Gay Marriage and Skyrim: Conservatism Takes an Arrow in the Knee

Imagine, for a moment, that a fantasy novel had recently been released.  The book gets tremendous praise in popular media, and is driven by a successful ad campaign...some paid and in the mass media, the rest generated by an eager fan base.   It was a barnstorming, raging success, selling three-and-a-half million copies in its first two months.  It was such a success, in fact, that it was spawning internet memes and fan videos.   Not only that, but it's the kind of book that trickles down to kids, so that many tweens and teens are reading it.

Now think, for a moment, about the reaction of certain elements in American conservatism once they discovered that in this book, same-sex marriage was tacitly endorsed.

One would expect the usual response, the sort of silliness that was leveled against the really-actually-very-Christian Harry Potter books.    Some blogger, somewhere, would get mad about it.  Pat Robertson would say something.  I mean, Pat never misses an opportunity, right?  The Family Research Council would surely issue a stern missive.

But there's been nothing.   Nothing at all.

That's been the response, best I can tell it, to the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the recent multi-million-dollar blockbuster game from Bethesda Softworks.   It's a great, great game, exactly what I'd expect from the folks at Bethesda.  It is deep and complex and beautiful, and after forty hours in, I'm still marveling at how wonderfully and fully realized their vision of this land is.

As part of creating an immersive realistic world, you can, if you so choose, get married.

If you do, you get all sorts of pleasant little perks, none of which are even remotely R rated.  Your spouse will  cook for you if you ask nicely, making meals that restore your health and stamina.   They'll come live with you, assuming you've got a house of your own.  They'll sleep in the same bed you, which accrues bonuses to your well being and ability to learn new things.  It's not called the Cozy Spooning Bonus, but I'm familiar with that effect in the real world.

And you can marry someone of the same gender.

As Bethesda Softworks sees it, this is not a big deal.   This is, after all, a world in which you could also marry an Orc.  Or one of the catlike Khajit, or...although this seems non-conducive to connubial spooning bonuses...a horned, reptilian Argonian.  Not to mention that marrying a lizard would represent a significant escalation in the spousal thermostat wars.

Perhaps the lack of response is because it's not a big deal.

That there are same-sex marriages in Tamriel has no impact on my marriage.   I know they're virtually happening, sure.  But my relationship with my wife is utterly unaffected by hearing about unions outside of our own.  There are factors...like work stress and kid stress and financial stress and the siren song of self-indulgence that pours from our me-centered culture...that can have an impact.  Those need to be called out and resisted, because they do pose real threats to marriage and the deep, covenant relationships that are a blessing from our Creator.

But hearing stories about virtual unions?  It has no effect on my heterosexuality, or on that of my wife.  It does not effect us, or our relationship.  Or on yours.

If you're defending marriage, there are better things to do than worry about what Bosmer and Altmer choose to do.  It just doesn't really change anything.  So I guess folks have just decided to let this one slide. 

A pity those same folks don't realize that's the case outside of the virtual world, too.

English, Dragonish, and the Problem with Fundamentalism

Yesterday, as I bumbled my way through a reasonably productive Monday, I encountered two things that got me thinking about faith and language.   The first of those two things was the video below, which was pitched out onto Facebook by the former head of the religious school at my family's synagogue.   It's a pleasant little bit of history, the history of the English language, presented by the inimitable Open University.   The Open University, in the event you haven't heard of it, is a British institution, one that allows easy access to quality, college-level coursework to anyone who has the desire to partake of it.   Back then I lived there in the late 70s, much British daytime programming during the day on one of the three television channels was dedicated to Open University lectures and course preparation.   Those wacky socialists and their educations!  Anyhoo, here it is, ready to sop up 10 minutes of your life.  It's a bit naughty in that wry British way, so thou art forewarned:



After this little excursus into the organic evolution of the English language, I took a break from FB and blogging, did a few chores, and then settled in for a bit of day-off gaming.  I'm playing my way through Skyrim on the PS3, and it's a remarkably entertaining, deep, and well-constructed game.  One of the elements that Bethesda Softworks has really nailed in both this game and others is a well-crafted soundtrack.  It's a contextual soundtrack, meaning the music shifts and varies depending on location, time of day, and whether or not you're blowing up zombies with balls of magical fire.

As I settled in with my controller yesterday, though, something caught my attention.  At the beginning of the game, during the initial load screen, there's a song.  It's a big bellowy hoo-hah song, all pomp and bombast, the sort of music that stirs the small Viking fragment of my genetic heritage.   In the midst of drums and blaring brass, a big male voice choir grunts and vocalizes, and then starts yarping gibberish in an MMA-meets-Glee testosterama.

When the yarping began, I realized, suddenly, that they weren't singing nonsense words at all.  For the purposes of verisimilitude, the game has a language that was made for it, a language spoken by dragons.  The words in that tongue are spoken throughout the game, and in a moment of geekish epiphany, I recognized dovakiin, the Dragonish word for "dragon-born."  And then the word Anduin, the name of the great dragon who brings about the end of time.  It was a bit like that time I first attended a synagogue service after learning Hebrew.  Only geekier.

I went online, and found the...cough...English "translation," which goes like this:



So here's a language, or the framework of one, that exists solely in-game.   I'm not sure there's enough there there for the American Bible Society to attempt a translation into Dragonish, but I figure if you can translate the Bible into Klingon, anything is fair game.

Twice in one day, then, there came the reminder of the ephemeral character of human language.  It's one of the reasons I find fundamentalist literalism so completely bizarre.

Sure, the nature of God is unchanging, and the nature of the Being that God speaks is boundlessly, deeply real.  But words?   As much as I love 'em, words in human tongues aren't the thing itself.  They can evoke.  They can suggest.  They can point to, and lead to, the Holy.  But they are not the Real that rises from our Maker.

Perhaps that's why we find it so easy to fight over them.   As MacDonald puts it:

God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words...even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple.

Viva la Neoreformacion!