted both of our children at birth in open domestic adoptions. We could fill our home with nannies, sisters, grandmothers, female friends, but no mothers.

My daughter says “Mommy” in a funny way, in a high-pitched voice. Although I refer the honors immediately to her birth mom, I am flattered. But saddened as well, because she expresses herself in a voice that is not her own. It is her stuffed-animal voice. She expresses not only love; she also expresses alienation. She can role-play the mother-daughter relationship, but she cannot use her real voice, nor have the real thing.

nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/the-misnomer-of-motherless-parenting.html

Why should that child be deprived of having a mother-daughter relationship?

 

[1newcatholic]

Or back 150 years, or 300, or 500, or 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 or as far back in human history as you wish across the planet. You will find that every society recognized an institution involving publicly acknowledging a relationship between members of the opposite sex, with no equivalent recognition of the same type of institution between members of the same sex.

If you had actually undertaken this research project, you would have disproven your hypothesis.

 

[PRmerger]

Frank Ligtvoet and his male partner are raising children; check this out:

By FRANK LIGTVOET
Published: June 22, 2013

Wow. That is the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time.

 

[PRmerger]

A valid point which I believe will come in handy for me in future discussions.

I brought the idea up for 2 reasons, the first is selfish in that I am partial to feeding the hungry and helping kids in foster care.

That’s a non-sequitur.
You were creating a dichotomy where none needs to exist.

The second is I believe a page out of Pope Francis book when he encourages us to pay more attention to those in need and less to what divides us. And also his hope expressed in the Synod regarding the “gifts and qualities” gay people can offer. He probably didn’t have SS parenting in mind but I find the potential intriguing.

Amen!
Another non-sequitur, nonetheless.

 

[PRmerger]

Or back 150 years, or 300, or 500, or 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 or as far back in human history as you wish across the planet. You will find that every society recognized an institution involving publicly acknowledging a relationship between members of the opposite sex, with no equivalent recognition of the same type of institution between members of the same sex.

Egg-zactly.

 

[1newcatholic]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions:

*While it is a relatively new practice that same-sex couples are being granted the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly used by mixed-sexed couples, there is some history of recorded same-sex unions around the world.[2] Various types of same-sex unions have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.

A same-sex union was known in Ancient Greece and Rome,[2] ancient Mesopotamia,[3] in some regions of China, such as Fujian province, and at certain times in ancient European history.[4] These same-sex unions continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans, which prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed. [5]*

How is it that some of you can’t even be bothered to do basic research before you spout off like you know ANYTHING AT ALL about the history of same sex marriage?

 

[frobert]

That’s a non-sequitur.
You were creating a dichotomy where none needs to exist.

Amen!
Another non-sequitur, nonetheless.

So what is your point? I agreed that you had a valid point. I agreed that you had a valid point. I told what I was thinking when I brought it up, the dichotomy was an unintended consequence. That the post does not satisfy you is your problem. And by-the-way haven’t you created dichotomies yourself?

 

[PRmerger]

So what is your point? Haven’t you created dichotomies yourself?

There is nothing wrong with creating dichotomies…where they actually exist.

But you ought not create dichotomies…where none exist.

For example: saying “Why don’t you Catholics work on feeding the poor rather than fight against gay ‘marriage’?”

That’s creating a false dichotomy. Catholics are perfectly capable of doing BOTH.

True dichotomies = just fine.
False dichotomies = bad.

Examples of true dichotomies:

• This cannot be both a square and a circle.
• http://www.i2symbol.com/images/symbols/geometry/large_circle_u25EF_icon_256x256.png
• A man cannot be both a bachelor and married.
• There cannot be both One God and Many Gods.

 

[frobert]

*]http://www.i2symbol.com/images/symbols/geometry/large_circle_u25EF_icon_256x256.png

Pretty circle.

 

[DrTaffy]

As long as your description is consonant with truth, we say

Great, so we can call two men or two women married as long as they have gone through the legal process to which that term orignally applied.

LOL!!! The State defined marriage?

Yes, as explained many times. To you, indeed.

The word ‘marriage’ stems from the latin, which both predates Christianity and referred to a civil institution, and was used on numerous occasions to refer to same sex couples, including emperors.

