Gay Civil Unions a 600-Year-Old Tradition

A new study from the September issue of the Journal of Modern History suggest that homosexual civil unions may have age-old roots and can have existed six centuries ago in France.

Allan A. Tulchin at Shippensburg University reveals in his forthcoming article that a strong historical precedent exists for homosexual civil unions, ScienceDaily.com reports.

Religious groups fighting against gay marriage often try to push forward the image of nuclear families as the only "traditional" household form. However, as Tulchin writes, "Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures."

In late medieval France, and also elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe, there existed a certain type of legal contract that provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts.

Affrèrement, roughly translated as brotherment, meant that "brothers" pledged to live together sharing 'un pain, un vin, et une bourse' -- one bread, one wine, and one purse. "The model for these household arrangements is that of two or more brothers who have inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and who will continue to live together, just as they did when they were children," Tulchin writes. But at the same time, "the affrèrement was not only for brothers," since many other people, including relatives and non-relatives, used it.

When two people signed the contract, all of their goods became the joint property of both parties, and each commonly became the other's legal heir. "They also frequently testified that they entered into the contract because of their affection for one another. As with all contracts, affrèrements had to be sworn before a notary and required witnesses, commonly the friends of the affrèrés," Tulchin writes.

Tulchin argues that when the affrèrés were single unrelated men, these contracts provide considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships. "I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the community accepted that. What followed did not produce any documents," Tulchin writes.

"The very existence of affrèrements shows that there was a radical shift in attitudes between the sixteenth century and the rise of modern anti-homosexual legislation in the twentieth."