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[blizzerd]

if the only reason not to implement it is "it will bring up too much drama/people will feel offended/emotional about it

then i say implement it, cause there is no better game then one that makes you stop and think about how you see the world and how you want to act in a dramatic setting

the fact that people kill kittens for food or make trade depods flood with water to steal the riches then that begs for something like this

if we do want to exclude homosexuality from this game, we ether exclude any taboo from the game, including child death... OR this game will be having a kind of homophobic tone to it

[Phreak]

Wow this is an interesting topic(looking at how people react and what they say), and I'm sure there will be many more like it, even if they are not quite the same. But please please keep this in a note or word document all your ideas/thoughts or something so you can bring it up when DF is 'fleshier' and more stable and ready to add the more detailed social things like this etc. Im not disregarding this and throwing it away, im saying maybe we should we keep this behind a barely barricaded door, and keep antagonizing the beast behind it, until Toady is up to this part of the dwarf society, and then open the door and let loose the chaos(pardon the very out of place, and probably bad pun). Hasn't he got stuff like this planned for a time in the development-to do tab? This will surely bring out the many homophobes(I'm guessing a majority of the community) who would hate for their dwarfs to be homosexual, or even bisexual. I know they should grow up and take a look at the real world but we should keep this debate in the calendar for a time when toady is going to read and remember, and add when hes up to this kind of thing. I guess he may make a poll for this in the future?

[Phreak]

I cant even remember any games that DONT have a homophobic tune to it if thats what your calling it, though im sure there is quite a few. Also the examples you chose(drowning merchants and eating cats, killing children) are not quite the right examples...

[devek]

It is all a pointless discussion anyway, because the official statement was that marriage as it is now was put in quickly just to make world gen and isolated fortresses work. The official statement is that homosexuality will start to occur naturally eventually. If someone gets the idea that dwarf fortress is against the idea, they are simply wrong.

I just have a pet peeve when people have simplistic viewpoints regarding sexuality as a whole. People are not as simple as a gay/straight switch hehe and when DF gets to where it should be, dwarfs won't be that simple either. Thank god too, it is kind of stupid and unrealistic how a dwarf will marry any other dwarf you lock in a room with it.

[NW_Kohaku]

There's no reason not to put in variant ethics when it comes to homosexual acceptance. It's true that Dwarf Fortress technology doesn't extend beyond the 14th century (pump stacks that spew magma out over the countryside notwithstanding), but to say that society standards should necessarily be held to the same standards, I'd say no. For one thing, it just isn't our world (oh rly?).

I'd also like to point out that we have completely anachronistic gender equality right now.

As in, it's not even in our own so-called enlightened times we have the sort of nigh-absolute gender equality we see in DF.

Women are not only not expected to fill different social roles in the game, and aren't subject to notions that women are more "hysterical" than men, but they are pretty much forced by modding fiat to not be recognized by the game to be in almost any way different at all. 

There is no pay discrimination, no glass ceiling, no maternity leave (which can actually be a little disturbing when pregnancies occur mid-combat), no periods, men can wear dresses and thongs, and nobody even notices.  In fact, you can make your whole society go nude, and nobody really minds men and women, children and elderly, being naked together all the time.

We are, frankly, unrealistically liberal about the whole notion of gender equality in this game.

Likewise, we are being unrealistically prudish about the entire concept of sexuality in this game - to the point of not really even modeling heterosexual relationships very well. Once married, dwarves don't even have to talk to one another again, they just waft some spores into the air after every pregnancy to keep the women eternally pregnant.  Sure, we don't need dwarves "doing it", but they could, I don't know, sit down and eat dinner together once in a while or something.  (At least buy her a drink before you knock her up again, geez.)

In fact, I'll just leave this Extra Credits link on sex in games right here... 

What we need is not graphic displays of sex, but rather displays of intimacy. (And I mean that in "aww, they're holding hands" terms, not "get a room" terms.)

We need dwarves who are in relationships taking time out to spend time with their loved ones, rather than getting married to the first person they manage to stand around the dining hall near long enough to get 300 relationship points with, ignoring their spouse from then on, and then ignoring their children that follow them around like ducklings, even into the middle of an onrushing horde of trolls. 

We need dwarves who take time out to connect with one another, especially after some of the horrific things that happen in DF, like attacks from flying zombie heads coming up out of the well in the hospital and eating the doctor in the middle of surgery. 

Having that sort of intimacy, where dwarves try to take time out to spend with the people they like or do the things they like instead of operating as color-coded robots, even if it's just two male dwarves whose relationship levels go past "friends" into "lovers" in a screen most people will never notice, is just the first step in the right direction.

