[After tallying up the number of civilizations or societies that I am aware of that has crumbled due to same-sex marriage, I'm inclined to think it does not (harm society).]
I disagree. Rome and Greece accepted homosexuality we all know what happened to them.
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For contrast, try the Judaen and Israelite kingdoms. They utterly rejected homosexuality, and look what happened to them. They got their butts handed to them time and again, got their temple destroyed twice...
Post hoc ergo propter hoc -- because it's easier than actually thinking.
By the same reasoning, I hear that when the number of pirates declined the global temperature started increasing. Do your part to stop global warming, and become a pirate today. ^_^
"Rome and Greece accepted homosexuality we all know what happened to them."
Yeah, we all know what happened to those ancient Greeks and Romans: They DIED!
Of course, sooner or later, the same thing happens to everybody, so I don't think you should really read a whole lot into that.
~David D.G.
Nothing happened to Greece. It was conquered by the Romans and was allowed to continue with it's customs and practices. Later Christianity spread through Greece and the Byzantine Empire became an important part of it's later history. It never was destroyed, it's people were never beaten down, and throughout it all Greece experienced quite a bit of prosperity until the Ottoman Turks came into the picture (it recovered from that event btw). In the end it simply went through a series of natural changes. One could even say it evolved.
As for the Romans, well I fail to see what spreading yourself too thin and foolishly letting a group of barbarians live in Roman territory only to treat them like garbage has to do with a few people practicing homosexuality. The thought that you could make as many idiotic decisions as you want and it doesn't matter as nothing bad can happen to you as long as you follow god's word may appeal to you, but it has no basis in reality. Besides, it fell after it's people became Christian - See Ashe's comment..
Rome conquered Western Europe (except Scandinavia), half of England, northern Arabia, northern Africa, Greece, modern day Turkey, etc etc etc...
This was in 116 AD. The Roman Empire was around 130 years old at this point, and already had bisexual/gay rulers and politicians. So, yeah.
Then, suddenly, the Romans adopted Christianity as their state religion, and that's when things got bad. But we aren't going to blame Christianity for the death of the Roman Empire, because that'd be pretty stupid.
If anything, NGL should be praising the Greeks and Romans for making the spread of Christianity possible in the first place.
Without those homo Greeks conquering land from Macedonia to Persia, there would have been no Greek Empire to spread a common language to all the regions that would later become part of the Roman Empire. By Paul's time, everyone in the Roman Empire could communicate in Greek. No matter where Paul went, he could always preach in a language everyone would understand. Imagine Paul trying to spread the gospel without this - trying, say, to speak to Assyrian audiences in Hebrew, or Roman audiences in Aramaic. Yeah, don't tell me that God made use of the Greek language for his own purposes. He's the one that tried to separate everyone's languages in the first place.
And without those homo Romans enforcing peace and security throughout the Mediterranean, Paul would never have survived his travels in the first place. Without a strong Roman navy to keep the seas free of piracy, Paul's ship would likely have been attacked on one of his many journeys. Or he'd have been robbed and killed by bandits on the road. Oh wait... it would have been somewhere on a dirt path, because it was those homo Romans that built the roads Paul used.
And finally, NGL should be careful about decrying homosexuality in the first place, never mind Rome or Greece. There is good evidence that Paul himself was the Ted Haggard of his day.
That the Romans owned most of Europe, the Middle East, and bits of Africa?
That the Greeks gave us most of the bases of modern thought?
...Can't be, because apparently *you* don't know that.
@Tempus
Rome and Greece both made and sold cheeses, and look what happened to them.
And Rome even extended their trade into the middle east. The world famous Cheeses of Nazareth.
Well, Greece fell because Rome conquered it...so by the same argument you could say that the Romans were just bigger, badder homos, eh?
Rome and Greece accepted homosexuality, but not same-sex marriage, which was the point of the question. And as others have pointed out, both civilizations have had lasting impact on our own culture.
Bzzzt! Thanks for playing.
Neither the Greek now Roman empires had XBox 360s, and look what happened to them. Therefore, in order to prefent the downfall of American civilization, I'm off to play Gears of War.
Oh, and any scientist will tell you that correlation IS NOT THE SAME AS CAUSE!
Others have already mentioned the accomplishments and legacies of Rome and Greece, so I won't repeat them.
But I will point out that the Byzantine Empire fell when the Turks captured Constantinople. Which happened because Western CHRISTIANS sacked and pillaged Constantinople beforehand, leaving it vulnerable to the Turkish invasion. Of course, this idiot will probably make the argument that those crusaders weren't really Christian because they were Catholic. Still, homosexuality had nothing to do with it.
@Adrian: Actually, the Macedonians were Greek, it's just that the other city-states referred to them as foreigners, which they used with any city-state outside their own. The Greeks did not think of themselves as a united country yet.
I disagree. The USA's most prominent (at the time) preacher Ted Faggard accepted homosexuality (despite preaching against such practices):
image
We all know what happened to him.
FYI, NoGreaterLove:
'The ancient Romans believed that buggery caused earthquakes'
-John Sessions, "QI":
image
X3
The Greeks forged one of the largest empires ever.
The Romans forged an empire that lasted about 600-700 years or well over 1000 if you count the eastern empire/byzantines, who were... Greeks!
While the rest of Europe was shitting in buckets, the Eastern empire had plumbing in large cities, heated baths, and the idea that maybe bathing wasn't a terrible thing.
Yes, they founded the evil backwards things known as culture, philosophy, natural causes for disease, democracy, the olympics, capitalist trade, law and order and laid the foundations of Europe. I mean what has democratic law, artistic culture and capitalism ever done for you?
You mean the civilisations modern western socities are built upon? Rome, who dominated Yahweh's land& people and whose military & political systems heavily inspire our own to this day? Greece, from whose language & mythology you derived many of your own mythology's dearest concepts, terms & traditions?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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