You do realise that the Bible was not written in English originally, so cannot define the word ‘marriage’? :ehh:

Nor have you addressed the catch-22 that if marriage cannot be refefined by the State, then that would apply not only to modern legal recognition of same sex marriage, but also to when the Christian Emperors tried to redefine ‘marriage’ to exclude same sex couple.

So heads I win, tails you lose!

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll3oeqQXbe1qbvaudo1_500.gif

So you can disabuse yourself of the ga-ga, la-la nonsense that the Church has forbidden homosexuals from describing their feelings for each other as “love”.

You really cannot have a polite conversation, can you? It always has to come down to personal abuse and sneering animated GIFs!

YOU raised the parallel of “love” - I merely pointed out that for it to be relevant you would have to be trying to prevent homosexuals from applying the term to their relationship. So feel free to describe your own objection as “ga-ga, la-la nonsense” if you so wish.

 

[PRmerger]

You really cannot have a polite conversation, can you?

I think my record speaks for itself.

No infractions. Never been banned. Never been suspended.

27,000 posts.

Pretty good record I’d say.

What about you?

 

[DrTaffy]

How is it that some of you can’t even be bothered to do basic research before you spout off like you know ANYTHING AT ALL about the history of same sex marriage?

Research takes effort. Self righteous condemnation takes none.

Examples of civilisations that had same sex marriage.

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 contemporary 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.

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.

 

[_Abyssinia]

Research takes effort. Self righteous condemnation takes none.

Examples of civilisations that had same sex marriage.

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 contemporary 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)

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

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)

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):

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

Egypt:
Sifra Aharei Mot 8:8–9]

(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.

Even if homosexual ‘marriage’ was legal historically in many places, that doesn’t make it morally right. There have been plenty of things legal and not legal that have been practiced that are reprehensible.

Where was marriage legally recognised in any of the places you mention between people of the same gender? You mention Rome, and there were homosexual type marriage ceremonies, but were they recognised legally as official marriages? Wikipedia references a book called ‘Roman homosexuality’ by Craig Arthur Williams and Wikipedia says:

Roman law did not recognize marriage between men

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome

Follow The Footnote or the Advocate as Historian of Same-Sex Marriage attempts to deal with a lot of the claims about historical ‘marriage’ by people such as William Eskridge:

scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1468&context=lawreview

 

[PRmerger]

Follow The Footnote or the Advocate as Historian of Same-Sex Marriage attempts to deal with a lot of the claims about historical ‘marriage’ by people such as William Eskridge:

scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1468&context=lawreview

Most insightful, trenchant, scholarly, well-researched article I have read on the reputed same sex “marriage” history. As stated earlier: ga-ga, la-la nonsense.

"To the contrary, no one has ever argued that samesex
marriages are “unheard of.” Rather, it has been argued only that the
world’s major civilizations, and most of its minor ones, have not conferred
upon same-sex unions the status of marriage as that has been understood
in each of those civilizations.

 

[PRmerger]

Most insightful, trenchant, scholarly, well-researched article I have read on the reputed same sex “marriage” history. As stated earlier: ga-ga, la-la nonsense.

"To the contrary, no one has ever argued that samesex
marriages are “unheard of.” Rather, it has been argued only that the
world’s major civilizations, and most of its minor ones, have not conferred
upon same-sex unions the status of marriage as that has been understood
in each of those civilizations.

My favorite quote from the article:

“First, he impresses
those who are easy to impress.”

QED

 

[1newcatholic]

Even if homosexual ‘marriage’ was legal historically in many places, that doesn’t make it morally right. There have been plenty of things legal and not legal that have been practiced that are reprehensible.

As an American and a Catholic, I’m not interested in imposing my religious definition of ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’ marriage on people who are not participating in my religious tradition.

That’s why I support separating religious and civil marriage, as many other countries have done.

The Catholic Church is welcome to maintain its traditional teachings about marriage and sexual complementarity, and in my own private opinion these traditions are both pragmatic and reasonable. But I have not confused America, a kingdom of this world, with the Church, the kingdom of God.

It’s absurd to expect the secular laws of a worldly kingdom to reflect and enforce my religious beliefs, when the scriptures and the saints of that very tradition have taught for centuries that these two kingdoms are fundamentally opposed, and that we should not expect perfect cooperation between them.