So, during the times of the Inquisition in Europe, when religion ruled with an iron fist such that none dare sin on pain of death, gay marriage and civil unions were actively encouraged? I wonder how present day religious anti-gays will take to this news? Yeah, we certainly have evolved socially since then.

Gay Unions Sanctioned in Medieval Europe

Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says.

Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past.

“Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize,” Tulchin writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History. “And Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures.”



  1. Mac Guy says:

    The Roman Catholic Church even had actual gay ceremonies. No joke. Of all places I learned that… Catholic high school.

  2. bobbo says:

    “Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize,”

    Yes–the “family structure” in many places seems to have evolved spured on by the evolution of the “family home.” Gone are the days of Master and Slave, people and cattle, all huddled together for warmth.

  3. Cezar says:

    Fine, can we feed them to the lions afterwards?-)

  4. bobbo says:

    CNN just had that special regarding the Warriors of God? I didn’t watch it except while surfing but Abrhamson (sp) had a rant that it was totally biased. I didn’t see it in what he “said” was said, but it would be an exercise to sit thru the 6 hours and see if that were true.

    Also, just recently, I was reminded that the Crusades really were an effort by the West to STOP the invasion by the not so peaceful Arab Muslims.

    I’ve just about concluded there is a distinction to be made between Arab and Non-Arab Muslims, and there should be a crusade against the former. If they think Israel is bad news for them, let the holies be released!! In the long run, its for their own good.

  5. rectagon says:

    “if accurate”….

  6. dwright says:

    We can’t turn back the clock. At least that’s usually what you hear when people want to go back to more decent ways.
    Now you want to because it fits your agenda?

    How much of marriage mattered in civic life back then, who gave a flying f**k? Now with tax codes, health benefits, anti-discrimination lawsuits, it’s a bigger ballgame that affects us all.

  7. Misanthropic Scott says:

    Maybe I’ve just read too much Heinlein during my impressionable teens and tweens, but whenever any number of people of any combinations of sexes and genders get together and proclaim that they love each other and want to call that a family, I’m OK with calling it a marriage. I don’t see why the state needs to have any rules about who can and who cannot marry.

    As for any church’s, temple’s, mosque’s position on the subject, as long as they treat everyone equally and don’t affect actual laws, that’s OK too. I have a problem with the many women to one man ruling only because it is inconsistent and unfair. If you want to allow polygyny, you should allow polyandry as well.

    For me, personally, I happen to have way too much vasopressin in my system to allow me to partake in such a marriages, so one man, one woman happens to work in my case. But, I would never presume to rule that what works for me in marriage must be right for everyone else.

    Heinlein’s line marriage (which may not have been an original idea on his part) actually does sound like a highly stable marriage well suited to reliably raising children and maintaining a good lifestyle for everyone involved. It’s a bit surprising that it never, to my knowledge, really took off as one of the major marital forms.

  8. bobbo says:

    8–Scott==back when the constitutional amendment re marriage was a hot topic, someone said that the whole concept of marriage was an intrusion of religion into politics==

    ie–all combinations of two people should be simply “civil unions” and if after that you wanted to be “married” in some religious ceremony, that was between you and that religion.

    Makes alot of sense that.

  9. Misanthropic Scott says:

    #9 – bobbo,

    I don’t really know how I feel about that. Marriage as it stands today, being the only legally binding contract involving sex in most states, does have kind of a nice ring to it. The word has a long history of conveying a closeness of relationship that people might otherwise not grasp immediately from the term civil union. The term spouse carries a lot of weight around hospitals and such. I think I’d personally stick with the terms everyone knows and loves, so to speak, and simply leave it up to each group of individuals whether to go for a religious or non-religious ceremony. I think your way might actually require religious folks to have both a justice of the peace and a religious figure, both of whom charge money. Sounds a tad unreasonable, IMHO.

  10. Milo says:

    Many priests in the recent past used to have ‘house blessings’ for gay couples too.

  11. Terry says:

    It was interesting to learn through Michael Badnarik’s Constitution Class that I attended last May, that until the middle of the 19th century, marriage in the United States was a pretty informal arrangement. As the Revolution was fought partially to establish a freedom *from* religion as well as a freedom *of* religion, the founders never addressed the issue of “marriage” as having anything to do with the government. English Common Law was accepted as the standard, so if you took a woman into your household and proclaimed to the community that you were married, well, then you were married. The government had no involvement in the arrangement. George and Martha Washington had no marriage license and there is no formal record of their relationship except that history tells us they were married. Same story with most of the other early presidents.

    It wasn’t until the end of the civil war that marriage licenses were established, and these came about specifically to prevent miscegenation (i.e., mixed race marriages). If a white man wished to marry a black woman (or a black man wished to marry a white woman), the man first had to apply for a permit to do so. The government could grant the license, or could deny the application. But then decades later, this was determined to be unfair if it was applied only to interracial marriages, and some argued that if you had to have a license to marry someone of a different race, you should have to have a license to marry anyone at all (and thus create a new way to generate revenue for the government). So now, you have to ask for permission from the government to marry anyone, regardless of their racial background.

