Rush Limbaugh to divorce third wife...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow

Marriage laws are historical, not something modern conservatives made up. Even ardent buggerers in ancient Greece had only heterosexual marriages. They sometimes adopted their pederastic lovers as sons for inheritance purposes.

Yes, marriage laws (in all their varieties) are historical - and so are the institutions of slavery, marriage by capture, the subjugation of women to men in marriage, polyandry, polygamy and female and male infanticide.

Marriage 'laws' are also mutable- no longer are women and children the chattels or property of the married man, no longer do widows have to marry their dead husband's brother and provide a child by him, and it is no longer expected that a widow will immolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Women even get to keep their own property in marriage now- perhaps this is behind the divorce rate.

I'm curious as to why you should bring Ancient Greece into the argument, since the modern binary distinction between heterosexual and homosexual did not exist for the Greeks of Classical antiquity.

Are you arguing that because of its roots as a practice in historical antiquity, that married heterosexual men should now seek out fourteen year old boys to engage in a master-tutor relationship, exchanging gifts and partaking of interfemoral and intercrural sex?

I'd like to know your stand on the practice of exposing male infants (as done in Sparta) who were disabled or in some way unlikely to be able to father offspring- seen as a necessity in Spartan society and marriage.

Also, in Spartan marriages it was permissible for married men to take other women if their wives proved infertile, for the purposes of begetting more male children.

Similarly Spartan women (who enjoyed rather more rights than the women in other Greek states) could take male lovers to provide them with offspring should their husbands prove impotent or infertile.

Does this meet with your support as a practice to be encouraged within modern day marriages between consenting heterosexuals who are not in marriages arranged by their parents, nor first cousins, nor siblings (practices seen as routine or 'normal' in other societies and times)?

Also, do you take the stance that marriage between heterosexual people of different perceived 'races' should be legal or illegal?

At varying times within American society it has been legal, then illegal, then legal again. As it was also considered, at varying times, to be immoral and a threat to the stability of that society, I wonder if you have any statistics relating to the breakdown of law and order when interracial marriage was seen as wicked and immoral?

Do you think that the marriage of nuns to Christ or Venice to the sea should be allowed?

I don't really see the point of non-procreating women being allowed to marry a god, or a city being allowed to marry a sea or stretch of water- after all these could set dangerous precedents.

What if the marriages break down?

Will the Adriatic sue Venice, and what would be the likely alimony payments?

Would nuns be eligible for half the communal property?

[Drake Tungsten]

Trying to score a point whilst missing it- congratulations.

Thank you.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Both are wrong. It does no good to try to compare the two to each other.

Right, because there aren't varying degrees of wrongness. Next time you jaywalk, we'll be sure to note the comparison between yourself and Hitler.

So it is with some wife-beaters... No excuse.

Or primate cousins are prone to sexual "infidelity," but there's no evidence of widespread abuse on remotely the same level. You still have failed to make any connection between the two except to say both are wrong. So what? Telling a fib and murdering someone are both wrong, but only the demented would find them morally equivalent.