State of Protest

National support for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage has slipped recently. Thank God.

Everyone knows that God hates gays, as is evidenced in the Bible in numerous places, including Leviticus, where God kicked out those in Canaan who accepted gays, and imported people from Israel to replace them. But besides jumping to succumb to God’s mighty wrath, what’s really the harm in a nation adopting gay marriage? Who gets hurt?

Ultimately, men do. That’s the probingly deep offering of Hashva Nyetovich, an ex-Soviet scholar who teaches at Israel’s Bar-Non University while serving as a senior fellow at the Shackle Center in Jerusalem. She’s also the author of an excellent new book, Created Similarly: How the Bible Broke the Back Mountain. I’m proud to publish her reflections on the question. Keep in mind that if you want to disagree with this analysis, you’ll have to explain why the historical parallel doesn’t apply:

I have studied ancient civilizations for many years, so I know a thing or two about drawing parallels between ancient cultures and our own, including the vilifications they perpetuated that we’re just on the verge of adopting. Regarding same-sex marriage, the writers of ancient Greece have much to teach us.

I have to conclude, after extensively reading Greek poetry, were I a man, I would be concerned by the tidal waves of legislation now threatening to drown this proud nation.

What really is the point in the gay and lesbian movement other than to have our society be forced to fully accept homoeroticism? What would that day look like?

Let’s take a look in our crystal ball at a future that is not too distant. Jessica, a teenager, has bffs who date girls and bffs who date boys. On TV, in magazines, Jessica sees depictions of women in love with women and of women in love with men. Jessica admires the picture in her principal’s office of the principal and her wife on their honeymoon. In this day, no one uses the word “homosexual” anymore, in just the same way that today no one uses the word “negro” — it’s so laden with the baggage of yesteryear’s bigotry. In fact, in this day, no one makes a big deal about sexual orientation at all. Jessica knows that when she seeks intimacy she is free to choose a red-head, a blonde, a Latina, a Phillipino, a girl, a guy; it’s all cool. Free choice and tolerance take the day.

But reading her history books about the 20th century, Jessica is shocked to discover that the percentage of women who were sexually interested in other women stood only in the single digits. She is shocked because everyone she knows engages in this regularly.

Why do I say everyone?

Because of what was written by the most prolific woman writer of ancient Greece. Some people are indeed homoerotic by nature. But others, as Aristotle noted, develop this as an acquired passion. Homoeroticism is, to a large degree, socially constructed. It turns out that where homoeroticism is granted full social sanction, as it was in Rome, it flourishes — so much so, that one writer noted that the emperor Claudius exhibited an unusual trait: he was sexually interested in women alone!

Women, we learn from ancient Greece, will enjoy sex with other women, if there is no social censure. Now, all of this should be fine for us as well — after all, we should let free choice and tolerance reign.

The real problems begin, however, when we read what these writers had to say about marriage. Consider this piece from the fifth century BCE poet Sappho (Sappho to Her Girlfriends), in which the poet addresses herself to her hetaerae girlfriends:

This is my fair girl-garden: sweet they grow —
Rose, violet, asphodel and lily’s snow;
And which the sweetest is, I do not know;
For rosy arms and starry eyes are there.
Honey-sweet voices and cheeks passing fair.
And these shall men, I ween, remember long;
For these shall bloom for ever in my song.¹

The social history behind this piece is clear: once they’ve experienced sex with other women, Sappho implies, women are unsatisfied with what their men provide them.

And so now we come back to the idyllic day of free choice and tolerance envisioned by the gay and lesbian movement. It turns out that that day has winners and losers. The winners — big time — are lesbian women. Despite historical records lacking note of widespread lesbianism, major factors suggest that lesbianism was just as prominent as male homosexuality: lesbianism was generally not considered a “problem” until the 1900s; the vast majority of ancient writers were men; women in ancient Greece and other lands were often sequestered with each other; and women are often depicted in art as sharing one another’s pleasure.

The losers from all this will be the vast majority of men. With full social sanction given to homoerotic activity, the historical precedent suggests that tomorrow’s men will have a harder time finding and holding on to suitable women without resorting to threats and violence. As men will suffer, so will the vitality and stability of the nuclear family.

As Shakespeare noted, the past is prologue. The push to legalize same-sex marriage — to grant full social sanction to the homoerotic bond — is a major step in an experiment of social engineering. We might wind up ourselves one day penning the observations of writers like Sappho, and impotent to turn back the clock. It is said that all opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in religious dogma, which has no place in our legal discourse.

But there is a utilitarian argument as well: full social sanction for the homoerotic bond is opposed not for God’s sake, but for the sake of tomorrow’s men. For what will the men do once all the pussy’s gone?

Unconvinced?²

1. Sappho to Her Girlfriends, translated by Arthur S. Way [<]
2. The above is satire, and includes full quotes and paraphrasing from BeliefNet’s extremely bigoted, biased, sexist article trying to appeal to women to oppose gay marriage, for their sake. It’s a bunch of hogwash, and I hope the women know it. [<]

Tags: gay marriage, Homosexuality, Satire

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Law, Morality, Religion, Satire, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.