    This is progress?

  12. David says:

    SO simple. The government provides legal unions (among any legal age adults able to sign contracts) for tax/benefits. Religions provide ‘magic’ blessings based solely on their beliefs to get you into their heaven(s). Problem solved.

    If Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or Navaho’s want to bless your union and say it makes their god, goddess or demi-gods happy, so be it! But if I don’t belong to YOUR (or any) religion, shut the hell up and leave me alone!

    How DARE anyone suggest it matters what the f**k the pope thinks. I’m not a Catholic. They’re just a bunch of silly people in funny clothes to me. I could care less what they think of my marriage. The pope doesn’t care what I think about his silly hat and I don’t care what some old man in Italy has to say about my private life.

  13. BubbaRay says:

    #10, Scott, “I don’t really know how I feel about that. Marriage as it stands today, being the only legally binding contract involving sex in most states”

    There was an article about this just this weekend with a great cartoon:

    http://tinyurl.com/29z359

  14. Li says:

    I would agree with Bobbo, actually, it is an unreasonable intrusion of religion into the apparatus of state, and likely a violation of the first amendment. Additionally, having priests and ministers administer legally binding contracts strikes me of mixing God and Caesar to an unwholesome degree, so there is even a Christian argument against it.

    It really just boils down to a silly semantic argument over a word, that some people have decided has earth-shattering importance. More evidence that we are a foolish race, lost staring at a crack in the plaster as the roof collapses on us.

  15. BdgBill says:

    Hmmm…Lets just look at the little snippet of the article that you posted.

    “A Historian says” – Meaning one historian

    “Can be interpreted as” Hardly rock solid evidence

    “If accurate” … “If” is a big word.

    This is just bullshit revisionist history meant to endorse a modern politically correct agenda. Something tells me “A historian” is a big Judy Garland / Clay Aiken fan.

  16. KevinL says:

    Uncle Dave,

    Are you gay?

    If so, please just say that you want people to “accept you” and then you can go collect your “special rights.”

    Oops! I guess the 1st ammendment only applies to people with special rights and not to the majority of people who happen to have a different view than the special few.

  17. Li says:

    So, let me get this straight; if you claim something is as it has always been, and I provide contrary evidence, you then get to say “Well, do you want us to move backwards?.” Or, to put it more simple, you get to claim anything then claim the opposite when it is expedient.

    Oh yeah, and when throwing away all consistency in pursuit of some partisan hysterics isn’t enough, let’s start calling people “Da gay”. Cause you guys prefer your gays to be hypocritically destroying their families rather than having some of their own, eh? http://www.rollcall.com/issues/1_1/breakingnews/19763-1.html

  18. Mister Mustard says:

    >>all combinations of two people should be simply “civil unions”
    >>and if after that you wanted to be “married” in some religious
    >>ceremony, that was between you and that religion.

    Gosh bobbo, I agree with you. What’s happening to me?

  19. Mister Mustard says:

    >>Cause you guys prefer your gays to be hypocritically destroying
    >>their families rather than having some of their own, eh?

    Hey, you’ve got to go easy on the right-wing Republicans here, Li. I think it’s some kind of litmus test that they have to be closet-gay hatemongers. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be where they are: Adopting that “wide stance” as he went potty. Woo hoo hoo! That was an answer worthy of ex-AG ‘berto!!! He was playing footsie with the undercover cop in a crapper because of his “wide stance”. What, he had a watermelon between his legs??

    These guys should just go directly to work for Leno or Letterman. Nobody could make these punch lines up.

  20. David says:

    #18 – Why are religious nuts like you so dumb? Do you have to fail some IQ test to be a Republican?

    I’m the one advocating freedom you idiot, YOU’RE the one wanting to control (by law) what others are doing. I’m advocating the libertarian approach.

    I say let ALL people get married. You say I can only get married if YOUR religion says it’s ok.

    I say let people worship ANY god (or none) if they wish. You say only your religion is real and I must follow your religions laws, and you’ll use the power of the federal or state government to enforce it.

    I love it Republican/right leaning idiots who claim that if I ask them to stop killing gays or lynching black people, or denying either group “equal” treatment that I’m asking for “special” rights or trying to enforce my views on them. You DON’T have a right to FORCE me to live like you. You don’t have a right to physically attack me for not living like you. I don’t care what silly made up magical being you worship, nor am I trying to control that. I could care less. I don’t care who, how many, or IF you get married. I just want YOU to stop controlling MY life.

    By the way, you nuts can stop the “I’m holier than though” stuff. The Amish think you’re a sinner (bet you listen to music, maybe even dance, and your wife paints her face and uses a bra to push up her tits for public display). Now you wouldn’t agree and probably think YOU’RE the moral one, but it’s funny how that’s relative among the religions.

