NATURAL STATE?

     For the most part, although Kinsey put gender and sexual orientation on a sliding scale, he was doing so in the time in which he lived with the people living then and, although his research and conclusion may be correct according to available evidence, historical conditions, perhaps available in sources not available widely enough or the potential interview subjects too wary to come out, his conclusion are not perfection.

     The Romans had structured their civilization on stability. There was no use working your life away hoping to leave what you accumulated to specific people if after you die your life’s work becomes a grab-bag for any and all who are left behind. There would be chaos, court monopolizing, never ending chaos.

     After all, in spite of some people’s best efforts, or not, one man may be the father to many children by many women. When it came to just living your best life, the Romans did not care with whom you slept provided it was clear in the law that the only issue that will inherit anything, unless otherwise specified, would be the first born male child of a legally sanctioned marriage. 

     Blood, indeed, was legally thicker than water. 

     Few took anyone to court, so, the system wasn’t clogged with family infighting.

     A person could give into any temptation, but at some point, if they wanted to insure a clean line of succession and inheritance, a person would have to enter a legally binding marriage contract, remaining free to follow any desire so long as duties to the wife and offspring are taken care of because to not do so could be used in what should have been unnecessary litigation regarding the worthiness of the heir. There may have been romance, but not getting Rome all tied up in endless litigation, was a major factor in marriage with the usual arranged ones to keep and increase fortunes. If the claimants to the inheritance want to kill each other to be left with it, those cases can be dealt with as murder trials, quick and limited, not those never ending business cases that never seem to resolve.  

     There is that Greek practice of men training boys to be men who would then get married and establish a familial line of inheritance, and that of soldiers becoming intimate with each other so that the person along whose side a soldier fought was one whose life the other would fight harder to protect in battle because people who are in relationships will fight to the death for the other’s survival.

     In both cases what was done by the wedded on their own non-familial time was up to those involved as long as actions did not complicate things by crossing legal lines.

     When it comes to sex, over time, we have so labeled and compartmentalized it that it has the people in society getting into everyone else’s business, but it was not so in those days.  

     The Christian Church in all its manifestations, sects, and ideations may downplay it , but it cannot deny it, though it would like it not to come up, that in its early decades Christianity had developed a ritual where same sex couples, knowing there would be no issue, except in rare cases, and so unable to get a civil marriage because there was no need for one, instituted a ceremony for same sex couples, blessing their relationships. It was an attempt to have the committed relationships of all the members of the church recognized and supported, and, if the state would not honor a same sex union, in Jesus’s name, the church would raise up the relationship. 

     The church might now give some excuse why such blessings were nor real ones while it continues to bless animals on a specific day, fishing fleets on another, religious items bought in gift shops, weapons of war, and any inanimate object someone light like, I have seen the things the faithful thrust in front of a priest seeking it be blessed, but somehow blessing a same sex couple is now a step too far. The blessing of weapons should have been the line in the sand for blessing things, but religious leaders would rather God protect a weapon of death than a relationship based on love, and that attests to the principle of a blessing, or lack thereof.

     But it cannot deny its true history.

     Over time, Roman “civil marriage” seemed to be lacking something and those who could get married in city hall demanded the church also give their marriages a little spiritual boost. It was a case of wanting what someone else had, one might call it a “special right”, while not also getting them what you had so both become equal. No one demanded the state recognize the church blessed unions.

     Instead, the church began the sacrament of marriage denying it to those who had been the reason for it in the first place because countries were being formed and the new monarchies killed or let live according to who conformed the closest to what kept the monarch in power. 

     As the institutional church became larger and positions in it became the alternative to no inheritance if you were second in line and the heir selfish, and while having no civil power, could mold the church and people to become your tax paying citizenry. Political views overpowered and replaced some fundamental and traditional firmly held religious beliefs. 

     Christian councils went on to reduce Mary Magdalen to a prostitute and institute the sacrament of marriage. 

     A careful examination of the Historical record shows that when religion and politics wed, things like same sex activity needed to be regulated to ensure there was conformity and a continual resupply of the population could be met. If same sex coupling was allowed to continue, it could decrease the number of those needed to keep the monarch and all who benefited from his personage and largess in power as feudal armies, and the whole feudal system depended not on humanity, but a steady supply of people to send into battle and tax in order to do that. Those in same sex relationships also made the rules that controlled society a little fluid and if this “freedom” of expression without control spread, equality would have come sooner in history and monarchies and the system dependent on it end/.

   It would also show that there were more ways to do things than those demanded by church and monarch, and this fluidity of rights and thought could be dangerous to those in power.

     Politics often uses religion and vise-versa when beneficial to those who gain from the power of either.

      When same sex couples were discovered in the act, although both people might be punished, the more ostentatious kind was meted out to the one who had either, in the case of a dominant Lesbian, usurped the male role, while in a male couple the harsher punishment was given to the one that assumed the woman’s role and demeaned his sex.

     Like Catholics and Protestants between Henry VIII and Cromwell, where you stood sexuality and gender-wise depended on monarchical tastes and political expediency.

     When Psychoanalysis started up, although the concept was good, in order to work there had to be a normal and an abnormal, and the only delineation was that what the founders of psychoanalysis did was normal, while what they neither did nor were attracted to, or found objectionable, was abnormal. 

     They had to take human sexuality that was boundless and put it into boxes.

     The term “Homosexuality” with all its assigned baggage did not come about until the late 1860s, and then being normal and abnormal could be measured and people put in cubbyholes. Most people are not aware that as the talk of psychoanalysis began to enter common conversation, non-Homosexuals wanted to know what they were called, and, so, in spite of the idea that their behavior was the norm, they were labeled Heterosexual.

     It, like Homosexual, was coined to label an invented category coming into existence as a word about a quarter century after the division.

     The Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology recognizes that as our initial goal is to find Homosexual activity on whaling ships, the reality is that that designation only began when whaling was becoming a slowly dying industry and only when the artificial normal/abnormal divide was invented, so the possibility exists that even as we look back and view examples of male/male interaction on whaling ships looking for the Homosexuals or just Homosexual activity, we may actually be rediscovering that there really never was and still is not in nature, a binary until we invented one and these men were not involved in Homosexuality but in sex.

     Society’s rules did not apply on board a ship with its own micro-society. It was only when a crew member returned to port that he had to abide by community standards, and communities can become quite judgmental and condemning if properly influenced.

     What happened on the ship, an island, a port of call, or another ship, as in the Newport instance, stays there.

     While looking for Homosexuality, we might actually prove that when free of society's rules and expectations, real or created, Non-Binary is the normal human condition. 

      Or, someone, after reading this, sees a topic of research and follows the leads.