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A mild question

” After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization . . .”

— President Bush, endorsing a Federal Marriage Amendment

Just one question (among many possibles). Where in these “millennia of human experience” is there room for Ancient Greece, where at times heterosexual unions had to be mandated by law in order to maintain healthy populations, and where Aristophanes, in Plato’s Symposium, explained homosexuality as the natural result of divine action.

(Once upon a time, goes the story, humans all had two heads. Some of us had a male and female head, and others had homosexual heads. Zeus, in his wisdom, split us in two. Since then, humans have set about seeking to become whole by pairing off with their natural counterpart. Some men seek women, some women seek men, but . . .

“The women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature.”)

And do these “millennia of human experience” include the Roman Empire? Many artisans in that era devoted a great deal of time and effort to making objects like this:









I guess I’m just trying to figure out which millenia of human experience the President is using to justify writing bigotry into the Constitution. Perhaps he means only the most recent millennium, which included 1327, the year the deposed King Edward II had a red hot poker shoved into his anus as punishment for his homosexuality. Sounds like a great tradition. Lousy activist judges!

UPDATE: I realized I could’ve explained the Aristophanes thing better. So I did.

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