Are civil unions a
600-year-old tradition?
A compelling new study from the
September issue of the Journal of Modern History reviews historical evidence,
including documents and gravesites, suggesting that homosexual civil unions may
have existed six centuries ago in France. The article is the latest from
the ongoing “Contemporary Issues in Historical Perspective” series, which
explores the intersection between historical knowledge and current affairs.
Commonly used rationales in support of gay marriage and gay civil unions avoid
historical arguments. However, as Allan A. Tulchin (Shippensburg
University) reveals in his forthcoming article, a strong historical precedent
exists for homosexual civil unions.
Opponents of gay marriage in the United States today have tended to assume that
nuclear families have always been the standard household form. However, as
Tulchin writes, “Western family structures have been much more varied than many
people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made
provisions for a variety of household structures.”
For example, in late medieval France, the term affrèrement -– roughly translated
as brotherment -– was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which
also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided
the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many
characteristics with marriage contracts, as legal writers at the time were well
aware, according to Tulchin.
The new “brothers” pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une
bourse’ -– one bread, one wine, and one purse. As Tulchin notes, “The
model for these household arrangements is that of two or more brothers who have
inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and who will
continue to live together, just as they did when they were children.” But
at the same time, “the affrèrement was not only for brothers,” since many other
people, including relatives and non-relatives, used it.
The effects of entering into an affrèrement were profound. As Tulchin
explains: “All of their goods usually became the joint property of both
parties, and each commonly became the other’s legal heir. They also
frequently testified that they entered into the contract because of their
affection for one another. As with all contracts, affrèrements had to be
sworn before a notary and required witnesses, commonly the friends of the
affrèrés.”
Tulchin argues that in cases where the affrèrés were single unrelated men, these
contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using
affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships. ... I suspect that some
of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is
impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to
understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the
community accepted that. What followed did not produce any documents.”
He concludes: “The very existence of affrèrements shows that there was a
radical shift in attitudes between the sixteenth century and the rise of modern
antihomosexual legislation in the twentieth.”
Source: University of Chicago
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JMH/home.html
http://www.physorg.com/news107094472.html
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