Same Sex Partership

The issue of same-sex unions have been in the news lately, this is not a new issue, but one that has been the subject of many churches, civil groups and laws. Thought out history same sex unions us not considered unusually, it have been within the last three century’s that the church and state begin to outlaw these unions Looking into history may be a way of resolving the conflict. The publication of a divergent view of history emerged dramatically with Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, by Yale historian John Boswell.

The first openly gay tenured professor at an Ivy League College, John Boswell wrote in his controversial 1994 book( Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe) Boswell found evidence in some 60 liturgical manuscripts from the eighth through the 16th centuries to support his thesis that the medieval Catholic Church routinely sanctified same-sex unions.

The traditional family, bound together by marriage, has long been the Western world's basic household unit, ensuring the cohesion and continuity of society as a whole. Until the 16th century, however, marriage could be effected by the man and the woman themselves, acting alone and without formal ceremony. Words of commitment were spoken by them, though almost always in private. Moreover, the sacramental act was not the exchange of vows but physical consummation of the union.

Present-day advocates of gay marriage notably, Yale law Professor William Eskridge in his book The Case for Same-Sex Marriage find historical analogues dating back to the Biblical accounts of David and Jonathan and Ruth and Naomi. Eskridge notes that same-sex relationships between men were common in ancient Greece witness Plato's discourse on love in the dialogue Symposium, and that the Roman Emperor Nero had a formal wedding ceremony with his male lover Sporus.

In late medieval France, the term affrer’ement roughly translated as brotherment was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts.

Despite the acceptance of same-sex relationships in ancient Greece and Rome, they emphasize — as Eskridge acknowledges — that attitudes changed by the time of the late Roman Empire. Accounts of male-male couplings assumed a satirical tone, and an imperial decree in 342 A.D. prescribed execution for men who married other men.

The Council of Trent, in 1563, gave the church a prominent role in solemnizing marriages. A valid wedding ceremony, the council decreed, must be performed before a priest and in the presence of at least two witnesses. This new pronouncement of canon law applied only in countries that had remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church after the Reformation

England, which broke with Rome during the reign of King Henry VIII, was not one of those countries. However, Lord Hardwicke's reform of the marriage laws in 1753 made it necessary, for a marriage to be held legally valid, to go through a ceremony in accordance with Church of England rites. Informal or “common law” marriages thereafter became virtually impossible in England.

Whatever acceptance same-sex relationships had enjoyed earlier, European religious and secular authorities adopted unambiguous opposition, according to Eskridge. Beginning in the 13th century, governments enacted the first laws prohibiting “crimes against nature,” he writes, and prior ecclesiastical laws “came to be more stringent enforced.”

Despite the opposition, same-sex relationships survived in the modern West, both in Europe and in the United States. Homosexual subcultures have existed in many European cities since the 18th century and by the beginning of the 20th century in such U.S. cities as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington.

Typically, same-sex couples were discreet, but by the mid-20th century interest in openly partnering was increasing. By the 1960s, the early forerunners of today's gay-rights groups were debating marriage, and some couples were engaging in mock wedding ceremonies. As Eskridge concludes, however, “these 'marriages' enjoyed neither legal recognition nor the prospect of legal recognition.”

Background

Professor Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies on ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessing of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles the “office of the same sex union” (10th and 11th century Greek) or the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century). That certainly sounds like gay marriage.