Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
Date:         Sat, 5 Sep 1992 23:17:02 EDT
From:         gaynet@GALLIFREY.KENT.EDU
Subject:      GayNet Digest Volume 6 Issue 9

In this issue:
                             rubber stamps
                             Family Values

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Date: Sat, 5 Sep 92 13:19:12 EDT
From: Tim Pierce <twpierce@cs.amherst.edu>
Subject: rubber stamps

Ryon Brame <ryon@support.avalanche.com> said:

> 	My hope is that straight people will feel uncomfortable passing
> the bills on, and maybe learn a little about what it's like to have others
> react differently to you when they think you're queer.  If nothing else,
> it makes people realize that we gays and lesbians are everywhere.
>
> 	Anyway, I hate to use this forum as a way to sell stuff, but I have
> some stamps left over, so if anyone wants one (and a stamp pad), please
> send $7 to:

This is a great idea, but if you're planning to redistribute these
stamps on such a large basis, I suggest changing "Gay and Lesbian" to
"Lesbian, Bisexual, or Gay" or just "Gay" or "Queer."  Some of us
aren't gay or lesbian -- OR straight! :-)

-
____ Tim Pierce                / The Queer Resources Directory: access via
\  / twpierce@cs.amherst.edu   / anonymous ftp at nifty.andrew.cmu.edu in
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / directory /pub/QRD.

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Date: 05 Sep 92 20:42:05 EST
From: Larry Goldsmith <LGOLDSMI@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: Family Values

Charles Bedard brings up an interesting point, that the word "family" has a
close etymological relation to "servant."  In fact, it's much worse than
that!  His posting reminded me of a recent article by David Herlihy, in the
February 1991 _American Historical Review_ (actually it's the published
version of his presidential address to the American Historical
Association), which examines the etymology in some detail.  Herlihy writes
(I'm omitting his footnotes):

      "The English word 'family' is a direct borrowing from the Latin
_familia_, which also supplies a common word for family to most other
European languages, including German and Polish.  It appeared very early in
the Romance languages, from at least the twelfth century; it entered
English by the fifteenth and German only in the sixteenth.  In classical
Latin, _familia_ carried several meanings.  As the ancients themselves
noted, the word could refer to both persons and property.  Both ancient and
medieval grammarians believed, correctly it seems, that the Romans had
borrowed the word from a neighboring people, the Oscans.  The Oscan root,
_famel_, meant slave, and the word also supplied Latin with a common name
for slave, _famulus_.  _Familia_ thus originally meant a band of slaves.
'Fifteen freemen make a people,' wrote the second-century novelist
Apuleius, 'fifteen slaves make a family, and fifteen prisoners make a
jail.'  The word in its original sense thus implied an authoritarian
structure and hierarchical order, founded on but not limited to relations
of marriage and parenthood.  In a related way, the Latin word for father,
_pater_, designated in its original sense not a biological parent but the
holder of authority.  The biological male parent was _genitor_.  Authority,
in sum, and not consanguinity, not even marriage, was at the core of the
ancient concept of family....
      "By further extension, the word applied to groups of people
possessing some organization, or at least some similarity, in their styles
of life.  In classical Latin literature under the name of 'family,' there
appear prostitutes in a brothel; publicans or tax collectors, moneyers;
military units; schools of philosophers; and, in Christian usage, demons,
monks, and the clergy generally.  St. Augustine of Hippo referred to the
entire Christian church as the 'family of Christ' or the 'family of God.'
The Christian author Lacantius, in his diatribe _On the Death of
Persecutors_, gave the word an even larger sweep.  Lacantius was condemning
the cruelty of the pagan emperor Galerius.  The wicked Galerius, wrote
Lacantius, like the Persian kings before him, treated the entire empire
_tamquam familia_, 'like a family,' that is, a limitless aggregation of
sullen slaves all suffering under his tyrannous power.  The use of the word
family to designate a huge community of the cowed rings strange to modern
ears :it does?:, but it is consistent with the term's core meaning, as an
aggregation of slaves."

      How's that for family values?  The rest of the article is
interesting, as well, and in fact this entire issue of the _AHR_ is devoted
to the history of the family, and has a lot of good material...

Larry Goldsmith:

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