The Vatican has just declared war over the issue of ‘gay marriage'.

An Anglican Bishop has also waded into the controversy.

Bishop Jones said English society needed to acknowledge that "those who give moral and social priority to marriage are not necessarily homophobic." He added: "Although it is uncomfortable to hear it, the debate needs to acknowledge that in the act of gay sex, there are serious health issues."

Monogamous Polygamy

Now this business about ‘serious health issues' is certainly true, although there are 'serious health issues' that need to be acknowledged by heterosexuals as well, since world wide, AIDS is mostly a heterosexual disease, as all those statistics indicate.

At this point, since the religious are bringing up the issue of STDs, and one must presume, will then make the leap of illogic by then suggesting that 'natural law' and the 'argument from reason' therefore suggest that life long monogamous marriage is the only morally correct choice, I thought that it might be good to look at how the societies represented by the Bible dealt with the troublesome moral issues surrounding STDs in the past.

Now social anthropologists can tell you that throughout human history 80 per cent of human cultures have practiced some form of polygamy, and that monogamy is actually the exception and not the rule when it comes to natural human behavior. The sky rocketing divorce rate and the difficulty and stress most people encounter in monogamous marriage are also indicators that monogamy is not the natural human way of relating. It would be hard to find any great hero in the Bible who actually practiced monogamy, since group sex with multiple partners is the norm in the majority of human societies throughout history, and this is certainly true of the societies that are represented in the Bible. This is important to note since conservative religious clerics like to assert that somehow this imposed monogamy represents the most basic human value and is somehow historically the norm for human beings and thus forms what they like to call ‘the fundamental basis for human civilization'.

It certainly wasn't the norm or the fundamental basis for those societies described in the Bible, and no one in these cultures was inclined to practice monogamy. Given that Catholicism had not been invented at that time, they therefore lived a little closer to true human nature and practiced a type of group sex (even today non-monogamous relationships are the norm, except of course that it is called cheating and adultery, whereas it was institutionalized in the cultures that created the Bible and thus was not ‘a sin' nor was it considered some kind of crime that had to be committed surreptitiously).

In order to understand why all the great heroes of the Bible practiced group sex, rather than monogamy, it is important to understand just how ancient some of the texts that compose the Bible really are...they go back to the late stone age and describe the period covering the transition to the early iron age, and then onto the period of the late Roman empire in the first century. The political structure described in these ancient documents predate the formation of such social institutions as the ‘state' and the ‘monogamous nuclear family' does not yet exist, not yet having been invented by the clerics of religion. The basic social unit was the extended family, the tribe, and so we see here that human beings were living in the same social units as other primate species such as chimps, gorillas, etc. What could be called ‘the family' as described in these ancient documents also mimics primate sexuality, in that dominant males kept harems, and given that the Bible describes and celebrates only dominant males, we are not told the stories of those males excluded from the primate mating ritual. When one male keeps many females it naturally follows that less dominant males would have access to no females, at least as far as breeding went.

The Bible provides hints as to how non dominant males dealt with sexuality in a world still mimicing the ancient primate social order. We are told that Judah, celebrated as the ancestor of Christ, was in the habit of sleeping with prostitutes he found loitering and waiting for customers by the side of the road. This dominance over females by the wealthier and dominant males in society thus created the institution of prostitution out of necessity, since subordinate males were unable to find females with which to breed, and thus, like Judah, resorted to prostitutes.

The sexual ethics of the Bible as they developed over the centuries are steeped in paranoia over the issue of the sexually transmitted diseases. We are told in the book of proverbs that a man must avoid a sexually adventurous women since she is the ‘doorway to the grave' and ‘very few men who enter who bed ever come out alive.' This understandable fear of STDs did not however result in the immediate call for ‘life long monogamy' (which is typically the case in religious arguments made today). Rather these ancient societies developed certain safe and legalized forms of prostitution, where those who could afford it established their own private whore houses. The correct term would be harems, but in all but name they were in fact whore houses, and the prostitutes were given a special legal status - they were referred to as concubines. A concubine had a lower legal status than a wife. The children of concubines did not inherit a part of the estate. Concubines were basically kept on hand as part of a harem so that men could avoid being monogamous and have promiscuous sex with prostitutes without having to worry about sexually transmitted diseases. The most celebrated heroes of the Bible kept such legalized whore houses (or harems if you wish to call them that) while those of lesser social status followed the example of Judas, and picked up prostitutes they found lingering by the side of the road, since they could not afford to keep a private whore house of their own, not being as rich and well off as the dominant male gorillas who are celebrated and described on the pages of the Bible (the story of the life of the subordinate male is not for the most part told on the pages of the Bible since it contains books such as ‘Kings' and for the most concerns itself with the story of the powerful male, thus giving us a unique look at the social mores of society as humanity moved out of the stone age, into the iron age, and then out of the tribal society and into the era of the great states and then the empires).

