Gay unions accepted as routine in cultures for centuries

Salt Lake City Tribune ^ | Feb 29, 2004 | Will Bagley

[george wythe]

Marriage, says BYU law professor Richard G. Wilkins, "has always been about one sexual relationship -- the union of a man and a woman." Of course, this would be news to Brigham Young, who said "I do" to some 56 women.

    Consider the furor and outrage Mormon polygamy evoked in the 19th century.

    The laws sanctifying the one-man, one-woman model of marriage had forced millions upon millions of women "to become a prey to man's lust and a consuming sacrifice upon the altar of illicit passion," the Deseret Evening News thundered in December 1885.

    "One man to one woman only," the newspaper proclaimed, was "the exception in Christendom as well as heathendom" and was "one impracticable standard."

    The News argued that polygamous marriage "prevails all over the world, and those who pretend to the contrary are very simple or very untruthful." That's a debatable point, even though it appeared in the pages of what The Salt Lake Tribune used to call "the font of truth," but marriage has been a flexible institution throughout history.

    Much of the current debate over same-sex marriage reflects a relatively new tradition of fear and hatred of homosexuals in American culture. The concept of homosexuality only appeared in European medical literature in the late 1860s and reached the United States by 1892, but it was the sodomy trial of British poet Oscar Wilde in 1895 that introduced the concept to popular culture.

The "queer eye" was nothing new, however, even in Utah.

    When Wilde (popularly known as the "Sunflower Apostle") visited Salt Lake City in 1882, he complimented LDS Church President John Taylor for his fine aesthetic judgment, and the Deseret News reported that young men adorned with enormous sunflowers filled the front row of his crowded lecture on interior decorating. (None of this was a stereotype in 1882.)

    The Victorians turned it into an identity, but same-sex sex has been going on since time immemorial and was considered entirely natural in ancient Greece and Rome.

    First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill didn't actually say "the only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash," but he may have wished he had.

    Rather than treat gay people as social outcasts, many cultures integrated men and women with transsexual natures into their societies. When French Jesuit missionaries found men among the Iroquois who dressed and acted as women, they called them berdache, incorrectly equating them with male prostitutes.

    Many scholars now prefer the term "two-spirit." American Indian languages had a variety of terms -- winkte (Lakota), nadleeh (Navajo), hemanah (Cheyenne), kwid-(Tewa), tainna wa'ippe (Shoshone), dubuds (Paiute) and lhamana (Zuni) to identify "a person who has both male and female spirits within," notes Lakota scholar Beatrice Medicine.

    Anthropologists such as Elsie Parsons long ago observed that two-spirited men often married other men. Even earlier, William Clark told the first editor of the Lewis and Clark journals that Hidatsa boys who showed "girlish inclinations" were raised as women and married men.

    Somehow, male-female marriage managed to survive in these cultures. Marriage even survived polygamy, which had extended the "blessings of matrimony and of home instead of discarding or destroying them," the Deseret News argued. "It surrounds the domestic relations with safeguards and a sacredness that are stronger and more enduring than any others."

    Restricting such a good thing seems selfish.

Historian Will Bagley is happily married.

[StarCMC]

The Victorians turned it into an identity, but same-sex sex has been going on since time immemorial and was considered entirely natural in ancient Greece and Rome.

Yes, and where are those cultures now? Can anyone say "decline?"

[ClearCase_guy]

"Many cultures"? And they all seem to be Amerindians. Which is to say, stone age peoples.

Yeah, we should be like that.

[lady lawyer]

This guy is deliberately misreading Richard Wilkins. Even polygamous marriages are about the sexual union of man and woman.

[Angelus Errare]

The Greco-Roman culture viewed same-sex relations much the same way that we today do heavy drinking - something to laugh at from abroad, but hardly something to actively promote. It never once occurred to them to marry a man to a man or a woman to a woman because it was understood that marriage was an institution designed for heterosexuals.

I also very much doubt that many ancient cultures that tolerated homosexuality had anything resembling that the rather peculiar subculture that has grown up in the last 100 years or so that we today refer to as "gay." Even in Greco-Roman times it was understood that those who engaged in such relations would eventually go on into heterosexual relationship and marriages.

