Arnold’s Gay Rights Give-and-Take - Governor signs civil rights bill...

Coast Weekly ^ | Oct 06, 2005 | Jessica Lyons

[little jeremiah]

Clicked the link for later reading, thanks.

[Carry_Okie]

My kids are writing a paper on the role of moral virtues in the rise and fall of Rome, of which, homosexuality played a definite part. They are reading several scholarly sources on the topic of which Juvenal's Sixteen Satires are but one.

Homosexuality lowered birth rates and spread plagues, rendering Rome far less capable of manning its army, which then had to be staffed with foriegners. It also meant more importation of labor which diluted the original Roman culture and abetted materiality above philosophy. It spread and deepened a social hierarchy of dominance, debauchery, selfishness, and rapaciousness.

When cities had once opened their gates to the Roman army and welcomed them as liberators, the need to fund Roman decadence turned them into hated conquerors.

Payback was a bitch.

[little jeremiah]

Sounds as though Roman history should be required reading for all and sundry.

Since I am a high school dropout, there are a lot of holes in my fund of general knowledge. I'll definitely read your linked article(s).

[Torie]

Homosexuality lowered birth rates and spread plagues, rendering Rome far less capable of manning its army

I wonder what the evidence of that is. It seems highly dubious. Did Rome keep fertility statistics for the empire, and what percentage of the population ceased having coitus?

I am pinging the resident expert.

[Carry_Okie]

I wonder what the evidence of that is. It seems highly dubious. Did Rome keep fertility statistics for the empire, and what percentage of the population ceased having coitus?

It seems highly dubious.

Oh really? A prevalent preference for sex with males has no effect on the rate of births? Dubious? You can do better than that. After all, they didn't have antiobiotics or disinfectants other than alcohol (which was not distilled).

As one would expect, the evedence for a low Roman birth rate is anecdotal. The lack of births to supply the army is well documented (for example, Octavian established penalties for adultery and childlessness on those grounds; he also reduced taxes on citizens who had more children and paraded a few prolific parents in the streets). As people became more obsessed with pleasures, children became seen as an inconvenience.

[BIRDS]

So, when do we as a state get a real conservative in the Governor's office?

I am right in concluding earlier that Schwarzenegger is a Libertarian long before he'd ever fit into any Conservative description. He's done some good things that I appreciate but I'd really like to see another Reagan in the Governor's office and not just Reagan's memory there.

[BIRDS]

Today I agree with you. I did not perceive earlier supporting Schwarzenegger as "aiding and abetting the GL/whatever agenda" -- my eyes are more open lately. Better late than never.

About Schwarzenegger, it seems he was a small correction to some degree in the state and thus he's in the Governor's office, BUT, I've never perceived him as a conservative but as a libertarian, which means he is socially liberal, and here it is, he is.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

You appear to be so busy hating Arnold, that you aren't even noticing that our own US Senate sold out our safety and just surrendered to the terrorists, they are more worried about the well being of the terrorists, than the lives of innocent Americans.

How do you arrive at that?

I listened to some of the Senate debate and from what I heard , it was putting current practices into a form so the activist judicials couldn't do their damage.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

As people became more obsessed with pleasures, children became seen as an inconvenience.

Describes the situation today for sure.

Politicians garner votes based on the peoples pursuit of pleasure.

[Carry_Okie]

I've never perceived him as a conservative but as a libertarian, which means he is socially liberal, and here it is, he is.

The problem is that the voters of California who passed Prop. 22 had a common understanding of what constitutes marriage. They passed that iniative primarily to protect heterosexual child-rearing. The governor has clearly chosen to go as far as he can to abet the leftistlature in IMPOSING the gay lifestyle upon them and their kids, including marriage in all but name.

This is not just about what people do in their bedrooms and hasn't been for a long time.

[little jeremiah]

Moral Absolutes Ping.

Okay, gang - read up Carry_Okie's comments and check his link in comments 20 and 22. I may be uneducated (no lie) but I have heard of "bread and circuses" to keep the hoi polloi busy and harmless to the elites. Microbrews, street drugs, and satellite TV/porn as modern equivalents? The more people are slaves to their transient impulses for instant gratification, the easier they can be enslaved by overlords, and the consequent anarchic behavior wrought by those addicted to "me first" pleasure necessitates more outside control

Edmund Burke said something like "the less control people have over themselves, the more control is needed from the outside".

Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.

[Carry_Okie]

Interestingly, one of Juvenal's stories involves his revulsion to witnessing the results of an abortion. He speculates that the pregnancy was the result of incest with an uncle, for which he blames the girl almost exclusively.

As part of our study and in search of an anthology on the subjece, we've ordered a book entitled, Roman Homosexuality, from the Oxford University Press. From what I have read it is a modern, rather pro-gay piece, that points out that by far most Roman homosexuality was with prostitues and slaves; i.e., non-consensual. The author apparently believes that the resentment of such created much anger abroad against the Roman authorities.

