[QUOTE=chalsall;346560]Excellent.

Interesting that some of the "Colonies" were actually faster at such modern thinking....[/QUOTE]
Indeed.

On the other hand it would have been possible for me to have spoken face to face with a freed American slave, though none are now still alive.

Slavery in the rest of the Empire was abolished much earlier and with much less fuss.

[QUOTE=xilman;346617]Indeed.

On the other hand it would have been possible for me to have spoken face to face with a freed American slave, though none are now still alive.

Slavery in the rest of the Empire was abolished much earlier and with much less fuss.[/QUOTE]


Not exactly true, the northern US states outlawed slavery well before the Brits. Even the states who traded heavily with the South (like New York and New Jersey) came around a decade or so before Britannia. And that freedom only came after a particularly brutal slave rebellion that was well [FONT=Calibri]publicized [/FONT]in the British press. And before you jump on that as some kind of wishy-washyness, you should also remember that Great Britain had plenty of exceptions (ie. where economics prevailed) to their freeing the slaves. Also Great Britain had no qualms about trading with the slave States (nor any particular hurry about freeing all the British slaves.)

It should also be noted that the people who benefitted economically from the British program to 'buy' the slaves freedom from the owners--to the tune of 20 million pounds--were mainly the ones voting on the freedom in the first place. In other words, I'll vote to have the Government pay me fair market value for the slaves, who I will then hire as cheap labor. Double bonus!

[url]http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/28311/The-Satanic-Temple-Performs-Same-Sex-Ceremony-At-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Leaders-Family-Gravesite?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Thegauntletcom+%28thegauntlet.com%29[/url]

[QUOTE=chappy;346624]Not exactly true, the northern US states outlawed slavery well before the Brits.[/QUOTE]To be precise, the Brits abolished slavery in parts of the Empire long before the [strike]terrorists[/strike] freedom fighters started causing any unpleasantness in Boston (that is Mass., not Lincs.).

Slavery had been illegal in England and Wales long before the North American colonies were founded. To the best of my knowledge, it was never legal in India, Australia, NZ, Canada and much of British Africa. I am very willing to be educated on this point if my belief is erroneous.

As for unpleasantness, again to the best of my knowledge, seriously destructive warfare never occurred within the Empire as a consequence of the abolition of slavery.

Odd that people complain so much about the American public educational system. Slaves were legal in all parts of the British Empire until 1833-34. There were slaves in [URL="http://archives.gnb.ca/Exhibits/FortHavoc/html/Slave-in-Canada.aspx?culture=en-CA"]Canada[/URL], [URL="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-28/revealing-a-dark-stain-on-australias-history/4446744"]Australia[/URL], [URL="http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7104398M/The_law_and_custom_of_slavery_in_British_India"]India[/URL] (which was exempted from the 1834 act), [URL="http://www.theprow.org.nz/slavery-in-colonial-times/#.Ueg-0I2bPQM"]New Zealand[/URL] (not a British colony until after the time we are discussing--but still a leader in Slavery)

The [URL="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/slave-trade-slavery.htm"]British were the major force in African slavery [/URL]long after Slavery had been outlawed by most of the Northern states. And [URL="http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/sherwood.html#26t"]continued to build slave ships support the slave trade financially for decades after this practice was outlawed.[/URL]

It's true that African slaves were never as numerous in England as they were in English colonies. Chattel slavery was largely ended by the Normans and replaced with the much more convenient debtors prison and penal slavery systems that had the advantages of getting work out of people while they are young and effective workers and relieving the end user of any kind of moral responsibility to care for them when they got old and could no longer work.

[QUOTE=xilman;346660]
As for unpleasantness, again to the best of my knowledge, seriously destructive warfare never occurred within the Empire as a consequence of the abolition of slavery.[/QUOTE]

You misunderstand, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist_War"]the slave rebellion[/URL] (and the brutal English retaliation) led to push for emancipation of the slaves. Not that freeing slaves led to warfare.

[QUOTE=xilman;346660]To be precise, the Brits abolished slavery in parts of the Empire long before the [strike]terrorists[/strike] freedom fighters started causing any unpleasantness in Boston (that is Mass., not Lincs.).

Slavery had been illegal in England and Wales long before the North American colonies were founded. To the best of my knowledge, it was never legal in India, Australia, NZ, Canada and much of British Africa. I am very willing to be educated on this point if my belief is erroneous.
[/QUOTE]

Slavery was outlawed in England in 1834, now my math isn't as good as some but 1834-1776 = some non-negative number.