[Phreak]

I know alot of people who would hate that, as it would be 'wasting time' in their opinion instead of healing the mayor before he dies, or protecting the entire fort because your the only soldier left, It is however a worthwhile idea, to an extent. I would however(off topic) like a nursery like workshop or room so that soldiers/working dwarfs wont bring their babies to die with them and cause the whole damn fort to go emo XD.

[devek]

Having that sort of intimacy, where dwarves try to take time out to spend with the people they like or do the things they like instead of operating as color-coded robots, even if it's just two male dwarves whose relationship levels go past "friends" into "lovers" in a screen most people will never notice, is just the first step in the right direction.

Urist McAxedwarf cancels kill goblin: Daughter wants to go shopping.

hehe

[NW_Kohaku]

I know alot of people who would hate that, as it would be 'wasting time' in their opinion instead of healing the mayor before he dies, or protecting the entire fort because your the only soldier left, It is however a worthwhile idea, to an extent. I would however(off topic) like a nursery like workshop or room so that soldiers/working dwarfs wont bring their babies to die with them and cause the whole damn fort to go emo XD.

Eventually, dwarves need to start doing something other than working like mindless automatons.

Especially since currently, beyond the initial year, most times, you have some idling dwarves, anyway. 

Anyway, you might want to look up the I, Dwarfbot thread and the Class Warfare thread for discussions on how to work on dwarven autonomy and how they spend free time, and how that can add to the game as a whole.

[Jeoshua]

I'd like to point out that while there is Gender Equality as far as leadership roles go with Dwarves, the same is no true for Humans.  People are as patriarchal as ever.

[Phreak]

Huh true, if we are just making it just for Dwarfs its a bit unfair and unequal right? But if we do it for the intelligent races, then why not for all races? since animals have homosexuality too...but then it would become too much for every race to have homosexuality as often as 'straight' so toady would have to work out that it would be not as common, so as to not have races that die out because of any suitable mate for a male/female for that civilisation is unavailable due to their tastes and that race would die. So, unfair as this may sound, they would have to be a bit less as often as 'straight'(maybe same with bisexual?) But idk for sure what Toady is thinking of for this and i myself have no idea :p just guessing really.

[Dutchling]

There a thousand things that I'd rather see implemented before this but eventually this should be put in.
I don't think there is a real reason not to implement them. There are just a lot more important things that actually add something to the game.

[Jeoshua]

Huh true, if we are just making it just for Dwarfs its a bit unfair and unequal right? But if we do it for the intelligent races, then why not for all races?

More than that, as I pointed out before, the most common outcome from civs having different ethics is not mere disagreement... it is War.  If Dwarves are okay with the whole gay marriage thing, but humans aren't, expect a seige next season over "abominations in the eyes of <insert-god-of-marriage-here>".

What? There was never another paragraph!

[Dutchling]

he he he.
I just went to do just that when you posted, because I realized that although people do not see you as anarchistic if you kill all your nobles they probably think you hate gays if you want to hurt them in-game.

EDIT: to actually add something to the discussion, I think marriage should be more than just a way to reproduce before gay marriage is added. And on an slightly unrelated note: Isn't Holland the first country were gay marriage was allowed?

[Jeoshua]

Yeah.  But understandable.  We are in a thread with the words "cultural taboos" in the title.

[G-Flex]

if the only reason not to implement it is "it will bring up too much drama/people will feel offended/emotional about it

then i say implement it, cause there is no better game then one that makes you stop and think about how you see the world and how you want to act in a dramatic setting

the fact that people kill kittens for food or make trade depods flood with water to steal the riches then that begs for something like this

if we do want to exclude homosexuality from this game, we ether exclude any taboo from the game, including child death... OR this game will be having a kind of homophobic tone to it

Damn straight on all counts. Pun not intended.

DF has never been a game to shy away from something just because it might be controversial, and never will be, and as a noncommercial niche game, it's not like it's going to lose the support of some nonexistent publisher because of nonexistent backlash. If anything, if the game can handle the subject reasonably, it might get positive feedback where it counts.

Huh true, if we are just making it just for Dwarfs its a bit unfair and unequal right? But if we do it for the intelligent races, then why not for all races?

More than that, as I pointed out before, the most common outcome from civs having different ethics is not mere disagreement... it is War.  If Dwarves are okay with the whole gay marriage thing, but humans aren't, expect a seige next season over "abominations in the eyes of <insert-god-of-marriage-here>".

What? There was never another paragraph!

I definitely think that sexual orientation should wait until dwarven socialization in general actually matters. I think that's pretty obvious, really. Like Toady said in that quote I posted, marriage is basically just there right now to facilitate breeding, but it'll expand beyond that, and at some point it'll be consequential and meaningful to explore dwarven (and elven, human, etc.) relationships more.