Nero, His Hero
Yesterday Washington Post ran a piece, “Conservatives say marriage has always been between a man and a woman. They’re wrong.” It was what you would expect, the standard boilerplate about husbands and wives dealing with one another differently in some ways than they did 700 years ago so why should they have to men and women, but I scanned through it for one reason: curiosity how far it I would go before finding the phrase “some Indian tribes.” No one can remember which tribes those were, but somewhere in North or South America, maybe deep in the Amazon or high in the Andes or along the Pacific coast, there once was a tribe with transsexuals, and it has become a legend. Sure enough, the legend was invoked, as “some Native American societies,” and the writer went the extra mile of also citing “some West African societies.” Before getting to those nameless indigenous peoples, though, he cited the precedent of Nero and Sporus, with a infogalactic link to the sordid tale of a teenager who was castrated, stuck in a wedding dress, and killed himself. What sort of man resorts to citing the practices of Nero to make the case for what he wants modern marriage to be like?
Bruce Charlton
May 14, 2015
Modern culture is at the point where ‘evidence’ usually means something vaguely-remembered from a movie or novel (marketed as ‘based-on a true story’).
It has long since been futile to try and engage in rational argument using consistent standards of proof. Indeed, to do so is regarded as a sign of weakness, a tacit signal of incipient surrender.
(This applies to science and in academia, at least as much as in popular culture.)
Tactically, it is much more effective simply to say something like:
“No – we cannot ever accept that under any circumstances; we will have to resist that to our utmost”.
And refuse to explain, on the perfectly accurate grounds that “You would not be able to understand”.
Bookslinger
May 14, 2015
And don’t forget how seahorses illustrate that males can nurture young just as well as females.
Paul Mouritsen
May 14, 2015
And don’t forget the Emperor Elagabalus. Gibbon says “The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonoured the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor’s, or, as he more properly styled himself, of the empress’s husband.”
John Mansfield
May 14, 2015
I wish I could forget him; I’d never heard of him before this year. I’d never heard of Sporus before yesterday. I wish old Roman depravities didn’t have some current relevance.
G.
May 14, 2015
These are the same people who reject the argument that America is in decline just like late Republican Rome.
Zen
May 14, 2015
I just want to see more horses in the Legislature.
Or donkeys.
Anonymous
May 15, 2015
Zen: we already have half a horse in the Senate. Al Franken is a horse’s rear half. We aren’t sure what happened to the horse’s face; some speculate that it currently calls itself Nancy Pelosi and represents an especially unsavory district in California.