"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[Angrboda]

In Republican Rome, the poorly attested Lex Scantinia penalized an adult male for committing a sex crime (stuprum) against an underage male citizen (ingenuus). It is unclear whether the penalty was death or a fine. The law may also have been used to prosecute adult male citizens who willingly took a pathic role in same-sex acts, but prosecutions are rarely recorded and the provisions of the law are vague; as John Boswell has noted, "if there was a law against homosexual relations, no one in Cicero's day knew anything about it." When the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, all male homosexual activity was increasingly repressed, often on pain of death. In 342 CE, the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans declared same-sex marriage to be illegal. Shortly after, in the year 390 CE, emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius declared homosexual sex to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be publicly burned alive. Emperor Justinian I (527–565 CE) made homosexuals a scapegoat for problems such as "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences."

Laws and codes prohibiting homosexual practice were in force in Europe from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, and Muslim countries have had similar laws from the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century up to and including the present day. Abbasid Baghdad, under the Caliph Al-Hadi (785–786 CE), punished homosexuality with death.

Wikipedia || Violence against LGBT people

As noted in another thread, the fact that same-sex marriages had to be explicitly outlawed seems to strongly suggest that same-sex marriages were in fact a reality at the time. The idea that they would make a law outlawing a practice that did not occur is absurd. And thus, Steve's contention that same-sex marriage does not exist in history would seem to be an exaggeration, at best.

This seems to put the lie to a good chunk of Steve's arguments, ancillary as they were to his supposed main point about the possibility of principled objection to same-sex marriage. That, if I recall, is still an outstanding question, namely, whether the divine sanction of anti-homosexual attitudes commutes the sentence of bigotry otherwise assigned. In that regard I'd note two things. First, the general lack of humility and even adherence to their own doctrines in the historical tendency of Christians to assume the role of God and attempt to enforce "His" wishes (really theirs) in history makes the distinction rather self-serving. A less pompous and arrogant faith might have led to a society in which LGBT people were tolerated and accepted, but just not condoned by believers themselves. But pluralism is foreign to Christianity, or to be precise, is foreign to Christians, and so intolerance becomes the norm, rather than the reverse. The other point is that it really doesn't matter whether the Christian attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex marriage are principled or not, either presently or historically. The fact of the matter is that a lot of pain and death has been inflicted on people who were otherwise innocent. That pain and death was real, unlike a certain sky fairy whose existence is likely just a figment of believers' imaginations. So, I really could give a shit about any supposed principled objections and the imaginary shield to culpability that provides, the reality is that Christians have left their mark in this world as judgemental and intolerant bastards, in spite of the exhortations from their own religion to leave such things up to God.