Same Sex Marriage

Last Entry this Week...The Good Stuff

So, one of the things that inspired me to start this blog was yet another round of recurring  conflicts in discussion groups around same sex marriage in Rokugan. 

The basic argument goes like this:  FFG has explicitly stated in its books that there is same sex marriage in Rokguan.  However,  there are those who feel that having same sex marriage in a fantasy 'Japan-like' setting stretches their suspension of disbelief too greatly and do not like this. When they state that, this tends to hurt LGBT members of the community  who find fantasy Rokugan and its embrace of same sex marriage a welcome respite from the difficulties faced with marriage inequality and other forms of discrimination in the real world, and indeed find some of these comments homophobic.  And so the battles go on.

I want to break this argument apart in a couple of ways, specifically addressing those struggling to see how same sex marriage can work in a fantasy 'Japan-like' setting.

First of all, from a historical perspective, there was significantly less of a problem with same sex relationships in historical Japan than in Western culture.  These relationships were routine, and there was no prohibition against them until the late 1800's.   More importantly, however,  Rokugan is not Japan. Instead, it is inspired by many elements of Japan, but we get to choose which elements we pull in. If we fully embrace what was in Japan during the Sengoku period or earlier for our Rokugan in terms of relationships, then we are forced to accept rampant pedophilia and other atrocious behaviors in our fantasy world. I don't think any of us care to do that, so clearly, we can pick and choose what we embrace or do not embrace for our fantasy world.   This leads to the idea of  'story axes'.

A story axis is a line along which story conflicts are intended by a game system to take place.  For example, Dungeons and Dragons has a story axis of celestial good vs celestial evil.  The whole game system is configured to create and play out conflicts along this game axis, and uses things like alignments and aligned gods and clerics, as well as certain spells, etc., to play out that conflict.  It is not, however, configured to play out games along a class axis, in general: there is no significant social class distinctions between PCs of different types or NPCs.  There are different social classes in the worlds (knights, farmers, etc.), but the game system itself is not constructed to explore class divisions.

L5R does not intentionally have a gender-based or LGBT conflict story axis.    Early editions are pretty clumsy about its handling of gender, but, unlike other versions of Japanese-style RPGs early on, there is no requirement that women must play non-combatants or play a subservient role to men, and there is no mechanic for gender inequality. It's not about those kinds of stories. However, it does have a social class story axis, with a status mechanic and everything.  Differences in social class are intended to be a driver for stories, for good or for ill; they are a source of conflict with which the PCs must contend, just like Celestial Good and Evil in D&D.  It is possible for a GM for L5R to reduce or remove this story axis by removing the burkumin as a separate caste and adding more social mobility, or just never play a plot where this is relevant. It is also possible for a GM to /add/ a gender conflict story axis, by, say, making an individual daimyo who has prejudice against the role of women in his family that plays out as conflict, but those are intentionally added by a GM.

The question, then is, if you are a GM, why would you end up adding a homophobia story axis where one is clearly not present in the RPG, and if you do, certainly why would you feel compelled to insist on its presence to other players.  

For the well-intentioned, I think it comes down to not quite figuring out how marriage is supposed to work in Rokugan.  In feudal societies, the production of heirs is considered very important.  That bastards not 'infiltrate' the family line is paramount, and arranged marriages are common, if not much more common than romantic marriages.  These conflicts are very prevalent in feudal literature and a source of many stories. In L5R, there are mechanics about happy and unhappy marriages, and clans and families and heirs, things that supplement the Class Conflict story axis well.  

So the question is how do we resolve these conflicts with the idea of same sex marriage, where the production of heirs and whose primary motivator in our experience, is love.  Why would a same sex marriage be arranged?  Why would a marriage be unhappy? 

My way to resolve this is to think about it this way.

Rokugan is a land where sex is not approached as exclusively as it is in the Western world traditionally.  It is approached more casually. Ideally it is done with someone you love.  However, it can be done with someone you like, or even someone you are somewhat indifferent to, and it would be considered fine and normal for all parties  assuming that it is done with consent,  respect, and mutual desire.  It does not carry the same weight.

Marriages in Rokugan are not exclusively, or even primarily, to produce heirs.  They could be done to seal a negotiation, providing a hostage and a person whose job is to ensure that the promises are kept.  These treaties may be created even before the one to be married is even born.  They are also done to bring people into a community that provide a needed resource into that community. A community needing a stronger economic foundation, for example, might marry in a person who has skills in that area to serve the community.  You can find a gamified version of this in the Prosperity System rules.  

Matchmakers in Rokugan have the job of finding people to fill these needed roles. They have access to supernatural abilities, prophecies, and preternatural insight in order to insure that the couple is compatible.  They would be able to tell if a match is attracted to the same or the opposite sex, for example, and the general personality they would be attracted to.  And, in general, it would be more beneficial to the harmony of society if such matches were not disruptive, but instead were, at the very least, tolerable to the parties involved.

Given this, for most marriages arranged in Rokugan, matches, then, would be generally compatible. They do not presuppose love, but they would generally be something that both parties could live with.  At that point, a sense of social obligation could encourage the partners to produce heirs if able to do so, either directly, or through adoption for same-sex marriages.  This social obligation does not require social stigma for not producing children. It does not even require social stigma for not sleeping together at all. The greatest social stigma could just be a disappointed would-be grandmother.   

Not every arranged marriage would be happy,  same sex or opposite sex.  Maybe the marriage was arranged with strongly definite terms before the child was able to argue. Maybe the relationship between the two changed during the betrothal period. Maybe one party fell strongly in love with someone else.   These unhappy relationships can be the source of all the bitter betrothals and story arcs you want, without the overall society requiring unhappy marriages and without same sex marriage being disallowed.  What is true for this family and this lord applies only to this family.

I'll end up talking about story axes more in later blog posts, but I hope that give some people having problems with how same sex marriage would work in Rokugan some ideas to see how it can apply and still give them story engines they desire.