This practice of emulating primate sexuality and practicing legalized promiscuity by keeping a stable of whores on hand in a private whore house continued on through the age of states and empires and only came to an end during the rise of Christianity. In its original form Christianities emphasis on monogamous marriage can actually be seen as egalitarian, when compared to what came before. The dominant male gorilla is what we find described on the pages of the Bible up to this point and not only is this form of sexual expression hierarchical (while it was natural for human beings, just as it remains for our relatives the apes) it was also grossly unfair to women. Women were forbidden by the dominant male ape from having sex with any other males, and you can tell from the pages of the Bible, that one of the main reasons for keeping a harem private was a morbid dread of VD and other STDs (this morbid dread being the inspiration for every expression of sexual paranoia you find on the pages of these ancient biblical documents).

Most of the dominant male gorillas celebrated on the pages of the Bible kept quite large harems and so a women could expect to be engaged sexually only on very rare occasions, and this type of polygamous sexuality, while it allowed certain privileged males to escape from the boredom of undesirable monogamy, imposed an intolerable burden on both the women who were being exploited in these arrangements and also on the subordinate males who were being forced to take their chances with VD by picking up prostitutes as Judah was in the habit of doing (so the Bible tells us). The hypocrisy of these ancient societies as described in the Bible is also worth noting, for Judah was in the habit of sleeping with prostitutes, however if a woman of your own tribe was found to be a prostitute honor required that you burn her to death, and Judah demands that a woman of his tribe be burned in just such a way for practicing prostitution. Apparently it was okay to sleep with a hooker, provided you found some willing girl that belonged to some other tribe. Of course the subordinate males from those other tribes would also be looking to screw your sister or your cousin, thus letting your tribe bear the ‘dishonor', just as Judah was willing to burn girls from his tribe while ‘dishonoring' girls from other tribes, but then the subordinate males did need to get laid somehow right, and so it went.

Now when you consider how unjustly human sexuality was expressed as evidenced by that celebration of dominant male gorilla culture known as the Holy Bible, then you can see the demand for an end to this male dominated polygamy and the institution of monogamy by the Christians could actually be seen as liberating and egalitarian in the context of that post-stone age, post-primate culture they had back then. But it was not the ideal solution, for while it addressed certain issues of social inequality, it introduced new and more pernicious problems in the process. While one can make an attempt at superficially reforming primate culture, fighting against the natural order of things is something else again, and it is just this bitter and hostile fight against nature that Christianity found itself fighting for the rest of its existence. You see, human beings are not by nature monogamous. Monogamy is an artificial construct. Polygamous relationships are the norm as the vast majority of cultures on earth testifies, since polygamy, and not monogamy is the dominant form of sexual expression in the vast majority of human cultures over the course of history. Monogamy is unnatural, and about the only good thing that one can say about it is that you don't risk catching VD or AIDs or some other STD if you practice monogamy. Of course you won't catch VD or AIDs if you keep a private whore house if you can afford it, just as the dominant male gorilla heroes of the Bible did, but then this leads to social problems, those very social problems monogamy was supposed to fix.

On the other hand returning to the tribal family unit, without including that dominant male gorilla in the picture, is also a viable solution, and seems more likely to keep people happy in a less than ideal situation than this miserable and hated monogamy. Monogamous couples require lots of counseling and therapy. Consider all the hours and all the sermons and all the marriage retreats with which Christian ministers must busy themselves, all the hard selling of the ‘virtues' of monogamy, the romantic mumbo jumbo about true love waiting for prince Charming (some day your prince will come). Yes monogamy is a real problem for people, as that sky rocketing divorce rate testifies, since, by nature people should be living in a tribal family unit, like other primates, and this monogamous nuclear family idea is just an arbitrarily imposed artificial construct intended to correct one social injustice while introducing a whole host of other problems in the process.

The monogamous nuclear family is not ‘the basis for all human civilization' as the conservative clerics of the Vatican like to keep suggesting. If it was natural people would like it a lot more than they do instead of hating it as passionately as they do. Monogamy and the nuclear family are simply an artificial half solution to an ancient social problem which might not have such a big problem were it not for the complicating factor of those pesky STDs. People continue to get AIDs for example, not because they are ‘born sinners' who refuse to ‘practice morals' because of their unsaved and sinful nature, but rather because human beings are primates and belong in an extended tribal family unit, where like the primates, they practice promiscuous group sex. As for that dominant male gorilla business, in primate societies it has been found that the females sneak around a lot, and researchers have noticed females having sex with that dominant male gorilla, and then sneaking around and having sex with the subordinate male apes and monkeys behind that dominant males back, and so we can say that in primate society more is made of the dominant role of that dominant ape than is really the case in actual practice. Certainly this would also have been true in regards to those dominant apes celebrated in the Bible. No doubt those ‘submissive females' were acting just like their counterparts in other primate societies, and secretly sneaking around behind the back of that dominant Bible male. That bit about the ‘dominant male' it would seem is also grossly unnatural, and female apes and gorillas and monkeys won't put up with it any more than human females would, and in the end it really is hard to say just who really is the father of those little chimps and apes given how mom has been observed by primate researchers playing the field.

Now given the nature of human culture, and in particular the dogmatic narrow mindedness of religion, it just follows then that this whole bit about the monogamous nuclear family has now become ‘the basis of human society since the beginning' and something that is alleged to be ‘supported by natural law and simple reason'. Actually if the truth be told it is unnatural and a less than perfect solution to an ancient social problem which has now become fossilized and through the process of religious indoctrination is held up to be some kind of ‘divine revelation' regarding how human beings should live, yes even the divine commandment of God in person. It is none of these things.

