Gay Marriage—Nothing New Under the Sun

Gay Marriage—Nothing New Under the Sun | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report

Gay marriage and homosexuality were part of the moral landscape faced by the first Christians in Ancient Rome.

Given that the gay marriage agenda will be increasingly pressed upon Catholics by the state, we should be much more aware of what history has to teach us about gay marriage—given that we don’t want to be among those who, ignorant of history, blithely condemned themselves to repeat it.

Contrary to the popular view—both among proponents and opponents—gay marriage is not a new issue. It cannot be couched (by proponents) as a seamless advance on the civil rights movement, nor should it be understood (by opponents) as something that’s evil merely because it appears to them to be morally unprecedented.

Gay marriage was—surprise!—alive and well in Rome, celebrated even and especially by select emperors, a spin-off of the general cultural affirmation of Roman homosexuality. Gay marriage was, along with homosexuality, something the first Christians faced as part of the pagan moral darkness of their time.

What Christians are fighting against today, then, is not yet another sexual innovation peculiar to our “enlightened age,” but the return to pre-Christian, pagan sexual morality.

So, what was happening in ancient Rome? Homosexuality was just as widespread among the Romans as it was among the Greeks (a sign of which is that it was condoned even by the stolid Stoics). The Romans had adopted the pederasty of the Greeks (aimed, generally, at boys between the ages of 12 to 18). There was nothing shameful about such sexual relations among Romans, if the boy was not freeborn. Slaves, both male and female, were considered property, and that included sexual property.

But the Romans also extended homosexuality to adult men, even adult free men. And it is likely that this crossing of the line from child to adult, unfree to free—not homosexuality as such—was what affronted the more austere of the Roman moralists.

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Comments

[Charles E Flynn]

Should a federal judge ever interrogate you about the subject of sexual practices in ancient Greece, be sure not to contradict you own published works:
In the Case of Martha Nussbaum, by Gerard V. Bradley.

[Sandra Miesel]

Roman attitudes towards homosexuality cannot be measured from the bizarre behavior of Nero and Elagabalus. muchless mentions in satire. Two emperors who really were homosexual (Trajan and Hadrian)were married to women because that is what was expected in their station. The legal gradations of Roman marriage are a rather complicated subject.

[Agnieszka]

What a debasing and depressing subject.

[Edward]

Agreed Sandra, this is a much more complicated subject than Wiker makes it out to be.