...

[meteordust]

Okay, so on RO you can roleplay romances between characters. Some people even get married, inviting friends to a wedding ceremony and exchanging vows and gifts. None of this is coded into the game, however - it's a purely symbolic act.

Now there's talk going around that Gravity is planning to implement an official marriage system in the game. Married couples will get special skills allowing them to do things like support each other in battle. However, marriage can only take place between a male and a female character - same sex marriages are not allowed.

So someone posts a poll on the RO-World forums asking whether gay and lesbian marriages should be allowed on RO. The result? Not surprisingly, a massive flamewar.

In the 236 posts which follow the original, pretty much the entire spectrum of responses can be found, including 'Gravity is homophobic', 'homosexuality is an abomination to God', 'Christian bigots should die', 'get over it, it's only a game', and 'it's okay if it's lesbians, hur hur hur'.

Religion, as always, ends up featuring prominently in the debate. There is argument over whether Rune-Midgard is a Christian kingdom (with dictionary definitions of 'church' being cited) or an ancient Norse fantasy kingdom (in which gays may or may not exist). Leviticus is brought up, of course. There is much heated discussion of the 'people are born gay' versus the 'it's a lifestyle choice' issues. Surprisingly, no one has invoked the Nazis yet.

Me? On one hand, I think it's going to suck if same sex couples can't access those new skills. On the other hand, I'm finding it easy to resist wading into this debate - the old saying about participating in arguments on Usenet comes to mind.

All I can say is that if I had a JournalFen code, this would so be going on Fandom Wank.

Comments

[chuuchuu.livejournal.com]

They're immature, what do you expect? Furthermore, many live in a dreamy wish-it-were world than what-really-happens reality. iRO is run in America by Americans. America is where certain figures do their utmost to censor away every homosexual reference in made-for-public entertainment (think anime licenses and "controversial" foreign films). I'd delve further into the schizophrenic libertarianism of the pseudo-moralists but just wanted to point that same-sex marriages won't be happening in iRO. Because kiddies who play might raise uncomfortable questions to church/mosque/synagogue-attending devout parents.

[meteordust.livejournal.com]

Well, the marriage system is being tested on kRO at the moment - it's anyone's guess as to when it might reach iRO, or in what form. It's been suggested that Korea itself is pretty conservative when it comes to gay rights. Although it's not all dark news on the US front - Massachusetts has recently become the first state in the US to legalise gay marriage (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/11/18/gay.marriage.reut/).

Because kiddies who play might raise uncomfortable questions to church/mosque/synagogue-attending devout parents.

Yeah, it seems all too likely that Gravity will want to avoid any hint of controversy and just not include same sex marriages in the game. As someone pointed out, Gravity's not going to stop you from kissing your boyfriend or girlfriend in Prontera Square. It's just the skills thing you lose out on.

Gay marriage is an important issue, yeah. But it just boggled my mind how furiously it was being debated in the context of an MMORPG.

[hopexd.livejournal.com]

Heh. More people seemed to have voted "yes" for that one though. =)

I remember three years ago when shounen-ai first started to get popular among fangirls, there used to be tones of flame wars in the mailings and BBS i was on... It destroyed a few BBS as many people got offended and left. Nowadays it doesn't happen much in anime fandom anymore... probably coz of the tolerance of (male) fans graduately went up... XD; RO obviously hasn't been through this process yet, plus it's more like real world, it's always different when real people are involved. It is in a way representing people's opinion on the real world guy/lesbian relationship too i guess. >.>;

And who cares about Gravity... it'll take them another year to implement that, and we're getting married before the end of next week. X3 Next week will be my last week of RO before i leave, coz my PC will be disembled and packed up after that.

Busy... busy...

[meteordust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen so many of these flamewars in various fandoms, it was a weird experience to see the same kind of thing crop up in RO. It's a very different community from the ones I'm usually part of - I was surprised to see so many "yes" votes too.

Next week will be my last week of RO before i leave

T_T