Same sex Marriage has been recorded since before Christ (around 30 BC). It is not a new fad, nor is it about causing conflict. SSM is about exactly the same thing as heterosexual marriage. Love, commitment, and now tax benefits. It only becomes a conflict when people are denied rights or common decency.
"Ancient times[edit]
Main article:
History of same-sex unions
Various types of same-sex marriages have existed,
[1] ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.
[2]
Cicero mentions the marriage (using the Latin verb for "to marry", i.e. nubere) of the son of Curio the Elder, but he does it in a metaphorical form to criticize his enemy Antonius. Cicero states thus that the younger Curio was "united in a stable and permanent marriage" to Antonius.
[3] Martial also mentions a number of same-sex marriages, but always in derisory terms against people whom he wants to mock.
[4]
Practices and
rituals for
same sex unions were more recognized in Mesopotamia than in
ancient Egypt.
[5] In ancient
Assyria, there was considered to be nothing wrong with homosexual love between men.
[6][7][8][8] The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers giving
equal standing to the love of a man for both a woman and a man.
[9]
At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions; and in fact, thirteen out of the first fourteen Roman Emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual.
[10] The first Roman emperor to have married a man was
Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions. First with one of his
freedmen,
Pythagoras, to whom Nero took the role of the bride, and later as a groom Nero married a young boy, who resembled one of his concubines,
[11] named
Sporus.
Adolescent emperor
Elagabalus referred to his
chariot driver, a blond slave from
Caria named
Hierocles, as his husband.
[12] He also married an athlete named Zoticus in a lavish public ceremony in Rome amidst the rejoicings of the citizens.
[13]
These same-sex marriages continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the
Theodosian Code(
C. Th. 9.7.3) was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law prohibited
same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed.
[14][15]
In the Middle Ages, a same-sex marriage between the two men Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz in the
Galician municipality of
Rairiz de Veiga in Spain occurred on 16 April 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel. The historic documents about the church wedding were found at
Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova.
[16]
The
Siwa Oasis in
Egypt had an historical acceptance of male homosexuality and even rituals of
same-sex marriage — traditions that Egyptian authorities have sought to repress, with increasing success, since the
early 20th century.
[17] The German
egyptologist George Steindorff explored the
oasis in 1900 and reported that homosexual relations were common and often extended to a form of marriage.
[18]"
Wikipedia