Now given how some church preacher or another is always guaranteed to bring up STDs aor AIDs as either an argument against gay people or as some supposed ‘natural law' proof that monogamy is the divine requirement, I thought I would point out here that a modified form of the ancient legally sanctioned personal whore house idea that all the great heroes of the Bible practiced would also provide every bit as much protection from STDs and AIDs as ‘having sex with only one person until your dead.' The argument about STDs as an argument in favor of monogamy and the unnatural nuclear family unit is bogus for that very reason.

For example people could practice a form of tribal family unit, which is the natural human unit and the true basis of all human society, since human beings are primates. We see people living this way in the most ancient texts of the Bible, and the later imposition of this monogamous nuclear family was something that arbitrarily imposed upon human culture from the outside, not something that was natural and thus practiced by nature by human beings. It had to imposed, and it was imposed for a reason, but this does not make it natural. Since monogamy and the nuclear family actually represented an artificially imposed compromise solution, it only logically follows that other artificial solutions could be proposed, and given how hated monogamy really is, an alternative solution, if carefully crafted and though out, could very easily prove to be a superior solution.

A better form of human relationship could be a kind of monogamous polygamy, absent the social injustices of the sexual practices described on the pages of the Bible. Practicing ‘monogamous polygamy' in the ‘tribal extended family unit' would address that nasty issue of STDs while also saving people from the horrors of that dreadful monogamous nuclear family trap and snare that human beings hate so much. It would also address those nasty social issues that early Christianity tried to address by enforcing monogamy in the first place. There would no dominant male gorilla, and people could sleep with multiple partners without causing social problems for others or risking their necks engaging in risky sex. Since monogamous polygamy addresses all the issues just raised and proposes viable solutions, it is therefore as viable as monogamy, and whenever anyone tries to argue that VD or AIDs is an argument for the monogamous (true love waits...some day my prince will come) nuclear family you might want to bring to their attention the fallacy in their reasoning and logic by pointing this simple fact out to them. Monogamous polygamy in addition to offering some safety from STDs would also go a lot further in keeping people happy than the slave house of monogamy, which only makes them miserable. Who knows, they might not even need tons of therapy, and that would be an improvement as well.

Considering this you can see that by fighting against nature for thousands of years Christianity actually creates the very sinful adulterers they then roundly condemn. By stubbornly attempting to maintain the fiction of monogamy and the nuclear family, they create the very conditions that have resulted in such human misery and sky rocketing divorce rates which the church then condemns. The church is also shares responsibility for the disastrous spread of STDs, in particular AIDs, for by stubbornly refusing to tolerate the genuine expression of natural human sexuality, and instead insisting in a ridiculous fashion that the hated religious view of human sexuality is somehow natural, they force human behavior underground and people therefore become ‘sinners' engaging in ‘forbidden activities' when, if you consider what I just said above, it is very possible for people to express their sexuality in a more natural way, while of necessity still imposing some restraints (due to STDs) and yet have a better chance of keeping people safe, healthy, and happy than is the case under the tyrannical system of religious dogmatism that shares a huge load of guilt and responsibility for creating the very situation which they then claim to solve by simply imposing archaic solutions that have already been rejected by the majority of the human race.

As I mentioned showing even a little flexibility opens up worlds of possibilities, opening the mind to ways of living that might actually make people happy, instead of keeping them snared in traps that prove damaging to them in the end. While people might be foolish enough to get talked into that deal about how they are going to ‘have sex with just one person until they drop dead' it isn't long before they find out just how miserable they are going to be, and therefore we must ask, did the dogmatists of some church really do them such a big favor by deluding them in the first place. But then religion has never been about human happiness but rather religion is about the dogmas of religion and the sole purpose of religion consists of the spreading of religious dogmas, even worthless dogmas it turns out. Were human beings made for religion, or is religion to be made for human beings? In our culture it turns out to be the case that human beings have been created for the sole purpose of serving religion, their sole purpose in being born turning out to have been so that they could ‘accept Jesus' and other such religious notions. How we turn things upside down!

Gay marriage - a two edged sword

Now this brings me to the subject of ‘gay marriage' in general, and considering the above is it not a two edged sword. On the one hand, the argument is made that gay people should have the right to marry if they so wish, and I am not going to argue against that position. However one has to wonder why any gay person would want to marry, especially when you consider how miserable most straight marriages are. If monogamous marriage were somehow some great thing, the most natural choice, then I can understand why some gay couple might want to marry.

Gay people are not by nature monogamous, and therefore it seems that ‘gay marriage' is something that will only appeal to a small minority, and even then, once they've tried to weather the storms of going against human nature (human beings are by nature polygamous like other primates) well they might find that ‘gay marriage' really isn't such a great benefit to have acquired after all.

