Gay marriage is a good thing

Recently in the UK parliamentarians have been arguing over adopting gay marriage plans into law http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22605011.

during the debates some fairly incendiary phraseology was used at times which won't be getting repeated here.

The thrust of the anti gay marriage argument however seems to have been that it would render the institution of marriage meaningless. I couldn't disagree more. In an essentially conservatively liberal society like ours the idea of marriage as a meaningful institution has been dwindling. More people than ever live as couples and have children without recourse to marriage. this is fine. it is good that people aren't put under religious or social pressure to conform to the married couple stereotype.

The point is however that for gay people there is an urgent desire for equality on this matter. Many of them desperately want to be able to marry. To publicly bond and declare their love. this isn't for tax breaks or acceptance or religious reasons. It's for love. They are actively connecting marriage and love an equation that hasn't always been a t the forefront in recent years.

So perhaps gay marriage will actually reinvigorate the idea of the marriage union as a public declaration of love and that can only be a good thing. Speaking as a happily married heterosexual man I for one would recommend marriage (to the right person whoever they are - regardless of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity etc) as a positive thing.

We spend too much time telling people what they can't do. Let's just live our lives and let them live theirs.

History should be empirical

http://www.history.com/news/did-blood-cause-henry-viiis-madness-and-reproductive-woes

This article on Henry the eighth is a fascinating read, nobody with any interest in history could deny that. Yet it is undermined by one glaring problem. It is theorising and supposition not fact. It may be factual that Henry's sexual partners were prone to miscarriage. This is recorded and we can reference it. Finding out why however is a very different matter.

To the credit of those involved they had been asking for permission to undertake the relevant DNA tests that would prove or disprove the hypothesis. This is good science. But is it good history to publicise the ideas before any such testing could take place. once the suggestion of an idea is made for some it will stick.

We still don't know however as this article is from 2011 and two year on no permissions have been given and no tests performed. So, we have no definitive proof. Without it we have only unsupported theory. Which should not be given the oxygen of publicity until proven or at least publicly testable in my opinion.

Let's leave history to those who want to investigate it rigorously and in a basis of fact and to those who if they have a theory can and will get it publicly tested before pushing their ideas forward.

History is messy.

History, being a reflection of the wonderful messy tapestry of life is inevitably itself messy. We instinctively want to shoehorn it into labelled boxes, set amounts of time and what we see as definable eras.

Life just isn't like that. A Victorian in 1840 was very different from a Victorian in 1900 but we still bundle them together in our comfortably recognisable labelled box.

Life itself is no respecter of boundaries. Accross the Middle East sectarian violence flares. Sectarian movements do not recognise international borders. They go beyond them. which is difficult for the historian who wants to record what has happened as a political movement.

What we need to remember is that progress is not inevitable and that one period does not 'succeed' another or improve upon it. They bleed together and move in all sorts of directions at once. People are a mass of contradictions. Often our hero's seem oddly out of pace with us. Especially of they are historical characters whom we judge by the mores of our own times.

Yet all these inherent contradictions and non-definable progress are what makes history so fascinating. you can apply retrospectively a liberal, socialist, feminist, Marxist or generalist view and all will have some currency.

So let's celebrate history in all its messy glory!