Nobody's on the side of the emperor

[cosmolinguist]

(an LJ Idol entry)

Like so many other saints, St. Valentine was probably not a real person. Or he may have been anything up to 14 different people. But it's still possible none of them were really him.

Hardly anybody knows this.

What everybody knows about St. Valentine is much more interesting. Even from the age where I was reading picture books about saints because there was nothing to do at my grandma's house, I remember St. Valentine.

Gather round in the warmth of the electrons and let the internet tell you the story:

Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. The good Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome in the days of Claudius II. He and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this kind deed Saint Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off.

Sort of a cozy story isn't it? The kind of thing that makes you happy you're somewhere warm and that your head is unlikely to be cut off. And that modern rulers don't still prevent people from getting married. Right?

The commercialization that has made Valentine's Day the beast it is today still peddles the narrative of twitterpation as the only way to go about love and romance. Yet as soon as you question one aspect of hegemonic heterosexuality they all fall apart.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the stereotypical ultra-conservatives who shout "Marriage is between one man and one woman!" wouldn't need to be so vehement if this were really true? You don't get people shouting "Water is wet!" with that same kind of crazed vehemence in their eyes. No one needs to, because that's just a boring old fact.

Human laws aren't the same as scientific laws. Water's a chemical compound that'd be the same anywhere in the universe; marriage is parochial and arbitrary like all human ideas. There is nothing preventing marriage between two men or two women. There is nothing intrinsic limiting marriage to two people. There's no need for us to think everybody has to be either a man or a woman with no other possibilities.

Sure there are people who don't believe this, just like there are people who don't "believe" in evolution or climate change or the effectiveness of good sexual health education. Those things still exist because they are too big to care what any puny human thinks.

Like the emperor happy to shed others' blood while ruining their prospect of a family, these "leaders" and politicians and "community spokespeople" want to control everyone else. And they currently do so with a large measure of success: human laws are not as immutable as scientific laws, but changing them still takes a lot of work from a lot of humans for a long time. But that work is going on, and it's gaining momentum. I see evidence of it all the time.

And I swear some of these angry zealots see it too, and know that the tide of history is against them.

Parents embarrass their children partly because that's how quickly things change; when my parents were born, people of color couldn't marry white people in most of the the U.S. When their parents were born, American women couldn't vote. These things seem as old-fashioned and quaint to me as Roman emperors and the stories of martyrs in my grandma's old picture book. The children of my friends will probably grow up boggling that we all lived in a world were same-gender marriage was such a big deal. Our battles will quickly seem outdated, and then our success will be complete.

An emperor can ban marriage all he likes, but he can't ban the things that make people want to get married -- that catch in the throat when you see someone, the way you can't stop thinking about them, the way you smile when they are mentioned, the abiding conviction that the huge harsh world is more bearable with them at your side, holding your hand.

That emperor can't keep other people from being sympathetic to that feeling (perhaps remembering their own optimism and excitement when love is new); sympathetic enough to marry people in secret if need be; sympathetic enough to be telling ourselves stories about this hundreds of years later, with everyone rooting for the secret love rather than the stupid cruel emperor.

Comments

[similiesslip.livejournal.com]

There is so little love in this world. It is sad to me that people are against the formal expression of love between others. But, as your entry hints, it's very likely times will change..so there's some hope right there!

I found your recounting of the history of "forbidden love" very interesting. You tied it all together very well.

[cosmolinguist]

Of course there are lots of kinds of forbidden love, and legality isn't the only hurdle to clear -- you can't legislate compassion or respect, after all -- but I suppose this is the strand of "forbidden' love I know best myself, so it's what springs to mind rather than race or religion or other potential reasons for spurious resistence.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

"What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for.

"Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

"If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking." (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

This is fab - is it OK to share it on Facebook and / or Twitter? And if so, would you want it attributed to your account names there, or would you prefer not?

[cosmolinguist]

I would be flattered! And yes, I think both of them have been conected to this LJ at some point so feel free to name me :) Thank you!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Cheers! Have now shared. :-)

[shadowwolf13]

I'm looking forward to it all changing again.

[imafarmgirl.livejournal.com]

Very very well written. And I agree of course.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Excellent article.

Although, obviously, you weren't around for the Polywater debacle in the very early 1970s, where indeed you had notable scientists declaiming with great passion (and not a little crazed vehemence) that water was indeed wet. [Polywater was essentially the result of inadequately washed glassware, and was the Cold Fusion incident of that decade.] Which just goes to show that scientific laws are written by humans as well and can be equally mistaken. Meanwhile, as you say, water just acts like water.

