Posted by Morbo
The Federal Marriage Amendment failed to pass either the House of Representatives or the Senate earlier this year, but don’t expect the issue to go away. Visit any Religious Right website and you’ll find plenty of calls for changing the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. After all, the “values voters” have spoken, right? (Oh, wait, turns out that’s all bogus. Like that matters. Don’t expect anything like facts to shut up a TV preacher.)
The pro-amendment arguments just aren’t persuasive. Scratch them, and just beneath the surface lurks something like, “The Bible/Pope/Pastor Bob/Rev. Moon/Boolubi, the Fifth of the Enlightened Ones/[insert favorite religious leader here] says gay marriage is wrong.” In a secular republic, that just doesn’t wash.
Occasionally, amendment backers make a stab at advancing a non-religious argument. One of these is the claim that past societies that tolerated homosexuality collapsed, and Exhibit A is usually the Roman Empire.
In a long-winded rant against gay marriage earlier this year, Samuel Silver, chairman of a right-wing Jewish group called Toward Tradition, wrote, “The Emperor Nero reportedly ‘went so far as to write a marriage contract for one of his favorite male lovers.’ Do we really want to follow the Roman Empire into decline and ruin? It is critical to recognize the essential difference between a society where homosexuality is practiced privately and one that actually gives it official sanction and recognition.”
This argument can seem persuasive to people who have never read a history of the ancient world, and it allows those who make it to dress up an otherwise lame position with some historical pizzazz. (“Look, I did some research!”) However, it falls apart with even a cursory glance at the history.
Morbo does not pretend to be a historian. But I do have an interest in the subject, especially the Roman Empire. (Ask to see my cool collection of ancient Roman coins sometime.) I’ll be clear: Homosexuality did not bring down the Roman Empire.
To set the stage: When people talk about the fall of the Roman Empire, they are usually referring to the collapse of the Western Empire in 476 A.D. By this time, the Roman Empire had been divided into two spheres – Eastern and Western, each with its own emperor and capital. The last Roman emperor in the West was deposed by a Germanic king in 476. But the Eastern Empire, with its headquarters at Constantinople, survived and prospered. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire, and it lasted until Constantinople fell to Muslim armies late in the Fifteenth Century.
But what about the West? Did homosexuality cause the Western Empire to fall? In a word: No.
It’s true that some Roman emperors were gay or bisexual. Hadrian, one of the best emperors, traveled the empire with his youthful lover, Antinous. Caligula and Nero were accused of having sex with just about anyone or anything. All this proves is that gay people, like straight people, come in good and bad varieties.
By the time the Western Empire collapsed, homosexuality was no longer being tolerated in Rome. In fact, laws against it had been passed as the Christian church became politically powerful. The image of decadent Romans lying around on couches eating grapes during orgies comes from the First and Second centuries. By the Fifth, people in the West were too busy trying to survive to attend orgies.
So what caused the collapse? Not surprisingly, a combination of several factors:
* Economic chaos: In the First Century, the Romans’ standard coin, the denarius, was pure silver. A skilled worker earned about one a day, and it had real buying power. But by the middle of the Third Century, the coin had become so debased that its silver content was minimal. Roman mints produced bronze or copper coins and covered them with a thin plating of silver, but the government tariffed the coin as pure silver. This fooled no one. Just handling the coin would often cause the silver to flake off! The result was rampant inflation.
* Bad Leadership: The Romans never came up with a coherent plan for imperial succession. Emperors would pass the throne onto sons, who might be brilliant administrators or unhinged crackpots. Marcus Aurelius was a wise emperor known as a philosopher king. His son, Commodus, was a lunatic who thought he was Hercules reincarnated. Crazy emperors depleted the treasury, killed political opponents, neglected the needs of the state and generally made a mess of things.
* Ambitious Generals: Because the leadership was so often bad, Roman generals took to seizing the throne. Few of them lasted long. In the late third century, nearly two dozen different men held power over a 50-year period. There were constant attempts to usurp the throne. Even usurpers had usurpers! Civil wars broke out. This is not a recipe for stable government.
* Aggressive Outsiders: As the Roman Empire began to look increasingly chaotic, outside forces moved in for the kill. Germanic “barbarian” tribes (who, by this time, had been more or less Romanized) began pouring over Rome’s frontiers. To make things worse, the revitalized Persian Empire started causing trouble in the East, trying to provoke fights. More wars! More chaos!
* ‘Are You Ready for Some Chariot Races?’: You’ve heard of bread and circuses? The grain dole, which most Romans lived on, was the bread. The circuses were huge public entertainments held in the Coliseum and other forums – chariot races, gladiator fights, mock sea battles, etc. These events were originally limited to public festivals, but by the Fourth Century, Romans spent more than half of the year watching this “entertainment.” The shows became increasingly elaborate. They cost a lot to put on, further straining the treasury.
* Time: The Western Empire lasted for more than 1,200 years. (And Rome existed for hundreds of years as a republic before it was an empire.) That’s a long time, and sometimes things just fall apart as they get old. The Romans had a good run. They built a lot of roads, brought sanitation and fresh water to people, invented the postal service, centralized government services and inspired republican government. (Not bad, huh?) Like all good things, it eventually had to come to an end. Empires have a way of just eroding over time. Ask the British about it.
Blaming an entire class of people for the destruction of a society, nation or empire has its purposes: It becomes an excuse for marginalizing those people, suppressing their civil rights and even denying their fundamental worth and dignity as human beings. This is a crude and mean-spirited tactic. The Religious Right is free to employ it, but they have no business drafting the ancient Romans as allies.