My ancient Greek wedding
Does the history of ancient Greece tell us anything about the modern debate regarding gay marriage? No.
Emily Wilson has a book review of James Davidson’s Greek Love, a new exploration of the varieties of homosexuality in ancient Greece. I have not read the book itself (which sounds worthwhile), but the review reveals some confusion that may be typical of Liberal commentators on this issue.
Before going further, let me state for the record that I am in favor of full marriage rights for all, or the abolition of state-sanctioned marriage altogether. Good.
Wilson writes:
In short, there was no single “traditional” way to conduct same-sex relationships in ancient Greece. This fact in itself might make us leery of any claims about what a “normal” or “traditional” domestic setup might look like. Any claim about “the way things have always been” is liable to be false.
But this itself is simply false, as her own reading reveals! Davidson’s history reveals that there are indeed normalized views of love — his work shows only that there are many, many versions of tradition across Greece. There was indeed no normalized “Greek” view of homosexuality, but there certainly were customs and traditions in each city state that were no doubt powerfully prescriptive to their populations.
Wilson argues contra Foucault that “it really does not matter whether any Greeks thought of themselves as ‘gay.’” While this is surely true, in the modern context it certainly does, and the inevitability of this distinction forms the basis of the best arguments for gay marriage. WIlson has revealed only that it would be possible to think about homosexuality differently than we do now. Given that, her conclusion makes less sense:
Whatever public legitimacy was, or was not, granted to same-sex relationships in any previous culture, it would still be entirely unjust, within the terms of our own society, to deny homosexual couples the legal status available to heterosexual relationships.
Wilson is walking the fine line trodden by many historians and sociologists. Wilson’s conclusion is an explicit value judgment which is grounded in her own time and place and, of course, her Liberal values. However, the sweep of history reveals in no way that gay marriage should be justified, or even that it has been — that argument, which again I agree with, should be rooted in universal values. Davidson’s excellent history should be left to stand on its own, without a modern political agenda which it cannot support.
-John
Related posts:
- Greek to me
- Gay marriage, continued . . .
- Gay marriage & polygamy
- Is social conservatism a new religion?
- Founder philosophizing
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