Current insistence that marriage can only mean union between a man and a woman does not have an echo throughout history, writes Jim Duffy.
Medieval documents and artefacts suggest that marriage has not always been strictly heterosexual. Since 1989 23 countries (including South Africa as of December 2006) have introduced some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships, with some allowing full same-sex marriage.
Regions in Brazil, Italy and Australia and 10 states in the United States also recognise gay relationships, while Taiwan has announced that it will do so. With opinion polls showing climbing support for recognition; a Swiss referendum endorsing the move; the election of an openly gay man as head of a leading Canadian political party; and a gay man heading Germany's Free Democrats, the evidence suggests that public acceptance of gay relationships, and the right to legal recognition of them, is growing in much of the world.
Though homosexuality has existed for millenniums, the word itself, from the Greek homo meaning "same" and the Latin root sex, was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny only in 1869. For most of the last millennium, Christianity, not state law, controlled marriages, making Christian attitudes to homosexual relationships important historically. That attitude has been curiously ambiguous. A grave slab titled "Tomb Slab of an English Couple" in a museum contains all the standard iconic symbols representing a marital couple. The slab names them as Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvoe (died October 1391). It was found during renovations in a Dominican church in Istanbul, its existence, location and symbolism contradicting official teaching on same-sex relationships.
Even more curiously, some medieval prayer books include alongside heterosexual weddings rituals controversially translated as "rites of same sex union", which used the key contemporary liturgical rituals associated with Christian marriage, including kissing on the lips before the altar, invocation of saints on the couple's love, blessings by a priest, an open gospel on the altar and the reception of the Eucharist. In the 19th century United States, two women living together, sexually or otherwise, were said to have a "Boston Marriage". Till the 18th century "molly houses" in Britain often had chapels attached in which homosexual couples would undergo illegal marriage ceremonies. We'wha, a Native American emissary to the American government in the late 19th century, and his community's spiritual leader, was himself married to a man within his own culture. So the idea that marriage culturally has no past homosexual links is false.
Henry VIII enacted the Buggery Act of 1533, the first major anti-homosexuality law in England and Ireland, in order to attack the monasteries (homosexual activity in monasteries was widely documented). The first victim, Lord Hungerford, was executed in 1540. Yet James I's bisexuality was an open secret. The last execution occurred in 1835, with the death penalty replaced by life imprisonment only in the 1860s. The controversial "Labouchère Amendment" to the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, to which Oscar Wilde fell victim, remained Irish law until 1993.
Modern decriminalisation of homosexuality began with France in 1791 with the abolition of religious courts. The Netherlands under the Napoleonic Code followed in 1811. Catholic Poland decriminalised in 1932. West Germany controversially kept Nazi-enacted anti-gay laws until 1969. Britain decriminalised in 1967, following the Wolfenden report. Ireland, belatedly, finally decriminalised only in 1993.
The late 20th and early 21st century saw a dramatic change in attitudes, from criminalisation to legal recognition of same-sex relationships in most of the western world. In Europe today only Chechnya criminalises same-sex relationships, with a maximum punishment of death. Interestingly, the Vatican as a civil state has no law against homosexuality.
The first country in modern times to legalise same-sex partnerships was Denmark in 1989. Civil unions or registered partnerships now exist in Norway (1993), Israel (1994), Sweden (1995), Greenland, Hungary and Iceland (all 1996), France (1999), Germany and Portugal (2001), Finland (2002), Croatia (2003), Luxembourg (2004), New Zealand, United Kingdom and Andorra (2005), the Czech Republic and Slovenia (2006). At least 10 Italian regions, as well as 10 US states, and regions of Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and as of this year Mexico City allow some form of recognition. Gender-neutral marriage exists in the Netherlands (since 2001), Belgium (2003), Massachusetts (2004), Spain and Canada (both 2005), with South Africa introducing it in December 2006. Taiwan has announced plans to recognise same-sex relationships, while Chinese legislators have raised the issue.
In a Swiss referendum in 2005, 58 per cent voted for civil unions, subject to restrictions on adoption, while a 2003 EOS Gallup poll found that 57 per cent of people in the then EU backed full gender-neutral marriage. Some 42 per cent backed full same-sex adoption rights. Not all societies have, however, been moving in the same direction. In July 2005 Iran publicly hanged two teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, supposedly for raping other teenagers, an explanation dismissed as fiction by human rights organisations, who believed it was simply for being gay. Latvia, Poland and Lithuania all passed constitutional amendments enshrining gender-specific marriage.
Two major political parties, Quebec's Parti Québecois and Germany's Free Democrats, have gay leaders. While the latter's leader, Guido Westerwelle, came out long after being elected, André Boisclair was openly gay when elected leader by the party grassroots in a landslide in 2005. The heads of state governments in Hamburg and Berlin, and the mayor of Paris, are all openly gay, while the Conservatives' Per-Kristian Foss, as Norwegian finance minister, married his same-sex partner when in office. In Northern Ireland Steven King was always open about his sexuality while working as David Trimble's adviser, to little criticism inside or outside the Ulster Unionists.
Society's move from gender-specific to gender-neutral relationships is now reflected either in the form of marriage or civil unions in many western states, with many others debating the idea. Having removed barriers to marriage based on religion, class, economic status and race, the next barrier falling is that which defines marriage exclusively by gender. It is the latest step in the millennium-old evolution of marriage.
Jim Duffy is a freelance writer