[BIRDS]

Yes, I understand that.

[calcowgirl]

The problem, imo, is that because the Governor has an (R) by his name, he has little opposition from members of the Republican party, both among voters and among the legislators who go-along to get-along.

Had Gray Davis signed all of these pro-GLBT bills, how many (R) legislators would have been speaking out against his actions? My guess is it would be more than 0%, which is what we have now. In effect, Arnold is being allowed to promote his non-conservative agenda, virtually unopposed.

While he was painted as a social moderate and a fiscal conservative, I agree with your assessment that he is a social liberal. With respect to his fiscal actions, there is little conservativism to find.

[AntiGuv]

Homosexuality lowered birth rates and spread plagues, rendering Rome far less capable of manning its army.

I wonder what the evidence of that is. It seems highly dubious. Did Rome keep fertility statistics for the empire, and what percentage of the population ceased having coitus?

The statement that homosexuality reduced Roman birth rates and spread plagues, rendering Rome far less capable of manning the legions - and I presume by extension inducing the downfall of Rome - is utter and total nonsense. The reasons are probably so multiple that I will miss a few in my initial reply, but here goes.

1. The population of the Roman Empire continued expanding throughout the late Principate and on after the earlier 'barbarian' invasions and the fall of the Eternal City itself.
2. The Roman Empire was expanding vigorously throughout that era when homoerotic behavior reached its greatest degree of expression from the 1st century BC (the Late Republic) until the 2nd century AD (the middle Principate). In fact, this was precisely the era when the Roman Empire became an Empire and conquered Gaul, the Balkans, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Britain, and the Rhineland.
3. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire unfolded during the eras afterward when sexuality became increasingly repressed, from the 3rd century AD until the 5th century AD. This was the time when proto-orthodox Christianity suppressed its rivals and began its ascent, and when the adherents to the preceding Greco-Roman worship embraced steadily more ascetic creeds, such as that of Sol Invictus (a merger of Mithras & Phoebus Apollo).
4. From a premodern historical standpoint, wherever rates of homosexuality have evidently been high, fertility has also tended to be quite high, because in such cultures people apparently tend to have more sex with both sexes, not just with those of the same sex. This is evidently because under premodern rubrics of sexual behavior same-sex eroticism and opposite-sex eroticism are not regarded as mutually exclusive activities. And the tolerance or indulgence of one has generally signified a tolerance and indulgence of the other.

Let me stop there for the moment. Now, on the latter point in particular, this has not always been the case. It is not a hard and fast rule by any stretch. A demographic argument might in fact be advanced that the downfall of classical Sparta (and its colonies) actually resulted from a preference for homosexual relations at the expense of opposite-sex relations. It similarly appears that the northern Italian cities during the period of the Renaissance declined as well for similar reasons, or at the very least were concerned enough about it that Florence, by example, imported prostitutes in an attempt to entice its young men back to heterosexual endeavors (and reproduction in particular).

But with regard to Rome, the very suggestion is beyond ridiculous, and betrays a profound misconception and distortion of the relevant history. If you want a more detailed reply, with citations and so on, then I will be happy to provide that, but it might be a few days, if not weeks. I am very busy right now and already spend way too much time on FR as it is. Heck, I still owe Torie half of a response from all the way back in January, dealing with the historical evidence for the homoerotic inclinations of Richard Lionheart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

You'd thought I'd forgotten, didn't ya?? :)

[AntiGuv]

Oh, I left out the item I was going to include about the actual reasons that the legions declined (hint: it wasn't due to homosexuality). I'll get back with that in a short while.

[Carry_Okie]

The population of the Roman Empire continued expanding throughout the late Principate and on after the earlier 'barbarian' invasions and the fall of the Eternal City itself.

The population of the Empire and the population of Romans are two very different things (I may have been unclear about that and, if so, my apologies). Slaves were being bred in numbers huge enough to exceed the current population of Europe. From what I understand, they were not willing participants in Romon homoeroticism, indeed, quite the contrary.

The Roman Empire was expanding vigorously throughout that era when homoerotic behavior reached its greatest degree of expression from the 1st century BC (the Late Republic) until the 2nd century AD (the middle Principate).

From what I've read so far, the peak of the Empire was with Augustus in the first century AD and started its slow decline soon after (coincidently soon after the introduction of Greco-hedonism), but I'll have more to say about that when we've completed our study.

