Same sex marriage and the Roman Empire record

The Spectrum Magazine website has been giving a lot of attention to the upcoming same sex proposition in California. For some reason they think it is a religious liberty issue. It is something we learn to expect from the political left which operates that site.

I was reading an article in my local newspaper entitled: Milestones in GLBT history

The author states:

“While Massachusetts and California have recently legalized same-sex marriage, it is hardly anything new. In fact, the earliest recorded same-sex marriages occurred during the Roman Empire. A number of same-sex unions took place during that time — almost 2,000 years ago.”

Wow that is amazing 2000 years ago there were same sex marriages, does that mean that if one wants to promote same sex marriage they are promoting a Pagan religious ceremony since that seems to be the argument often used against those who oppose same sex marriages, separation of church and state etc.

Thanks to Wikipedia footnote 12 we find the reference to this precedent setting Roman Empire Same Sex Marriage. Since that footnote does not link to the reference and inquiring minds will want to know here is the source of growing in popularity Roman Empire and the first record of same sex marriage.

Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars The Life of Nero

28 Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife. 2 This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, 84 fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.

29 He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched 85 by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was his unshaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most of them concealed their vices and cleverly drew a veil over them; and that therefore he pardoned all other faults in those who confessed to him their lewdness.

A heartwarming account, one I am sure many proponents of same sex marriage can point to proudly…or maybe just point to. As Paul Harvey says; now you know the rest of the story.