[MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage (was: Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens)

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Ananda Dawnsinger wrote:

> ----------
> >From: Matthew Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.mudservices.com>
> >To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> >Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens
> >Date: Thu, Apr 6, 2000, 5:56 PM
> >
> 
> >I wouldn't. There's nothing out of role about homophobia, racism, or
> >anti-homophobia, or anti-racism. We have a number of homosexual characters
> >in Achaea, for instance, and have even dealt with the issue of same-sex
> >marriages.
> 
> How did you end up dealing with same-sex marriages?  It's an issue our
> design team is most likely going to have to face at some point (and the
> project leader is perfectly content to ignore it until a player asks).

We didn't deal with it with forethought. We waited until a player asked,
and then gave the ok. We didn't see any reason at all not to. We aren't
populated by religious bigots, thankfully (well, in-role we most certainly
are, but I don't think the christian right are big mudders).

 
> The issue is complicated because ours is a multi-racial system and IMO it's
> neither realistic nor desirable to sanction marriage between species of
> fundamentally different kingdoms.  Will players accept it if two humans of
> the same sex can marry, but a female human can't marry a male dragon?

It might not be realistic, but really, so what? Dragons aren't realistic
either. It might not even be internally consistent, but I would argue that
the #1 goal of any mud that is aiming for success in terms of player-base
needs to make community-enabling and person-to-person relationship
building their top priority. If two players are in puppy love with each
other (which tends to be a rather ooc thing in my experience), and you
tell them they can't get married because some byte on their characters are
different, I think you'll have a couple of very unhappy players. I mean,
what do you care if they marry, really? Not allowing them to have kids I
understand. 

 
> The solution I would (will) suggest is to decouple the legal and the
> social/religious aspects of marriage.  Any two (or more) people can register
> a union with the city-state, giving them property and inheritance rights. 
> The various religious and racial orders and institutions would be more
> restrictive.

Sure. If the players can join and leave said restrictive orders at will, I
don't see any problem. Asking the players to make a bit of sacrifice
(perhaps leaving said restrictive order) for the sake of love is not a bad
thing I think. 
 
> This means that race X can have a long history of blessing same-sex
> marriages, race Y can have different customs and names for same-sex and
> opposite-sex unions, and race Z can officially deny that homosexual Zs even
> exist...

What if an individual member of race Z decided to be homosexual though?
You're going to make him reincarnate his character or start a new one so
that he can be with the man he loves? That seems counterproductive to me.
Internal consistency can go too far (particularly as I'm unaware of it
being achieved to any great degree in any mud, when you really break the
systems down. No successful mud that I know of does things like create
laws of physics that explain things like magic, giants (who, in our world,
would simply find their bones and muscles unable to support their weight),
etc.

--matt




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