NEW QUESTION: Does history matter?

Historical claims come up all the time in the same-sex marriage debate. It is extraordinarily difficult to find pre-1960s societies that have had anything even close to same-sex marriage; and, as far as I know, impossible to find earlier societies that have had a conception of same-sex marriage that actually resembles the one being promoted today. (There are a couple groups where the occasional woman would be treated socially as if she were a man, and would enter into marriage or a marriagelike union with another woman, as well as fulfilling the other expectations of the male role. This is both highly unusual and, obviously, not much like what SSM activists are calling for today.)

So: Does this historical absence of SSM matter? Has the world changed so much that while it once made sense to prohibit SSM and view marriage as a means of uniting the sexes, this prohibition is outdated? What, if anything, should we learn from the historical record?

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posted by Eve at 1:57 PM VOTE

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