Gay marriage is certainly a two edged sword. On the one hand, by promoting this archaic institution, the door is closed on other expressions of human relationships which might address that troublesome issue of STDs while allowing people to express their sexuality in a manner more in keeping with natural law. As well, the backlash has begun, and now statistics are telling us that support for decriminalizing homosexuality has for the first time dropped by twenty points (from 60 per cent support to 40 per cent). So by adopting the agenda of the religious conservatives and the religious right, it seems that gay people have actually cut themselves twice over with that two edged sword. They have legitimized an unnatural and dogmatic conservative view of human sexual relationships, which makes heterosexuals miserable and which again and again proves to be a dismal flop (the majority of straight marriages currently end in divorce and of the rest, while so many of them learn to live with their misery), and now the back lash has begun.

The drive for gay marriage has been pioneered by religious gay people who identify themselves as Christian. It always surprises me just how conservative religious Christian gays can be. For example I have read tracts calling on gay people to realize that ‘true love waits.' Reading some of these religious gay tracts is like reading something put out by the American religious right wing. Its eerie. According to this gay Christian doctrine all gay people should practice abstinent celibacy until they finally enter in a life long monogamous sexual relationship with their life long soul mate. (Yes, I am telling the truth. Christian gays can be very conservative). This line is echoed by what are supposed to ‘liberal Christians' who announce to the world that they are very much supportive of gay couples who are willing to live in life long committed monogamous gay relationships. Thus, we can assume, they can also take on all the misery and problems of monogamous straight people, and we can expect them to probably be about as successful as monogamous straight people are at actually making this unnatural and artificial relationship a success. This call for life long monogamy among gay couples is typically about as liberal a statement as you can expect these days from ‘Christian liberals'. What they are saying then is that they accept about what, 1 or 2 per cent of the gay population.

Certainly reckless promiscuity is not the answer, but is calling on gays to live the monogamous lifestyle of the straight nuclear family a viable alternative? If gay Christians are to be some kind of vanguard then could they not rock the boat instead of simply surrendering to the sexual status quo, and lending their support to such dead doctrines as that of the straight monogamous nuclear family (true gay love waits, someday your prince will come)?

It seems unfortunate to me that the whole gay community is about to experience a huge back lash over an issue that represents only the smallest minority of the gay community, and which, given the size of the backlash is now being eagerly exploited by right wingers and conservatives of all kinds, who are always eager to jump onto the band wagon when we see such an opportunity to advance their agenda appear. And all this for something as stale as ‘abstinent celibacy' and ‘life long monogamy'. Doesn't seem worth it if you ask me...

The estrus cycle, ‘natural law, and Catholic Canon Law

What is truly remarkable about the recent statement on Gay Marriage is that at its heart the argument being used against gay marriage is the same one used against straight people who want to use contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. So some married gay guy and some straight guy wearing a condom or two married lesbians and some straight woman on the pill are both damned by the Vatican, and both for exactly the same reasons.

Now in order to understand why this would be the case you need to understand Christian Canon Law. According to Canon law sexuality for the purposes of procreation is a venial sin. That's right. Even married couples when they have sex to have a kid are guilty of a sin, but it is only a venal sin (which means you won't go right straight to the flaming pits of hell for committing a venal sin, unlike a mortal sin, which will get you eternally damned). Sex between married couples is a venal sin, since the sin of passing on original sin, which is transmitted through sexual orgasm, is somehow ‘atoned for' through what is called in terms of Christian dogmatism ‘the sacrament of marriage.' Because you are blessed when entering into the monogamous nuclear family by taking on this ‘sacrament of marriage' you can orgasm to have a kid and only be guilty of committing this ‘venial sin'. You are still guilty of sin, however, and even such a powerful sacrament as the monogamous marriage ceremony cannot erase the stain of such a sin, because you see, when having sexual intercourse you are transmitting the ‘original sin' committed by some guy named Adam and his wife Eve in the Garden of Eden. This original sin is transmitted through male sperm, and thus we can see that original sin is somehow programmed into human DNA. This makes one wonder why humanity has never thought to launch a class action for negligent programming and associated damages, which I am sure would mount up into the many trillions of dollars, but instead people pray to Jesus to forgive them for their faulty DNA programming, and then commit venial sins every time they have sex.

Unless they have sex while using contraceptives. According to canon law if a person has sex, strictly for pleasure, and without using contraceptives, they are guilty of a mortal sin and are therefore at risk of going to hell. According to canon law sex is for procreation only, and sex for enjoyment is a crime against God and against all natural law.

Now the argument that sex for fun is a mortal sin is based on an ignorant and unscientific dried out old pre-scientific religious superstition masquerading as an argument ‘from natural law'. According to this ancient dogma from Catholic Canon law, all the animals observe an estrus cycle. They only mate when the female is fertile and thus receptive and therefore it is an offense to nature when human beings ignore the estrus cycle principle and have sex for fun rather than for the purposes of procreation. All of natural law teaches us that throughout nature sex occurs during this estrus cycle for the purposes of procreation.

Now this ancient argument is dredged up to ban both gay marriage and the use of contraceptives. But it is a superstition and consists of pre-scientific mumbo jumbo. You see natural law teaches us that animals which have an estrus cycle observe the estrus cycle and that animals that do not have an estrus cycle have sex even when the female is not fertile, in otherwords, they have sex just for fun, since no procreation is possible during this non fertile period.

