Another bit :
"One of the recurring clichés of the same-sex marriage debate is that the very notion of such a thing is a radical departure from anything entertained before in human history. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In many cultures and in many eras, the issue has emerged-and the themes of the arguments are quirkily similar. Same-sex love, as Plato's Symposium shows, is as ancient as human love, and the question of how it is recognized and understood has bedeviled every human civilization. In most, it has never taken the form of the modern institution of marriage, but in some, surprisingly, it has. In seventeenth-century China and nineteenth-century Africa, for example, the institution seems identical to opposite-sex marriage. In other cultures (see the debate between Brent Shaw and Ralph Hexter) the meaning of same-sex unions remains opaque and complex. In Native American society, marriage between two men was commonplace, but its similarity to contemporary lesbian and gay marriages is far from evident. And today in a number of foreign countries, laws extending civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples have been or will soon be enacted. Judge for yourself what this might mean for our current convulsion. One thing emerges clearly: this issue is not a modern invention. The need to balance human dignity and social norms is as old as civilization itself. Although much of the past history of this debate has been buried until recently, it has begun to emerge again with all the passion that now crackles through modern Western culture."
from:
http://www.enotalone.com/article/4358.html
and :
"But this is just not true, Governor. You invoke "History" as though it's some source of authority, but you really don't know much about it, do you? "No investigation, no right to speak," I always say, and if you want to talk about homosexual unions in recorded history you should do some study first. First I recommend you read John Boswell's fine book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1980), in which he documents legally recognized homosexual marriage in ancient Rome extending into the Christian period, and his Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (Villard Books, 1994), in which he discusses Church-blessed same-sex unions and even an ancient Christian same-sex nuptial liturgy. Then check out my Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (University of California Press, 1995) in which I describe the "brotherhood-bonds" between samurai males, involving written contracts and sometimes severe punishments for infidelity, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Check out the literature on the Azande of the southern Sudan, where for centuries warriors bonded, in all legitimacy, with "boy-wives." Or read Marjorie Topley's study of lesbian marriages in Guangdong, China into the early twentieth century. Check out Yale law professor William Eskridge's The Case for Same-Sex Marriage (1996), and other of this scholar's works, replete with many historical examples.
...
What the study of world history will really tell you, Governor, is that pretty much any kind of sexual behavior can become institutionalized somewhere, sometime. You know that polygamy remains normal and legal in many nations, as it was among your Mormon forebears in Utah. In Tibet, polyandry has a long history, and modern Chinese law seems powerless to prevent marriages between one women and two or three men. Getting back to same-sex issues, the Sambia of New Guinea have traditionally believed that for an adolescent boy to grow into a man, he absolutely must fellate an adult male and chug the semen down. I'm not making this up; see Gilbert H. Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes (Columbia University Press, 1981). Now you and I would see that as a kind of child abuse, but to the Sambians, it's just common sense. It's been that way for well over 3,000 years of their history. (You might want to ask yourself: does that 3,000 year record make it right?) Some ancient Greek tribes had a similar notion of the necessary reception of semen to make a boy a man, only with them it was an anal-routed process. (See works by Jan Bremmer, for starters, on this practice as an "initiation rite" among various Indo-European peoples.)
...Over the last 3,000 years to which you specifically allude (someone else was telling National Public Radio that the Supreme Justice Court ruling defied 5,000 years, which would make departure from precedent even more serious), there has in fact been no global marriage norm. In some societies, a man and woman, of their own free will, formed a relationship, decided to forge a life-long commitment, got the necessary permissions and ceremonial legitimacy, started having sex after that, and maintained a monogamous union thereafter until one died. That's been very unusual, though. Arranged marriages involving varying degrees of input by the couple (usually less by the female) have been more the norm. (Do you realize, Governor, how radically sections of humankind departed from the prior "history" you so validate, when we started insisting on the freedom of young couples to marry without their parent's consent, and to do so based on "love"---which is another complex and evolving historical category? You might perhaps read Friedrich Engels' still relevant book The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, and learn something about how capitalism and the whole notion of the free market played a positive role here.)
...
The freedom to link yourself to another, and benefit from whatever range of privileges your political and cultural environment confer on "marriage," should not be arbitrarily confined to males who are attracted to females, and to females attracted to males. Even if that premise had, in fact, as you suggest, prevailed since the dawn of civilization, it would be irrational. If history (with a capital H), has any function at all, it is to induce people, merely through cumulative experience, to get more rational, and thereby alleviate the kinds of suffering they can inflict upon themselves. Recognition of gay marriage is a step towards recognizing reality, and alleviating the oppression homophobic ignorance and hatred inevitably inflict. That's the reasoning behind the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts' ruling."
From:
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12132003.html
...
) However, I also believe that there are multiple applications for verses, which seems like that's what you mean more than interpretation. To give a simplified explanation...let's say a verse was written in Hebrew to say "sit in the chair." It can only be interpreted as "sit in the chair." But the application might be different. Is it sit in the chair with your legs crossed? Sit in the chair with one leg tucked under? Etc? Well, all of them can be equally fine...after all, you're still sitting in the chair. 