Who needs slavery at home when one has exploitative global colonialism with which to enrich oneself on the blood and toil of others? Both means serve the same ends. Also, while e.g. WW1 and WW2 may have not "been about" the colonies "owned" by the various participants, those resource-rich chips figured prominently in the incentives calculus of the game, as it were.

There are no "clean shirts" on the exploiter side of any of this history.

Now, getting back to what I was saying about the unconscionable denial of the civil rights of single-person couples...

[QUOTE=ewmayer;346675]

There are no "clean shirts" on the exploiter side of any of this history.

Now, getting back to what I was saying about the unconscionable denial of the civil rights of single-person couples...[/QUOTE]

Part 1) agreed. And every group has been an exploiter at one point or other in history.

Part 2) sorry. (though I think the two lines of thought aren't so far removed from each other. )

[QUOTE=ewmayer;346675]Now, getting back to what I was saying about the unconscionable denial of the civil rights of single-person couples...[/QUOTE]
Yes? What were you saying?

This isn't intended to be flippant. I'm seriously interested, Ernst, in any on-topic view you in particular want to express in this thread. Have your views on marriage for same sex couples altered at all since your contributions in this thread 5 years ago? A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, after all.

@Brian-E:

I have not been following this thread closely since the initial back-and-forths you mention over the past 5 years, not because it's not interesting or important, but because other issues - broadly, global-economic and western-democratic - are more interesting or important to me personally. My view is perhaps "extreme libertarian", in that I believe government has only two legitimate reasons to "institutionalize marriage":

1) The very basic "perpetuation of society" [i.e. procreational/raising-children-to-become-responsible-adults] one. Given long-term global population trends the procreational aspect is moot. In the child-raising arena any government meddling should be based on what it legal terms is described as "compelling interest", i.e. absent clear evidence of harm to children, government should stay out. AFAIK there is no such clear evidence w.r.to same-sex couples raising children. But, the same standard should apply elsewhere - for example, polygamy/polygyny seems to work just fine [in the sense that the overall long-term societal result is no better or worse than for one-man-one-woman cultures] in areas of the world where it has been long-practiced. I mention the "long practiced" aspect because the "western world" - and especially the U.S. - is a bad proving ground for such forms of marriage because stigmatization and outright legal bans on such customs have forced them to "go underground", which favors "pathological practice of custom", as exemplified by various religious cults in which such practices are clearly exploitative.

2) Public health - There is a clear compelling interest in preventing procreation between close kin - how close should be left to medical science to establish broad consensus on. The rubric "child endangerment" should similarly be left to scientific and public-health professionals to delineate. In the U.S. the federal government's major role should be to reconcile state-by-state differences in applicable law and practice, but again such a role should be limited to demonstrable compelling interest.

I hold out no hope of any such things coming about in my lifetime, so I suppose you could say my view has evolved to "if governments insist on meddling in areas in which they have no legitimate reason to meddle, they should meddle equal-opportunistically." On that basis same-sex couples should be offered the same opportunity for unwarranted government meddling as opposite-sex ones. As should the millionaire playboy/girl who wants to have hundreds of kids by his/her dozens of wives/husbands. As long as the kids are well taken care of and the wives are not underage or close relatives of Mr. playboy, it's nobody else's business.

[QUOTE=xilman;346660]Slavery had been illegal in England and Wales long before the North American colonies were founded. To the best of my knowledge, it was never legal in India, Australia, NZ, Canada and much of British Africa. I am very willing to be educated on this point if my belief is erroneous.[/QUOTE]

Interesting, then, that Barbados has a long and well documented history of slavery.

Please note that Barbados was the only Caribbean island which was solely under British rule (every other island changed hands at least once).

Also please note that solicitors (and programmers) can be very exact in their language. Slavery may have been made illegal in England and Wales, but this does not necessarily mean this was done so in their colonies nor protectorates.

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml"]Just putting this out there....[/URL]

@ewmayer

Thanks for the response, Ernst. The government hands-off ideal, except for encouraging procreation and protecting public health, was broadly what you were arguing in this thread in 2008, and [URL="http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=66789&postcount=13"]before that too[/URL] (before my time here). While I disagreed in 2008 with what I thought you were implying then, namely that marriage should not be opened up to same sex couples because it would be government meddling which would not be justified on procreation or public health grounds, I find myself now in complete agreement with you now that you have explicitly added your last paragraph above, that governments should meddle "equal-opportunistically" if they must meddle. I would add that I think government has a clear duty to guard the welfare of all citizens and therefore must combat oppression against groups which are unfairly targeted: treating different types of family unit in the same way is an important pre-requisite to removing this oppression.