There are only two species known to not have an estrus cycle, human beings and the bonobo apes. Like human beings, the bonobo have sex all the time, and like human beings the bonobo exhibit great joy and ecstacy while having sex all the time, and this in spite of the fact that the bonobo don't have an estrus cycle and thus have sex for fun even though the female is not receptive to conceiving most of the time, just like human females. Human beings experience great joy having sex, and thus are just like the bonobo, who enjoy it an awful lot, as can be determined just by observing the non-estrus sexual behavior of the bonobos. Like humans the bonobos also have sex in just about every imaginable position, and enjoy great variety in sexual positions. According to Canon law, natural law teaches that all animals only have sex in the legal position for them, and this is true, except of course for bonobos and human beings.

Now the writers of Canon law knew nothing about bonobo apes, and thus they attempted to force an unnatural estrus cycle on human beings using a fraudulent argument they insisted was ‘an argument from natural law.' They also forbade under penalty of committing a mortal sin the practice of sex in anything other than the standard missionary position. They forbade this using what they called ‘the argument from natural law' since all animals only used one position, and thus humans must as well. Even though humans did not have an estrus cycle, they had to act as thought they did, only having sex for procreation and never for fun, which they declared a mortal sin deserving of the flames of hell, and they also had to do it only in the missionary position.

Now the bonobo apes don't have an estrus cycle and have sex for fun all the time, in every creative position they can think of, and thank God, the bonobo can't be converted or learn any religion of canon law, since they are only apes, and thus they can only obey ‘natural law' and canon law does not affect them in the least, making them an interesting subject for investigation, in particular since they completely destroy the premise underlying that old ‘natural law' argument against both birth control and since the birth control argument is merely recycled for this latest condemnation of gay marriage, it turns out the bonobo also undermine the so called ‘natural law' argument against gay marriage, since this archaic superstition is simply recycled and used for both damning birth control and then damning gay marriage and gay sex in general for the very same reason.

You see, according to Canon law, people have to obey ‘natural law' and pretend they are on an estrus cycle just like animals do out in nature, well except for the bonobo, but then the Canon religious lawyers did not know about bonobo apes, and instead tried to force humans to take on an estrus cycle which they had observed in various livestock and barn yard animals and so on.

Because you are only allowed to have sex on estrus cycle for the purposes of becoming pregnant, just like the animals of nature do, you are forbidden to use birth control. All nature teaches through the example of animals following natural law that it is forbidden to have sex outside the fertile period, the estrus period, of the female, therefore this great lesson learned from ‘natural law' must become the law for humans who must be forbidden to have sex for fun. Only bonobo apes can have sex for fun and not go straight to hell for having committed a mortal sin. Only bonobo apes can change sexual positions without violating sacred ‘natural law' which teaches that you can only have sex in one position since Canon Clerics observed that this was horses, sheep, goats and cows did it, therefore it must be ‘natural law.'

This is why the Catholic church bans birth control. Sex for fun is illegal in Catholic Canon law, and is punishable by an eternity in hell. To take birth control it is said ‘violates natural law' and if you are wondering what some Catholic Cleric means when they speak about ‘natural law' as it relates to birth control, well it all goes back to some obsolete superstition about the estrus cycle that made it into Catholic Canon Law, and is now being worthlessly recycled in an attempt to ban birth control on the grounds that it violates ‘the natural law of the estrus cycle observed in all animals which teaches the divine principle that all creatures must only have sex when it is time to procreate.' To take the birth control pill is to eliminate procreation and thus a mortal sin and a violation of ‘natural law' since it violates this divinely ordained estrus cycle.

Actually Catholic Canon law is invalid, and so is their ridiculous condemnation of birth control. What natural law actually teaches is that those animals that have an estrus cycle must obey their estrus cycle. They do and have not trouble obeying their estrus cycle since for them it really is natural law and thus doing sex that way comes naturally to them. Those animals that ‘have a problem obeying the estrus cycle law' require Canon Law to bring the matter to their attention since they have problem ‘obeying natural law' in this regard. What Canon law teaches matters not a bit, for what natural law teaches is that those two animals (bonobo and human) that do no have an estrus cycle can just have sex all the time for fun since they don't need to bother themselves with obeying an estrus cycle since they don't have one. Just as by nature all those animals with an estrus cycle obey its natural cycle with no problem, bonobo apes and humans have no trouble not obeying the estrus cycle since they don't have one. Once again this is natural law.

As for the bonobos they have sex for fun and then don't worry themselves sick about it later. This guilt over sex for fun is for humans, or perhaps its only for Catholics. Fortunately bonobos can't read, nor do they listen to sermons, so only human beings will have problems with sexual guilt. It goes with having a bigger brain (which probably isn't quite big enough however, thus the problems humans seem to have in this regard).