According to Craig A. Williams, author of Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, Oxford University Press, 1999, you have incorrectly portrayed Roman homosexuality, which was not devoted to eroticism but was more about vir, the ideal of male dominance:

This book provides a thoroughly documented discussion of ancient Roman ideologies of masculinity and sexuality with a focus on ancient representations of sexual experience between males. It gathers a wide range of evidence from the second century B.C. to the second century A.D.--above all from such literary texts as courtroom speeches, love poetry, philosophy, epigram, and history, but also graffiti and other inscriptions as well as artistic artifacts--and uses that evidence to reconstruct the contexts within which Roman texts were created and had their meaning. The book takes as its starting point the thesis that in order to understand the Roman material, we must make the effort to set aside any preconceptions we might have regarding sexuality, masculinity, and effeminacy.

Williams' book argues in detail that for the writers and readers of Roman texts, the important distinctions were drawn not between homosexual and heterosexual, but between free and slave, dominant and subordinate, masculine and effeminate as conceived in specifically Roman terms.

So much for eroticism, and your authority.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire unfolded during the eras afterward when sexuality became increasingly repressed, from the 3rd century AD until the 5th century AD. This was the time when proto-orthodox Christianity suppressed its rivals and began its ascent, and when the adherents to the preceding Greco-Roman worship embraced steadily more ascetic creeds, such as that of Sol Invictus (a merger of Mithras & Phoebus Apollo).

That certainly coincides with Gibbon's opinion from over a couple of hundred years ago. Were Christian repression the problem however, the Eastern Empire would not have continued beyond the fall of Rome as long as it did.

From a premodern historical standpoint, wherever rates of homosexuality have evidently been high, fertility has also tended to be quite high, because in such cultures people apparently tend to have more sex with both sexes, not just with those of the same sex.

Citations please. IIRC, many of said cultures also found need for fertility rites.

This is evidently because under premodern rubrics of sexual behavior same-sex eroticism and opposite-sex eroticism are not regarded as mutually exclusive activities. And the tolerance or indulgence of one has generally signified a tolerance and indulgence of the other.

That eroticism with women being primarily with slaves and prostitutes, the unions of which did not produce Roman citizens, but did birth more slaves.

The current number of miscarriages due to chlamydia alone calls your thesis into question. One might need a higher rate of fertility to overcome the demographic and epidemiological consequences of promiscuity about which you've said nothing.

But with regard to Rome, the very suggestion is beyond ridiculous, and betrays a profound misconception and distortion of the relevant history.

"Relevant" history is it? So far, I have it on pretty good authority that you are distorting history.

If you want a more detailed reply, with citations and so on, then I will be happy to provide that, but it might be a few days, if not weeks.

We're doing the same. Get cracking.

[Carry_Okie]

Oh, I left out the item I was going to include about the actual reasons that the legions declined (hint: it wasn't due to homosexuality). I'll get back with that in a short while.

I don't believe that I stated that homosexuality was the sole or even principal cause of the decline in the legions. If that is your assumption, you are in error.

[AntiGuv]

OK, I left out at least six items that I'd intended to list previously, and will probably still not cover all the reasons why the original assertion is patently and demonstrably false.

1. To begin with, the northern peoples who settled into the Empire and later displaced the Latin authorities (i.e., the Fall of Rome) themselves featured high rates of homoerotic behavior according to Greek and Roman commentators that saw fit to remark upon it. What evidently astounded those that did remark, such as Plato, was not that they engaged in homoeroticism but that they did so with such abandon between adult men, and did not seem to have much problem with taking the 'passive' sexual position.

   Diodorus provides a typical observation: "The men are much keener on their own sex; they lie around on animal skins and enjoy themselves, with a lover on each side. The extraordinary thing is they haven’t the smallest regard for their personal dignity or self-respect; they offer themselves to other men without the least compunction. Furthermore, this isn’t looked down upon, or regarded as in any way disgraceful: on the contrary, if one of them is rejected by another to whom he has offered himself, he takes great offence."

   Idle trivia: The Vandals captured Rome by selecting their 300 most attractive youths whom they sent to the Roman patricians as sexual slaves until a predetermined night whereupon they murdered their masters and threw open the gates of Rome.

2. Now, as for the legions themselves, the reasons for their decline and defeat are very complex and I cannot do them justice here. They involve a sprawling mosaic of sociocultural and politico-economic reasons that one could easily devote an entire text to. But, perhaps more than anything else, it was the degradation of Roman politics during the Late Principate that led to the downfall of the armed forces. The armed forces were a constant threat to the Emperors of Rome, many of whom were assassinated or inaugurated at the whims of the prevailing faction du jour.

   Although certainly not the singular factor, one reason that 'barbarian' mercenaries were preferred in that era was because they could be held at a distance, removed from populist rivalries, and deployed at will, but then withdrawn to the outskirts of the Empire. Now, at the same time, unemployment was running rampant in the cities of the western Empire, not least in Rome itself, where at least 100,000 citizens were fed by the graces of the Emperors.

