The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

It is not an idiotic issue if you are gay and you want to get married to someone you love and you are not allowed simply because of someone's else's beliefs.

Revel writes

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It is not an idiotic issue if you are gay and you want to get married to someone you love and you are not allowed simply because of someone's else's beliefs.

Marriage is a civil union between a man and a woman. Whether straight or gay, everybody is subject to the same law and has identical rights. The law neither refers to love nor requires it for that civil union and sexual orientation is a non issue so far as the law is concerned.

Many would support a similar type civil union for others who wish to form themselves into family groups, but they need to pick a different word than marriage as marriage is what it is. And these other groups can have whatever religious ceremony they want or none at all just like married people can.

It is not the word that makes the love you know.

and within a couple of generations or so we won't have anybodyaround pushing these kinds of idiotic issues.

Sorry, ff, but I am not going to compromise my civil rights because some homophobes have a problem with calling it what it is: marriage.

It is marriage so long as you legally marry a consenting person of the opposite sex. Everybody has the identical same right in that regard. If you want to form a legal union with a person of the same sex, I will fight for your right to do that. Just pick a different word because it won't be marriage that requires a union of opposite sexes.

echi wrote:

blatham wrote:

Why not leave churches out of it?

Because marriage is a religious institution. Government's involvement is relatively recent.

Are you sure? In what historical context? Even during much of American history, neither organized civil nor religious authorities were present in many communities. What of other earlier times and cultures?

Marriage began as an establishment of religioun.

blatham wrote:

echi wrote:

blatham wrote:

Why not leave churches out of it?

Because marriage is a religious institution. Government's involvement is relatively recent.

Are you sure? In what historical context? Even during much of American history, neither organized civil nor religious authorities were present in many communities. What of other earlier times and cultures?

Marriage began as an establishment of religioun. It wasn't until the 1800s that you needed a license to get married in the U.S. Although it was already somewhat entangled in state law, that was all carried over from the Church of England. State marriage law has been around a long time, but the institution is a spiritual one and, according to the U.S. Constitution, should be left to the church.

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Marriage began as an establishment of religion.

Where and when? What are your historical sources for this claim?

blatham wrote:

Quote:

Marriage began as an establishment of religion.

Where and when? What are your historical sources for this claim?

I will try to find sources that will satisfy you. Do you have any evidence to support that marriage was first instituted by the state?

blatham wrote:

Quote:

Marriage began as an establishment of religion.

Where and when? What are your historical sources for this claim?

I will try to find sources that will satisfy you. Do you have any evidence to support that marriage was first instituted by the state?

blatham wrote:

Quote:

Marriage began as an establishment of religion.

Where and when? What are your historical sources for this claim?

I will try to find sources that will satisfy you. Do you have any evidence to support that marriage was first instituted by the state?

Introduction

Ideographically, 婚 (pinyin: hūn) is identical to 昏 (pinyin: hūn, literally meaning "evening" or "dusk"). In more ancient writings, though the former has the radical 女 (pinyin: nǔ, which literally means "a female"). This implies that courting couples met in the evening. Similarly, 姻 (pinyin: yīn) is the same as 因 (pinyin: yīn). According to Zhang Yi's (張揖) Guangya Shigu (廣雅•釋詁), a dictionary of ancient Chinese characters, 因 (pinyin: yīn) means "friendliness", "love" and "harmony", indicating that correct way of living for a married couple.
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Marriage in a Confucian Context

In Confucian thought, marriage is of grave significance both to families and to society. Traditionally incest has been defined as marriage between people with the same surname. From the perspective of a Confucian family, marriage brings together families of different surnames and so continues the family line of the paternal clan. This is generally why having a boy is more preferred than a girl when giving birth. Therefore, the benefits and demerits of any marriage are important to the entire family, not just the individual couples. Socially, the married couple is thought to be the basic unit of society. In Chinese history there have been many times when marriages have affected the country's political stablity and international relations. From the Han dynasty the rulers of certain powerful foreign tribes such as the Mongolians, the Manchus, the Xiongnu, and the Turks demanded women from the Imperial family. Many periods of Chinese history were dominated by the families of the wife or mother of the ruling Emperor. Thus marriage can be related to politics.
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Prehistoric Chinese marriages
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Marriages in Early Societies

In traditional Chinese thinking people in "primitive" societies did not marry, but had sexual relationships with one and other indiscriminately. Such people were thought to live like other animals, and they did not have the precise concept of motherhood, fatherhood, sibling, husband and wife, and gender, not to mention match-making and marriage ceremony. Part of the Confucian "civilizing mission" was to define what it meant to be a Father or a Husband, and to teach people to respect the proper relationship between family members and regulate sexual behavior.
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Sibling marriages

Sibling marriage, although forbidden in Chinese culture, was reported to a minor extent in very early Chinese mythology. There was a story about the marriage of Nüwa and Fu Xi, who were once sister and brother respectively. At that time the world was unpopulated. The siblings wanted to get married but, at the same time, they felt ashamed. So they went up to Kunlun Shan and prayed to Heaven. They asked for Heaven's permission for their marriage and said, "if You allow us to marry, please make the mist surround us." Heaven gave permission to the couple, and promptly the peak was covered in mist. It is said that in order to hide her shyness, Nüwa covered her blushing face with a fan. Nowadays in some villages in China, the brides still follow the custom and use a fan to shield their faces.
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Inter-clan marriage and antithetic marriage

In Chinese society males should not marry females of the same surname (this have been largely disregarded in recent era as the Chinese population expanded to such an extent that people who hold the same surname might have little or no relation with each other at all). This is seen as incest and it is thought there is a risk that abnormal births might result. Marriage of a son to close relatives of his mother, however, is not seen as incest. Different clans might have more than one surname. Historically, there were numerous important clans living along the Yellow River in the ancient China, like the tribe of Huang Di with the common surname Ji and that of Yan Di with the surname Jiang. Because marriage to one's maternal relatives was not thought of as incest these families sometimes intermarried from one generation to another.

Over time Chinese people became more geographically mobile. Couples were married in what is called an extra-clan marriage, or better known as antithetic marriage. This occurred in the midst of the New Stone Age, i.e. around 5000 BC. According to modern Chinese scholars of a Marxist persuasion Matriarchy prevailed in society at that time, therefore husbands needed to move to, and live with, their wives' families. Yet individuals remained members of their biological families. When a couple died, the husband and the wife were buried separately in the respective clan's graveyard. Offspring would be buried with their mother. Antithetic marriage still happens in modern China. In Yunnan, males and females in the minority group known as Nakhi form temporary couples, and they call each other "Ahchu" rather than "husband and wife". The male "Ahchu"s live and work in the home of the female "Ahchu"s.
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Maternal marriage and Monogamy

In a maternal marriage, a male would become a son-in-law who lived in the wife's home. The husband would also need to change his surname into his wife's one. This happed in the transformation of antithetic marriage into monogamy, which signifying that the decline of matriarchy and the growing dominance of patriarchy in the ancient China.

It is precisely because the origins are so shrouded that my request for evidence to the contrary was valid.


twin_peaks_nikki...
I said I would try to find evidence, remember? Settle down.


blatham...
Thanks for the advice. I do know to evaluate the legitimacy of information sources.


I was unable to find evidence to support my claim. I did find some evidence that marriage, in fact, came about for political and economic reasons and that love and religion were in no way involved.

Checkmate.

twin_peaks_nikki wrote:

Checkmate.

Huh?