Historical Falsehoods

Ever since this Conservative backlash began in the church, I have been forced to listen to ministers and Catholic bishops and priests spreading around historical falsehoods and distortions about how instrinsic and natural the monogamous nuclear family really is ... they refer to it as 'the foundation of society' and insist that its origins 'predate the state' going back to the very origins of humanity as a species. This is a gross distortion of human history as the pedigree of the monogamous nuclear family only goes back a couple of thousand years, and has only become prevalent over the face of the planet in recent centuries, for the most part due to colonialism and imperialism and the intervention, under the protection of the power of the invading states, of various Christian missionaries who brought this 'monogamous nuclear family' concept to cultures around the world (thanks in no small part to the power of the gun barrels of the imperalist 'Christian' west). Whenever you here a minister of Catholic priest going on about how monogamy 'pre dates the state' and 'goes back to the beginning of time' you might want to keep in mind that this is a deliberate historical falsehood, and that various forms of polygamy go back to very beginnings of human history, and polygamy has been the foundation of human civilizations 80 per cent of the time with monogamy being the minority position, and a relatively recently introduced practice. Whenever you hear some Catholic bishop or conservative minister talking about 'monogamy' being protected 'for the overall good of society' you might want to consider the misery that most people experience in this imposed and unnatural form of relationship, the majority of marriages ending in painful divorces, kids traumatized, financial battles and struggles, the fighting and the distress, and then you might want to ask just how anyone could be so blind as to ignore the facts on the ground and then go on about how 'good for society' monogamy really is (of course this is often said by elderly celibate bishops who of course have no experience with the pain and misery of monogamous marriage, and thus are hardly qualified to speak out on what is good for society in this regard, never having suffered through it themselves...)

Polygamy and sex with multiple partners is the basis of all human society, and by nature no human being really wants to 'sleep with just one person until they are both dead'. Certainly no great hero of the Bible ever practiced monogamy, they were all polygamists, like almost every culture on the face of the earth at that time, going back to the very earliest recorded human history, and the fact, often paraded by ministers and bishops and priests, that monogamy is prevalent today is an accident of history (a function of imperialism and colonialism in the form of Christian conversion, and a recent - not to mention notoriously unsuccessful - innovation in human culture).

Bonobos, who, like human beings, have a sex life not tied to an estrus cycle (which means they have sex all the time, and not just to mate) are also bisexual. Their society is matriarchal, and one of the strongest bonds is the female to female bond, and this includes female-female sexuality. Male to male sexuality is also present, but since male bonding isn't as strong in bonobo society, males are less frequently bisexual than female bonobos. Among the sexual acts practiced by the bonobos are oral sex (both cunnilingus and fellatio), anal sex, 69, and sex in every possible position with adolosecents entering into the sexual circle upon entering sexual maturity (there is no artificially imposed concept of the 'extended childhood' in truly natural primate cultures), and they are, as I mentioned, bisexual, and polygamous, living in the same type of extended tribal family unit we see exhibited in most human cultures throughout history before the rise of the state destroyed the tribal family unit and the rise of religion destroyed the natural polygamous sexual practices which are the true 'foundation of all human civilization' (not monogamy).

I thought I would mention the above since it is another falsehood I have been forced to endure lately that states that any type of bisexual conduct is 'unnatural' and 'goes against natural law', and this is also false, since bonobos, unlike human beings, cannot learn religion, and can only obey natural law, and thus are a good object for study for this very reason (if one is sincerely interested in studying natural law, and is not just trying to prop up some religious dogmatism by mentioning 'natural law' as some argument against free sexual expression). However human beings, like the bonobo, are not by nature monogamous, as long human history indicates, and monogamy is something imposed on the planet by Christians for the most part through global imperialism by the west over the latter half of the last millenia. (Note that Mohammed was a polygamist, and this was in the seventh century, and that polygamy continued to be practiced until very recent times in Muslim countries - note the European Christian envy and fascination with the 'Tales of the Arabian Nights' in Victorian England - and this tells you just how persistent and hard to stamp out polygamous sexual expression really has been, and just how false religious arguments in favor of monogamy have been (they are deliberate historical falsifications).

For the above reason I am not entirely enthused about 'gay marriage', although I believe that people should be able to do what they want, in particular when it doesn't hurt anyone else, but it is about time for people to begin to really question how they want to express their sexuality. If monogamy was presented as one option, and not the only option, it wouldn't bother me as much as it does, and monogamy only represents the smallest fraction of the gay community, and thus it seems unfortunate that a backlash is building steam over this particular issue which will affect an entire community (even though, if the truth be told, it really isn't their issue, but rather the issue of small minority). Even so, the backlash is interesting in that it reveals just how shallow some of the support for extending equality to gays and lesbians really is (the soft underbelly of the rights movement).

Bonobo Extinction

By the way, on a side note, the Bonobo are on the verge of extinction due to the war in recent years in the Congo, with an estimated 4,000 only remaining in the wild, something that saddens me greatly. Once they are gone the rreligious dogmatics will truly be able to say that bisexual conduct is 'unnatural', which would be a blow to the gay rights movement, but they are also lovely creatures, the only creatures, along with humans, who have sex outside of an estrus cycle, a fine example of 'natural law', our closest sexual relatives among the primates. it will be sad day when they go, if this congo war should result in their complete destruction.


