I’m all for gay marriage. As has been mentioned in this thread, if two consenting adults love eachother, I don’t see a problem with them wanting to get a piece of paper saying they’re married.
In regards to the religious nature of marriage, there was an interesting article in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide a while back, which you may or may not disagree with (thought provoking either way though, IMO). Not sure how much I’m allowed to quote from it (let me know if this is too much - the full article is much longer), so I’ll just put in the bits on Roman and Pagan practice:
[Quote=‘Traditional Marriage: A Secular Affair?’, Patricia Nell Warren, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 1st May 2005, Volume 12; Issue 3]
So far our religious right has been pretty successful in their propaganda. They blur the line between civil marriage and a whole array of church nuptials, trying to sell the idea that it’s all one generic type of “traditional marriage” that must be “protected” from those evil homosexuals. And they lie baldly about the real history of marriage in the Christian West. The very people who go around putting up the Ten Commandments in schools and courtrooms have no qualms about breaking the Ninth Commandment when they tell us that “marriage has always been sacred.”
But the fact is, word “marriage” doesn’t refer to anything sacred or religious. Its root is a Latin word referring to civil authority in ancient Rome. The Roman Republic began in the 4th century BCE with a state religion that required everybody to worship Jupiter and other state gods. The emperor, Jupiter’s “divine representative on Earth,” was the high priest as well, and had the power to proclaim laws by personal edict. Even though this religion had a morality code, it was somewhat tolerant and didn’t intrude directly into family affairs. The legal roots of marriage were older and deeper than the Empire. Written Roman family law drew its life from Rome’s earlier history as a republic–from the civitas, or civil government of Rome itself, and one’s citizenship in that already ancient city-state. Civitas related to the rights of private free individuals and any legal proceedings concerning these rights.
Under Roman law, civil power rested with the husband. Latin for husband was maritus, from the god Mars, state patron of masculinity. For many centuries the male head of a family had complete legal authority over his wife, daughters, slaves, and other dependents. It was his job to police morality within the family: he could make divorce happen, even kill his wife or daughters if he caught them in adultery. Latin maritare means “to wed, marry, give in marriage.” When a girl “married,” it meant she was handed over by her father or guardian to the legal custody of the maritus, namely her bridegroom. Most marriages were arranged; the hope was that couples would grow into affection and concord with time. Meanwhile, a solid marriage also protected property and lineage rights.
But even the stern patriarchal Romans recognized the pitfalls of making a marriage stick if a woman hated the choice of man her family made for her. So the Empire humanized marriage somewhat to allow for the girl’s consent. Roman law stated explicitly: “It is not sex but consent and marital affection (maritalis affectio) that makes a marriage.”
Wealthy Romans had the option of going through elaborate and expensive religious rituals with the state gods and goddesses in order to marry. But this was not mandatory. For most people, the wedding took place at home and included a family feast at which the couple joined hands and gave their consent before witnesses. There was a written contract dealing with dowry, property, etc., validated by consent between the new maritus and his mate. All legal issues around a marriage devolved from that consent.
According to gay historian John Boswell’s groundbreaking research on marriage (Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, 1995), formal unions between two Roman men or two women also took place. Ancient Rome’s best-known gay couple, Hadrian and Antinous, were never actually married. But history noted some same-sex unions by Elagabalus and other emperors. These rites were greeted with snickers by some conservative Romans, who thought the idea of two mariti tying the knot was a hilarious contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, same-sex unions were a feature of Roman life until 342 CE, when Emperor Constantius II outlawed them, reflecting the growing power of Christianity.
PAGAN EMPIRE TO CHRISTIAN EMPIRE
The Empire had already started to go Christian under the rule of Constantius’ father, Constantine I (the Great), who was emperor from 312 to 337. From that point on, the early Church was capturing the Roman ruling class and taking control of that well-oiled state-religion machine. Jupiter and his ruler-priest were out; Jesus Christ and his ruler-priest, the Pope, were in. Churchmen wrenched the bronze doors from the pagan Senate’s government building and installed them in Rome’s first church basilica. With this symbolic act, much of Roman law and bureaucracy was rolled over to the new religion.
But Christian state religion was less tolerant than pagan state religion had been. The absolute authority of the maritus over his family vanished, to be replaced by absolute Church authority over its entire membership, complete with its own moral code. Severing their ties with Judaism, early theologians rejected the polygamy extolled in the Old Testament and adopted monogamy as their rule. They also grumbled about the marriage-related practices of the pagan Romans–from homosexuality, concubines, birth control, and abortion to mercy killings of deformed babies and permissiveness on sex with slaves. Initially, the early Christians allowed divorce in cases of adultery, but later they taught that only death or Church dispensation could end a marriage. By 389 CE, Ambrose of Milan was thundering, “What God has joined together let no man put asunder!”
However, on the civil front Christian marriage followed the same format as pagan Roman marriage. According to historian David G. Hunter, the early bishops acquired a quasi-civil standing in their communities, and some Christians had to get their bishop’s approval to marry. But weddings still took place at home with the joining of hands and the feast. The dowry contract was read aloud and signed by witnesses.
Indeed, there really wasn’t a Christian concept of marriage as a “legal” entity till the Middle Ages. By then, the Roman Church was putting less emphasis on Jesus’ scriptural teachings and more on its own authority, and would proclaim Catholic dogma by papal edict. This trend was given a boost when the Charlemagne united most of western Europe and assumed the title of Holy Roman Emperor with papal blessing in the year 800. By the 12th century, the Church had yanked the marriage ceremony out of people’s homes and required that it be done in a church. By the 13th century, the Pope had decreed marriage to be one of seven sacraments, so now it could only be dispensed by a priest. But theologians still recognized the old Roman principle that, to be valid, a marriage had to involve a contract and consent.
Surprisingly, some in the medieval Church apparently had no objections to another hold-over from Roman times. In his Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell produced some amazing church documents from Italy, Spain, and other countries that reveal pairs of men and women still establishing formal relationships involving mutual affectio. These appear to have been a sacramental rite; like heterosexual marriages, they took place in a church. Yet they also had a civil aspect, since the written ceremonies sometimes mentioned mutual ownership of property. (Perhaps this leniency on same-sex unions resulted from the Catholic priesthood’s having become a magnet for closeted gay and bisexual men. In more recent centuries, as homophobia grew in Europe, these same-sex unions vanished.)
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Unless the woman is rich of course