   Rome hardly suffered from a lack of able bodied men, it suffered from a surplus, displaced from the land by the consolidation of aristocratic estates, and turning to a life of crime, indolence, and agitation in the urban centers. Why didn't they join the legions? Because the Emperors did not maintain the legions, that's why; for economic and political reasons, not because they couldn't find the bodies. It became cheaper (and safer) to give the masses bread and circuses and to hire mercenaries than it was to turn the unemployed rabble into legionaries.

3. With regard to plagues, this is the first time that I have ever heard anyone suggest that homosexuality was the cause of Roman plagues. Moreover, to my knowledge, I cannot think of any Roman plague that one might think would be especially facilitated by homoerotic pursuits. The closest would be herpes, that did indeed ravage the Roman Empire, and that was widely credited to the heterosexual exploits of the Romans, not to the homosexual ones. More to the point, the actual major plagues of the Roman Empire were most attributable to the legions themselves, who carried them back from the campaigns abroad. Such was the case, by example, with great smallpox pandemic during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, which was carried back by the victorious legions from Parthia.

   A more salient health concern, BTW, was the lead piping of the Roman waterworks and the lead-based ornamentation of their dinner implements, which contributed to the high rate of death amongst the Roman citizenry. They surely would've been better off having more sex and eating less, although the two often went hand-in-hand - literally. ;^)

4. Again, from a premodern historical standpoint, martial prowess and homoerotic bonds have evidently tended to go hand-in-hand. This was the case from the Greek hoplites to the Egyptian malamukes to the Japanese samurai. As late as the 9th century Abbo of St-Germain-des-Prés offered a lengthy sermon on the prevalence of homoerotic relations among the French knights during the 9th century Norman siege of Paris, which he insisted would distract the ranks from battle to the point of catastrophe. I am not here suggesting a causative relationship, but merely pointing out that military valor and homoerotic camaraderie were not regarded as mutually exclusive (one may argue that they were in any event, or at least that they are now if not then). The more important point, however, is that in much of premodern history high rates of homoeroticism actually correlated with high rates of military regimentation, and it was quite often those with lower rates (of the type of homoeroticism prevalent amongst soldiers, as opposed to urban centers) that became the conquered. To what extent this does or does not apply to Rome and its adversaries is open to substantial debate.

5. As alluded to at multiple points above, there is no clear divide between sociocultural normative standards of the Roman Empire - and with regard to sexuality in particular - and those of subsequent European societies. It was a long evolutionary process that did not make the final transition into more modern sensibilities, with regard to much that we regard as 'visceral' (which isn't), until after the time of the Black Death in the 14th century, and in some key aspects (such as concepts of individualism) until centuries beyond that. With respect to sexuality in particular, it is beyond dispute that the Roman conception of same-sex behavior (I'm referring to perceptions of its etiology) persisted at least until around the turn of the millennium. Although the history of its prevalence becomes far more fragmentary and circumstantial, there is much reason to think that it remained a significant factor throughout the period in question, though certainly not so much in the public sphere and almost as certainly adopting different modes of expression. What bearing this may have had on the consequent development of European society is unfortunately inscrutable for a variety of reasons. Whatever the case, two points are worth making: (1) The demographic collapse of the Western cities undoubtedly took place primarily within the centuries after the Fall of Rome to Odoacer; (2) By many accounts, the prevalence of homoeroticism in the Eastern cities at least equalled that of the Western cities, if not surpassed it, and yet they continued to thrive for quite some while longer.

6. And this brings us to the final point, which is that there is no clear dividing line between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of what was to follow (which for the sake of brevity let's call Christendom). Definitely the people who lived through the times in question did not perceive of some bright sociocultural line between the Roman imperium and that of the successor kingdoms. It was a lengthy, tortuous path spanning multiple centuries and involving uneven rates of transition throughout the social, cultural, political, religious, economic, and military arenas. It began well before the sackings of Rome, and it extended well beyond reconstitution of extensive power during the Carolingian period. It was neither uniform nor was it comprehensive at any given point in time, and in some ways even so far as in the modern era. Of the key aspects that relate to sexuality in particular - the construction of masculinity/femininity, the concept of the public v the private, the notion of the individual, the structure of family relations, the economic modes of production, and so on - many of the key transitions did not fully emerge until long after the Fall of Rome, and to the extent that there had been a transition between the mores of the 1st century AD and those of the 5th century AD, those had already taken place by the time that the decline of Rome might be said to have commenced, in the 3rd century AD.

This is longer than I'd intended, and I probably neglected these items before because they are more complex and require greater exposition. Anyhow, I hope this helps!

[AntiGuv]

The peak of the Roman Empire is somewhat debatable, but was certainly not with Augustus. It was sometime between the eras of Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-138).

I'll review your other points a bit later.