Now the above is relevant to the discussion of ‘gay marriage' since the so called ‘argument from nature' relates again and again in the Vatican statement to procreation (code word - the divine purpose of marriage). This insistence that sex is only for procreation, and not for fun, and thus gay sex cannot be sanctioned since it ‘cannot fulfill the purpose', well this whole so called ‘natural law argument' goes back to that bit in Canon law about obeying the estrus cycle, even if you have to be forced to do it. Sex is only for procreation, as the natural law of the estrus cycle teaches us, although the bonobo teach us that sex is also for no other reason for fun, but the bonobo never made it into Canon law, since this Canon law was based on an ignorant pre-scientific prejudiced superstition, and not on scientific evidence. This ‘estrus cycle' argument is the basis for banning both birth control as ‘a violation of natural law' since sex cannot ‘fulfill the purpose'. Now sex could fulfill the purpose if you learn you natural law from a bonobo, since the purpose in this case was just to have a lot of fun. Catholic Canon law, being based on the observation of a goat or a pig does not allow sex just for fun, thus both birth control and gay sex are banned because ‘they cannot fulfill the purpose.'

This argument permeates the entire document released by the Vatican which bans both gay marriage and gay sex in general, and so it is important that you understand this principle from Canon law in order to be able to ‘read between the lines' in their document and also to understand how the entire document is based on ancient obsolete religious dogmatism taken from Canon law. In the end it turns out to be nothing more than a collection empty assertions and mere assumptions which again and again are presented as though they were evidence, although, being not evidence but rather dogmatism, are never backed up with any facts worth mentioning. They are just meaningless assertions and empty assumptions, with that bit about ‘natural law' thrown in to make it sound like something of substance is being presented here.

The Statement of the Catholic Church on Homosexual Marriage

CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS

The introduction to the document...

Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon ... The present Considerations do not contain new doctrinal elements; they seek rather to reiterate the essential points on this question and provide arguments drawn from reason ... aimed at protecting and promoting the dignity of marriage, the foundation of the family, and the stability of society, of which this institution is a constitutive element ... Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.

In the following section the Church attempts to make the argument that the monogamous nuclear family represents the typical sexual relationship going back to ‘creation' in Eden. Actually, social anthropology reveals that polygamy is more typical, representing 80 per cent of human cultures that have ever existed on this planet. This is also the typical sexual relationship described in the Bible in the pre-Christian era, although the document conveniently ignores this fact and chooses to emphasize the creation myth found in Genesis...The argument about sex and the estrus cycle also appears in this part of the paper (the ‘purpose' of sex is procreation, thus making both birth control and gay sex anathema)...

I. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE AND ITS INALIENABLE CHARACTERISTICS

The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose ,,,a man and a woman) mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. (This is followed by some selective dogma taken from an analysis of the Genesis creation myth).

Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts "close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

In the following passage homosexuals are called to practice ‘chastity' (abstinent celibacy) since gay people can only have sex for fun, and cannot obey the canon law regarding estrus, and procreation. While you are to respect homosexuals, you can call them disordered, sick, and sinfully ‘unchaste', and yes, homosexuals are also evil. . This is a fine example of ‘hating sin and loving the sinner.' How one goes about ‘respecting' the evil is left unanswered. The statement is profoundly hypocritical.

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts as a serious depravity...homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ... Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies "must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is however "objectively disordered" and homosexual practices are "sins gravely contrary to chastity"

Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.

On gay marriage "One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection."

III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

Civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.(12) Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law." This is followed by a dogmatic statement filled with mere assertions which are not defended, assumptions that one is supposed, one must think, to accept at face value (but is that not the nature of dogmatism).

Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.

The paper then asks why a law can be an offense to good reason when it does not seek to impose anything on anyone, and does not seem to cause any injustice. The paper then seeks to differentiate between 'private' homosexuality and what it refers to as homosexuality as 'a relationship in society'. The problem is, it suggests, that granting some kind of legal recognition to homosexuality would lead to a 'profound influence' and would thus "result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good." "Civil laws" it states "play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour." This would "also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour." Basically the argument becomes that one would be 'encouraging homosexuality' when the Catholic church wants to 'discourage' homosexuality and the argument is basically the old right wing line about 'recruitment' thus increasing the ranks of the numbers of homosexuals to the detriment of society, causing great harm to everyone in the process. As with most of the statements in this document no proof is offered for these broad claims, nor is any evidence that society would suffer great harm, other than that someone might be homosexual which is harmful, it is insisted, once again without offering anything other than mere assertions and dogmatic assumptions, which are then to be accepted as some kind of evidence as part of what is called 'a reasonable argument.' The catholic church is granted the right to decide what is and is not harmful. For example it is not harmful to refuse to allow women to be priests.

Once again the conservative heirarchy of the Catholic church promotes an ancient superstition and the unnatural notion that human sexuality should operate on some kind of estrus cycle by stating that "Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life." Since gay people have sex for fun, which is wrong, since it does not allow for pregnancy and fit into the unnatural 'human estrus' dogma of the Catholic church, sexuality between gay people is wrong and immoral, just as sexuality between a human couple who are employing birth control is wrong and seriously deviant according to the Vatican. Therefore both gay couples and straight couples using contraceptives are equally 'unnatural' and have 'violated reason' as well as the Vatican's interpretation of a few selected passages from Genesis, and thus gay couples are condemned for the exact same reason as the Vatican condemns millions of straight couples. Sex for fun is taboo.