  21. David says:

    Can we stop the arguments over what it “means” for something (in this case gay marriage) to have existed, then go away, then come back. Silly people. Sorry to shock you…history ISN’T linear! Never has been.

    Social trends come, go, come back, appear in multiple locations at the same time, disappear again. NONE of this has anything what so ever to do with any qualitative value on the ‘trend’. It’s just how all history works.

    For GODS SAKE, the very Renaissance was just some Italians rediscovering ‘lost’ classical (lost) teachings. They weren’t “going backwards” because they drudged up what the Greeks used to think about centuries before.

  22. David says:

    I mean you COULD think of the period when gay marriage last “disappeared” as the Dark Ages, and that we’re now coming back into an enlightened age. Whether a trend coming back or going away is forward thinking, retro, going back, or just bloody going sideways simply depends on if you LIKE the trend…nothing more.

  23. Cant Stop says:

    Why stop with just humans?

    I love my car and my car loves me.

    Why can’t we be married and have the same rights or left turns?

    Sorry car, I’ve found true love with an oak tree..)

    #4 that wouldn’t be a good diet for the lions.

  24. Li says:

    Pedro, your ‘side’ has been arguing for years that marriage is a institution that has been the same for 2000 years, but it’s not. This backwards argument is a reverse feint, and not a very clever one, so drop it.

  25. David says:

    #27 – Again my point that you have to fail an IQ test to be Republican or at least ‘right leaning’. 🙂

    I’d be ok with you marrying a car or tree…if the courts agree that the car or tree could legally consent to a contract. That’s what (civil) marriage is…a legal contract. The magical/mystical portion is up to you and your made up religion. This is why 12 year olds can’t marry (to the sadness of most of the southern states)…they can’t legally enter into a contract with another adult. It wouldn’t be considered legally binding.

    The OLDEST traditional marriage (according to the western Bible) is one man and many women. Jesus never revoked that or condemned polygamy. Actually he had a parable or two that included it. Hmm.

  26. Save A Tree says:

    With trees? wood that be a new splinter group?

    Brothers to Brothers, Sisters to Sisters,
    Grandma to great grandson or daughter,
    and to how many wives, when would it ever end….?

    Past is past, lets talk about today.

  27. KevinL says:

    David? So is that a yes then?

    Notice the difference in how I asked if, and you stated as if. I didn’t say I was a religious nut or a dumb republican but you did. More often then not, I vote democrat in local races but more conservative in state and national races. That is because a liberal approach is more suited at a local level than it is at a national level. That is only my opinion stated using my 1st ammendment rights. My views on homoism haven’t changed with changes to my views on religion. I am adamant that people always be treated with respect and I agree that many people who identify themselves as Christians fail to follow the second commandment. Gandi supposedly said that he would have been a Christian if were not for the Christians (sorry, I don’t have a link for that). That being said, “respect” and “accept” are to vastly different concepts. I respect the person, I don’t accept the action.

  28. nightstar says:

    #5 bobbo you had to call for a crusade against Arab Muslims in a gay marriage topic didn’t you.

    Just when I started to consider you to be somewhat reasonable.

    I’m amazed at the prevalence of homophobia amongst geeks. Why do you guys care if two men want to get it on. First of all I think the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the constitution, and if man-ass makes you happy more power to you. In addition there is potentially one more girl on the market for every gay male.

    Heres a link to a reality check on Americas progressive views on sexuality: http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/usa.htm

    And that’s not just for homosexuals either.

  29. David says:

    #31 – Well put. I was honestly just using your mini-post as a straw man type kicking off point.

    We’ll just agree to disagree. You don’t “accept” the behavior of faggots because you’re a religious nut. You would deny this but it’s true. I can say this because the ONLY folks who care at ALL about this are the religious nuts. Never in these type of posts does any present a “scientific” rational for not liking blacks, Jews or fags. Nope. It’s only ever a religious argument in the end. Never has the Union of Concerned Scientist come out with an opinion paper that fags are bad. Nor has the National Builders Association, the Association of Nuclear Medicine, JAMA, NRA or any other random group. It’s only Judeo-Christian religious organization who give a damn…sorry. If some group opposes gay marriage, I guarantee you it’s a religious group, not an organization of theoretical physicists. If you happen to belong to another group besides one of those that cares let me know.

    I may ‘respect’ you as another sentient human being, but I don’t “approve” of your bigged narrow mindedness and silly lifestyle including crazy supernatural beliefs. I just don’t “approve” of your actions, sorry.

  30. Mister Mustard says:

    >>You don’t “accept” the behavior of faggots because
    >>you’re a religious nut.

    Hey, he could be a redneck! Or a closet-gay homophobe. Not only the religious nuts hate fags, but the pig-squealers and the guys who are really homosexual but are trying to cover it up hate them too.


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