Same-sex marriage in Iowa

[bluestarultor]

Technically, when the state doesn't care one way or another, I'd struggle to call it a secular marriage. I mean, it's not necessarily a religious marriage (although the party might count as a stretch), but we're dealing with state-sanctioned unions in this discussion and that certainly wasn't.

Also, Egypt DID conquer different people, like the Jews. Just not on the level of Rome. Also, they DID conquer Lower Egypt, Kush, Canaan, Cyprus, and Syria, and otherwise were conquered by or had contact with Palestine, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Nubians, and the Romans. They weren't as isolated as you seem to think.

Edit: Oh, and Libya.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Premonitions

Okay I was obviously misunderstood, or misworded whayt I was trying to say there was I don't see why the government CREATED the statute of marriage in the first place, outside of religious tradition.

For exactly the reason you said, which is that it's a huge combo pack of legal rights and obligations wrapped up in a fancy dinner party and an oversized cake. You might as well ask why people go around buying cars, when what they really want is to propel themselves to a destination via a four-wheeled platform powered by internal combustion. It's like, well, yes, that is what that is.

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

I thought there was a permanent moratorium on religious discussion on these boards?

A good point; I'm gonna say this all is okay in that it's mostly been brought up regarding religion's history and social role and not like, which one is the Right And True One etc. etc.

[Archbio]

Technically, when the state doesn't care one way or another, I'd struggle to call it a secular marriage. I mean, it's not necessarily a religious marriage (although the party might count as a stretch), but we're dealing with state-sanctioned unions in this discussion and that certainly wasn't.

It's a non-religious marriage. If it had been state sanctioned, you'd have counted it as religious purely because ultimately to would mean it would be recognized by the authority of a dude symbolizing both a dude with a bird's head and a mummified dude, but it still wouldn't have been religious.

I mean, here you are, saying that Ancient Egyptian marriage is fully outside the bounds of this discussion*, except in as much as you could claim it as a religious marriage. Somehow. You can't, but you still try to make it look like you can.

I mean, if you think a party can be said to make something into a religious institution (in the same sense that religious marriage as we know it, as the purview of a religious authority, is a religious institution) while keeping a straight face, but nothing short of the modern secular state can make a marriage into a secular marriage, then there's not much point in this exchange. There's some amount of begging the question involved, methink.

I never meant to argue that non-religious marriage is historically the norm, but rather that it's not as radical a departure from the historical norm (if such a thing can be defined) as it's often portrayed. A civil or even private marriage in ancient times that has religious elements only because of the diffuse pervasiveness of superstitution, religion and/or a mythological view of the world could be said to be at least at an equal distance between a marriage that's not religious at all and marriage as the exclusive purview of a religious authority.

Something that struck me as funny in the interval was how my Roman example was shot down by a bogus explanation of how it totally doesn't count rather than by the fact that it may be a genuinely bogus example, upon giving it more than a moment's thought. It's a subject that would deserve further reading.

Also, Egypt DID conquer different people, like the Jews. Just not on the level of Rome. Also, they DID conquer Lower Egypt, Kush, Canaan, Cyprus, and Syria, and otherwise were conquered by or had contact with Palestine, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Nubians, and the Romans. They weren't as isolated as you seem to think.

As I seem to think? What? I don't seem to think anything that contradict any of this.** Go easy on the whole lecturing thing, Blue Realtor.

What I implied Egypt wasn't:

- A massive, sprawling empire.
- Many different peoples absorbed.
- A multitude of different religions that are impossible to consolidate.

How does the absence of this translate into total isolation? That's a rethorical question, it plainly doesn't.

*It doesn't fall outside of the scope of my point, so if you think my point falls outside of the boundaries of the discussion it might have been more delicate not to address it at all.

**Not that I pay much attention to utterly gratuitous, superficial lecture on Historical subjects.

[bluestarultor]

I'm just going to cut this argument off, because it's getting out of hand. I'll concede the point and step down.

However, I must comment that I've been on this forum for over two years now and there's really no reason people should still be getting my name wrong, especially if they're going to try to separate it out. You've been here long enough to have seen it and are old enough that even if you somehow haven't, you should be able to read the letters. I take offense at that specifically because it's not the first time I've seen you put it that way.




Edit: I already apologized for this via PM, but I'd like to say here that in terms of marriage in Egypt, I had a brain slip this morning on what I was trying to argue. Archbio is right in that the process described could well be considered secular, since the article mentions that no particular religious ceremonies are recorded as having taken place. Odd for ancient Egypt, since they were a very mystical people, but also entirely possible. The slip came in that we're talking about state-sanctioned secular marriages, and my brain didn't make a proper disconnect when presented with an example of seemingly secular marriage that wasn't sanctioned or really recognized properly by the state. In short, I wasn't ready for a third alternative and put my foot in my mouth. I'll also admit that the idea is still sinking in as I try to decide whether the parties mentioned class it more as a religious union given the lack of state recognition or if the lack of discovery of clearly-established rituals push it into secularism despite it.

I'm ready to continue discussing the topic civilly at this point, so I'd like to start back up by saying, no, apparently secular marriage isn't new, but it's certainly new since the collapse of the ancient world. By all means, said collapse had very little influence on modern culture because the illiterate masses had no means of continuing the advancement those cultures were known for, and as such, all their artifacts were regarded with wonder, even into modern times and the present. We're only now beginning to piece together how many things were built, from statuary to monuments, only because of our ability to measure and analyze it all with modern technology. Had we not had to rediscover all that was lost on our own, world society would be centuries more advanced right now in several disciplines of math and science, and maybe society, as well. It took us long enough to re-establish secular forms of marriage, and a look at several ancient cultures, including the Greeks and Japanese, tells us that given proper time, homosexuality can become acceptable, though not necessarily as a rule of progression, depending on how the framework of society treats it in the first place, as evidenced by the harsh take on it as seen in the Middle East.

TL;DR: Yeah, I fuzzked up this morning, I still can't decide how to class Egypt, and my view is that we're basically on catch-up duty when it comes to much of the ancient world because the people were damn smart, so I really can't reconcile indications that they deserve credit for current developments, though they're quite useful for examining them via parallels.


P.S. As a small rebuttal, Egypt circa 1450BC extended all the way through the Holy Land up to Turkey, roughly encapsulating what is now Isreal, Lebanon, most of Syria, and maybe a bit of Jordan, and all the way down into a good chunk of Sudan, with a thin strip hugging the coast through everything up to the top half of modern Djibouti. That's a fair share of land, with many different peoples, who were liable to have many different beliefs.

That said, I'm not going to press the issue further to avoid derailing the topic completely, but I must say, I personally consider that to fulfill the stated criteria.