Homosexual unions would be "an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good." What they mean here is that by suggesting that sex is for fun, and not simply for procreation, and that like the bonobos, human's delight in having sex, even when using birth control, great harm would be done to society because Catholic dogmatism of the ages would be undermined. This is essentially the argument here, and this argument could be recycled by the Vatican when it comes time to lobby to deny birth control to women in the third world, thus forcing them to get pregnant and thus 'rprotecting the sacredness of marriage' and so on (the Bush administration has given the religious right wing in the United States control of family planning dollars in the third world and they are using their control to deny access to birth control and instead are promoting 'abstinent chastity' among the married who don't want more children, and this policy is completely in line with the sexual hostility and unreasonable attitude of the Vatican).

"The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it." What they mean here is that gay sex can only be recreational and according to the dogmatic interpretation of human sexuality it therefore just logically follows from 'reason' and the 'argument from nature' (as its called) that sex for fun cannot be 'marital'. This is not an argument from reason or from nature but rather an argument based on Catholic dogmatism concerning human sexuality. The great sin of a gay couple is that they are, like straight couples using contraceptives, having sex for fun rather than for the purposes of procreation.

In the next section Ratzinger argues that the state should be able to legislate against according freedom from religion to those who aren't Catholic. "It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition." Because according to Catholic definition of human sexuality, people can only have sex if they wish to procreate, and sex for fun is, as canon law teaches, a mortal sin that brings even married couples to the very gates of hell (thus the need to ban contraceptives, since they could damn millions to the flames for that very reason), well for no other reason than Catholic dogmatism defines the nature of what is 'marital' to be such and such, therefore it logically follows that the religious should be able to deny legal rights to those who disagree with such conservative clerics as Ratzinger, simple because the church says so. There really is no other justification given for the position elucidated above than that. There is some mumbo jumbo about 'the development of the human person' (a meaningless phrase from religious dogmatism) and then the bit about the Catholic definition of the 'purpose of marriage' and that is all that is required to deny any legal right to the freedom from religion to those who have no interest in Catholic doctrine. The argument is fascist and indicative of the totalitarian mindset of the religious conservative, those who believe in forcing their religious viewpoints on others, and who are laboring to put more right wing judges onto the supreme court in the United States in the hopes of being able to do just that... (In short, these people are VERY VERY dangerous to society as a whole. Their anti-freedom activities do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society and one can only hope that they do not receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State for that very reason. (Being dogmatic should not give an individual a special dispensation before the law, or special rights and freedoms which involve depriving others of their rights and freedoms, which is what these conservative clerics are demanding after all).

In conclusion the clerics declare the doctrine of 'hating the sin, but loving the sinner.' "The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour." Now having paid lip service to 'respect' the clerics then proceed to refer to these homosexuals they 'respect' (whatever that means) as 'deviants' and then suggest that orthodox catholic dogma represents the 'inheritance of humanity.' "Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity."

The Nuclear Family

It has been suggested that the primary purpose of the monogamous nuclear family is 'raising children.' people were 'raising kids' before people practiced 'life long monogamy'. You know you can raise kids in the extended tribal family, which is why humanity never went extinct before monogamy was invented.

You can also consider the example of the other primates. In primate culture infants are not raised in isolated nuclear families. Primate researchers have observed male primates providing 'fathering' to infants who are not their own. The theory is that they do this to impress females with their fathering skills so that when the next mating time comes they might be in line for sexual intercourse with the female. Female primates also don''t have to worry about 'day care' since the whole tribe provides parenting, and certainly infants received parenting in the polygamous societies which represent the majority of human cultures throughout history, which explains why human beings never went extinct before 'life long monogamy' was invented.

As for this monogamous nuclear family, it can be examined also from an economic view point. Property rights and keeping fortunes within families can be protected by isolating human beings and cutting their natural ties with the extended tribe. During the Bible age, fortunes were protected by only alllowing the oldest son to inherit the estate, thus preventing fortunes from being busted into tiny pieces due to the large families that result from practicing dominant male gorilla polygamy.

As for nature, the following are typical 'family relationships' that have nothing to do with 'life long monogamy.' Animals practice extreme promiscuity and one of the more common families in the animal world is the single working mom raising kids by herself. Animals also practice single season monogamy, becoming a monogamous couple and sharing the work load only until the infants leave the cave or nest. Animals practice life long monogamy in certain rare instances, and unlike humans, since this is natural for them (normally this would be certain bird species) they don't require therapy to make it work. Single season monogamy is more typical among birds. Animals also practice polygamy, and some species are also matriarchal. Some creatures are double sexed and have both a penis and a vagina and thus make love to themselves believe it or not. And one species of lizard has only females and no males and does not mate at all (the females are capable of producing fertile eggs without any sex at all). Some animals don't parent at all, and their offspring are on their own from birth. In short just about every known form of sex is practiced in nature, although it would seem that the prosmiscuous single mom thing or just leaving the new born to fend for themselves are the most common.

Human beings never went extinct before they lived in isolated nuclear families, and the group parenting practiced by primates would seem to be the more natural way for human beings to raise children since this is how humanity raised children in the vast majority of tribal societies throughout history, and if this seems 'wrong' today it is only because of 'property rights' which are one powerful force currently in existence which would work to undermine any other form of human relationship as far as the family and raising children go (you do want to isolate yourself from the tribe so you can keep all your stuff right)....