[billorites]

We're mainstream!
Really!

[Michael.SF.]

American Indian languages had a variety of terms -- winkte (Lakota)

Winkte?

I don't think one needs to be a Lakota Sioux to understand that that term sounds pretty gay.

[Restorer]

Yes, and where are those cultures now? Can anyone say "decline?"

Unfortunately for the "homosexuality caused the decline" of these cultures theory, the greatest popularity of homosexuality coincided quite nicely with the greatest period for each. Their decline actually concided with a return to more "traditional" morality.

Personally, I can find lots of other, entirely historical reasons for being opposed to these practices.

[george wythe]

Since it's been a while since I took any anthropology class, I googled the term "berdache" and found this picture:

It comes from this article:

Over 130 different Native American tribes had a special category of men who wore women's clothing, spent their time doing "women's work" such as basket weaving and pottery, and held a sacred, spiritual role in the tribe. Berdaches had sex with other men, and marriages between a berdache and another man were common. Sometimes in a polygamous marriage, a berdache became a secondary "wife" to a male who was already married to one or more women.

American Heritage Dictionary defines berdache:

Among certain Native American peoples, a person, usually a male, who assumes the gender identity and is granted the social status of the opposite sex.

[whereasandsoforth]

You mean after all this time we now know it wasn't the white man's fault! The Indians screwed themselves?

[george wythe]

Even in Greco-Roman times it was understood that those who engaged in such relations would eventually go on into heterosexual relationship and marriages

Just like the Arabs?

I've read many reports from Westerners about homosexual sex being common in Arab countries, but men always end up getting married in order to continue the family name.

[StarCMC]

Sorry - don't buy it. It takes a while for those things to affect the standing of the country. Doesn't happen overnight.

[Theo]

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill didn't actually say "the only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash," but he may have wished he had. What is that doing in the middle of this poorly-written piece? Bizarre. This author wrote this late at night after 3 glasses of merlot.

[FlatLandBeer]

hy is this called hate speech. It offends Catholics

[Redcoat LI]

"Historian Will Bagley is happily 'married'."

To what?

[george wythe]

Even polygamous marriages are about the sexual union of man and woman.

Do you happen to know what happened to Brigham Young's marriages according to Mormon theology after he died?

Is Brigham Young still in a polygamist marriage to his 56 wives, or is he united to only one of them in the Mormon afterlife?

[justshutupandtakeit]

It is false that the ancient Greeks considered homos "normal." Man/boy relationships were certainly more complex than today but when a man refused marriage and children and became the passive partner in homo relations, they were scourned, ridiculed or worse. That role was acceptable for a boy but not a man.

Read what Plato said about such relations in "The Laws" it ain't pleasant. Much of the homo relations refered to in Greece were not of the carnal nature hence the term "platonic." In addition, any sexual relations were not of the type favored by modern queers.

[demnomo]

...Historian Will Bagley is happily married.

To whom? Or should I say to what? A man? A goat? A (gasp) woman?

As a happily married woman whose husband happens to be a MAN, I think the idea of polygamy stinks. It seemed to cause a lot more problems in the Old Testament and is still causing more than a few in this day and age. If homosexuals are allowed to marry, polygamists wanting their right to the pursuit of happiness can't be far behind. What's to stop this from happening? Ugh.

I'm sure a few FReeper guys think this might be a great idea. Think again, guys. Each of your wives will have their very own charge accounts and will play a game of musical PMS every month. :)

[Angelus Errare]

I'm uncertain - certainly a number of younger al-Qaeda jihadis have turned out to have been molested by their superiors in the Afghan camps and a number of the Pakistani madrassa chiefs are evidently pedophiles, but I'm wary about judging cultural attitudes on a particular subject on the basis of members of a terrorist organization.

I do know from my own reading that the Qur'an that homosexual relations are condemned there in no uncertain terms as well as that all Muslim countries maintain anti-sodomy laws. The Malaysian deputy prime minister was actually sacked on the trumped-up allegation that he engaged in such practices. But no honest clue as to just how common these things are.

[george wythe]

To whom? Or should I say to what? A man? A goat? A (gasp) woman?

LOL! All I know is that he lives in Utah.

Which kind of marriages are common in Utah?