Included in the articles I downloaded before we sailed from New York was a diary entry at Blue Mass Group relaying Live Science article:
Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe….
[Professor Allan Tulchin] found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term “affrèrement,” roughly translated as brotherment….In the contract, the “brothers” pledged to live together sharing “un pain, un vin, et une bourse,” (that’s French for one bread, one wine and one purse). The “one purse” referred to the idea that all of the couple’s goods became joint property. Like marriage contracts, the “brotherments” had to be sworn before a notary and witnesses.
The comments to the diary entry are, naturally, full of discussion regarding the significance of this. However, I think this comment by Tim Little just about nails it:
I think the point may very well be that this type of arrangement is indeed nothing new. While it’s unclear whether these afrerements necessarily applied to homosexual couples, it does at least cast doubt upon the traditionalist argument against legal and social recognition of committed same-sex couples… with the caveat that this is just one snapshot of one place and one moment in European history.
To clarify, my guess—not being an historian—is that there was probably a world of difference between these afrerements and Church-sanctioned marriages between hetero couples circa 1400, just as a legal agreement (as suggested above) between a same-sex couple is not the same as true marriage equality in our own day and age.
I might go a step further, adding that this would provide some precedent for the concept civil recognition of non-traditional one-man, one-woman families, presumably with rights, responsibilities, and privileges associated with that recognition, without breaching the religious definition of marriage.
Thus, I stand by my previously-stated preference that the government should get out of the business of marriage. Let the state serve as registrar of civil unions, and leave the definition and pronouncement of marriage to society and religious institutions.