academiccompositionab
Empowerment Equalizer
SSaragian
Antony Sammeroff
Ann Sterzinger
Rodney
RJ
busterjames
cainusmaxus
Craig FitzGerald
David Heleniak
Caity & Dan Greene
keirmartland
Keith Preston
Bill the Butcher
ljp711
MRDA
Jack Donovan
Rachel Haywire
comrade hermit
Michael
Vince
robertstark2014
Noonan
S E Pearson
Rachel Haywire
Nexus X HumectressMy personal view of marriage is that it is an outdated institution and social concept. However, for those who still believe in it, it should be a private matter between the individuals involved, voluntary contracts according to whatever religious or cultural standards the participants in a marriage adhere to. While I am not theoretically opposed to gay marriage per se, I agree with those who argue that if you accept gay marriage, there is no particular obstacle to polygamy or marriage between close relatives. Not that I’m particularly opposed to that either. It’s a matter of indifference.
Banned Hipster
In 1996 Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party passed the Defense of Marriage Act protecting marriage between a woman and a man.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/respect-marriage-act-senate-should-pass/
Protecting marriage has a long history in the United States. Mormons were considered criminal outlaws because they practiced white slavery, the sexual trafficking of girls, mystified under the euphemism ‘plural marriage.’ The Republican party of the day spoke of the abolition of ‘the twin pillars of barbarism, slavery and polygamy’ and had Utah on the list to conquer as soon as they finished with Dixie.
Age of consent laws were passed to prevent the sale of girls on open markets, something that was not at all uncommon in the seedier parts of cities like New Orleans and in many rough frontier towns.
The attacks on marriage the Democratic party forestalled with the Defense of Marriage Act were ‘mystified’ as well, using the rhetoric of ‘gay rights’ as a smokescreen for the agenda. While many self-identified ‘Queers’ were very vocal about their agenda to ‘demolish the institution of marriage’ while using ‘gay rights’ as an excuse, the Queers were little more than useful idiots in the grand scheme.
Can you define ‘outdated’ as anything other than ‘not currently fashionable among a segment of mostly white Western bourgeois?’
What most Westerners think of as “traditional marriage” (monogamous companionate marriage” is “mostly Western bourgeois” in origin. Actual “traditional marriage” would be more along the lines of polygamy and/or arranged marriage.
Yes, of course, it is our tradition. Companiate marriage and a high status for women have been features of European society going back to pre Roman times (Germania, et al.)
However it is obvious not ‘borgeois’ because it existed long before industrialization, and in Europe even existed before some forms of agriculture.
Monogamy was also a feature of both pre and post Christian European marriage.
So we have marriage that is more or less the same as it has been in Europe since pre civilization times.
Then white American Gen X leftists discovered that it was outdated. As we all know, the focal point of history is the year we were freshmen in college.
The Greco-Roman cultures were more inclined toward formal monogamy than many other ancient cultures, but their monogamy was just that: a formality. https://www.historyhit.com/the-oldest-obsession-sex-lives-in-ancient-rome/
Christian asceticism placed a more serious emphasis on monogamy (or least on procreation, a custom they picked up from your good friends from Palestine), mostly as a means of demographic aggression from what I can tell, along with the Platonic emphasis on the duality between the soul and the body. But even in the late medieval/early modern period, polygamy wasn’t entirely forbidden Western culture like it is today. Martin Luther once advised Philip of Hesse to become a bigamist rather than divorce his wife, on the grounds that the former was less sinful, which is the polar opposite of our present day remnant Christian, secular humanist norms. Strict monogamy begins with the rise of the bourgeoisie, the market revolution, Protestant Reformation, puritanism, and related and overlapping trends in the early modern era. And arranged marriages were practiced in the West well into the 19th century if not later.
Also I understand why you had to do the whole Havel’s Greengrocer bit, just to repost an article that you don’t agree with. ‘But I’m totally not homophobic, racist, sexist, antisemtic, transphobic, etc.’
An Eastern European reader of mine expressed astonishment at how celebrity Joe Rogan starts anything political with ‘and I totally support gay marriage.’ ‘Gay marriage’ is a fringe phenomenon yet everyone has to declare loyalty to the party line.
Now the definition of a ‘woman’ is considered ‘hate speech.’
It is shocking how deeply this propaganda was imprinted on Gen X types.
I still find myself terrified to be thought of as ‘homophobic’ just like a worker in the Soviet Union was terrified to even think a negative thought about, e.g., a Jew.
I’ve been opposed to marriage since I was nine. It seemed boring. My parents were married and they were boring, lol. I’ve had the same political view of marriage customs/laws for 35 years, long before gay marriage became the in-thing. Although I always welcome criticism from the right as the most visceral criticism I get tends to come from the left. But, believe me, I have no hesitancy about offending the left over these kinds of topics when it’s warranted. Case in point: https://attackthesystem.com/2009/05/20/is-extremism-in-the-defense-of-sodomy-no-vice/