[cosmolinguist]

I wasn't around then, no, though I have read about it enough to remember it vaguely now that you mention it. Ah well; I figured whatever example I used of something that is an obvious fact -- "the sky is blue" is a common example of this but I live in Manchester and can't bring myself to say that when I see so many more grey skies! -- someone could argue about it. I actually took out a couple of other comparisons of scientific "laws" to legal laws -- you're quite right in that they're all human laws, as you can't separate humanity from science -- just because their rhetorical effectiveness wasn't worth the potential for pedantic dilution of the argument.

I'm really glad you liked it! Thanks for stopping by and reminding me of polywater. I love stuff like that, and cold fusion, and phlogiston, and the aether. Science is so much more interesting when it isn't just a list of facts but includes the tangents and mistakes and dead-ends that we inevitably bring to the process.

[myrna-bird.livejournal.com]

Wonderful way to lead in from St. Valentine story and acknowledging that love knows no boundaries.

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

I love the way you tied the story to modern isusues.

[jacq22.livejournal.com]

The story was new to me, the things we learn on lj! and yes agree so good that you put this together so well.

Love does know no boundaries. Also I already see the tide turning, it will happen. Love is always better than hate.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, it's not inevitable, and it's not to be taken for granted, but there are so many people working, in however quiet or little a way, that I think change is coming.

[cosmolinguist]

Indeed you don't. This is one of the many reasons (other than its relevance to people who don't do well with the gay/straight man/woman binaries) that equal marriage is a better name for it than same-sex marriage. LGBT rights are human rights.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Really well done!

[basric.livejournal.com]

An interesting post. I enjoyed reading it.

[shimmerdream.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard that story before. Really well-written entry.

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

Well written!

[sarcasmoqueen.livejournal.com]

Very interesting lesson.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

I really like the way you circle this story back around to the beginning, and make the story into a metaphor. Nicely done! And you make a great point about generational thinking - I posted on someone else's entry last week that the main obstacle for great social change is waiting for the bigots to die and be replaced by a more open generation.

[cosmolinguist]

I think it's a lot more difficult to be such a bigot when you think on longer timescales. They're as insular in time as they have to be in space; they have to be in order to keep up the delusion of "common sense" or "human nature"... because really most things are different in other places or times.

I'm so glad you liked it :)

[alien-infinity.livejournal.com]

A lovely, well-written entry! ♥

[frecklestars.livejournal.com]

This was really fascinating. Also props for linking to The Oatmeal; one of my fave webcomics ever! :P Also very good call on questioning why they feel the need to shout about heterosexual marriage so much. I'm going to use that in my next (inevitable) argument with people who are anti-gay marriage. Cheers to a wonderful entry!

[cosmolinguist]

I like a lot of things The Oatmeal does, but I was so relieved to see this because I think Valentine's Day is getting to be as bad as Christmas: what I dread about it most is the people complaining about how much they dread it!

Good luck in your equal marriage arguments! I'm really pleased if I've been able to say something at all useful.

[iamthesea.livejournal.com]

I really loved this :)

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else get the feeling that the stereotypical ultra-conservatives who shout "Marriage is between one man and one woman!" until that vein stands out on their foreheads wouldn't need to be so vehement if this were really true? You don't get people shouting "Water is wet!" with that same kind of crazed vehemence in their eyes. No one needs to, because that's just a boring old fact.


That paragraph right there is so right on. I hadn't thought it of before. Very great entry, I love the take on the topic!

[cosmolinguist]

I think crocodilewings' quote (I recognized it even though I must have read that essay eight or nine years ago, that's how much I liked it :) ) is pretty apt: "The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true."

So those are always the ones to look out for.

[cosmolinguist]

There's nothing better than getting compliments on the writing from people whose writing I love :)

[karmasoup.livejournal.com]

Fantastic. The bit about water is so simple, and yet so profound. An incredibly obvious truth that too much overthinking would have one completely overlook, like a young child suggesting letting air out of tires. Thanks for sharing this.

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for that thoughtful comment!

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

All kinds of good here.

[cosmolinguist]

This has made me smile a lot.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Excellent.

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

I didn't foresee where you were going with this, but it circled back around perfectly.

I pretty much second everything whipchick said, both the comments on the writing and the notion that (I've heard people say this) that society is just waiting for the bigots to die out.

Well done!

[mstrobel.livejournal.com]

This was utterly fantastic.

[unmowngrass.livejournal.com]

Please forgive me for not entirely agreeing with your point of view... however, I can't but commend you for the way that you've expressed it, or for the way you link it in with the prompt in a subtle manner. You did a really good job writing this, well done.

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

*APPLAUSE*

Very well said. All of it. There is so much in here that I absolutely agree with. Really well stated and I love the way you intro the piece with Roman history and use it to illustrate today's circumstances.