Do you support gay marriage?

600 years is a very short time in the history of society for mankind. Particularly is you consider that human civilization goes back more than 6,000 years.

Marriage has many meaning, even in the bible. It is extreme arrogance and self adgrandizement to assume that your belief system is more important than the beliefs of anyone else. Being christain does not give you any rights to force your ideas onto anyone!

I do not make outrageous claims at all. Simply because you are completely uneducated, does not mean that others are. History is there for everyone to read, all you have to do is pick up a book or do some research on the internet.

The zealots are those who refuse to accept that the human race is made up of diversity and that your religion is not the only belief system on the planet. Religion does not have exclusive right to marriage and never has. Marriage was around long befor christianity was and it was originally a Pagan ritual adopted by christians.



Yale historian John Richard Boswell discovered this early Christian history and wrote about it nearly 20 years ago in “Same Sex Unions In Pre-Modern Europe“ (1994).

In ancient church liturgical documents, he found the existence of an “Office of Same Sex Union” (10th and 11th century Greek) and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century Slavonic).

He found many examples of:
A community gathered in a church
A blessing of the couple before the altar
Their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages
The participation of a priest
The taking of the Eucharist
A wedding banquet afterwards

A 14th century Serbian Slavonic “Office of the Same Sex Union,” uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Boswell documented such sanctified unions up until the 18th century.

In late medieval France, a contract of “enbrotherment” (affrèrement) existed for men who pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une bourse’ – one bread, one wine, and one purse.

Other religions, such as Hinduism and some native American religions, have respect for same-sex couples weaved into their history.

When right-wing evangelical Christians talk about “traditional marriage,” there is no such thing.

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"The same type of legal contract of the time also could provide the foundation for a variety of non-nuclear households, including arrangements in which two or more biological brothers inherited the family home from their parents and would continue to live together, Tulchin said.
But non-relatives also used the contracts. In cases that involved single, unrelated men, Tulchin argues, these contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships." said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania .

Gay 'marriage' in medieval Europe
Same-sex unions aren't a recent invention. Until the 13th century, male-bonding ceremonies were common in churches across the Mediterranean. Apart from the couples' gender, these events were almost indistinguishable from other marriages of the era. Twelfth-century liturgies for same-sex unions — also known as "spiritual brotherhoods" — included the recital of marriage prayers, the joining of hands at the altar, and a ceremonial kiss. Some historians believe these unions were merely a way to seal alliances and business deals. But Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment, says it is "difficult to believe that these rituals did not contemplate erotic contact. In fact, it was the sex between the men involved that later caused same-sex unions to be banned." That happened in 1306, when the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus II declared such ceremonies, along with sorcery and incest, to be unchristian.
http://theweek.com/article/in...