UESP Forums

From a collection of Sermons written on Orcish Theology by yours truly, written 18.01.2018 on my then-blog.

Mauloch, Father to us, his children
Gave us strength, endurance and passion
That we may crush our foes and love our kin;
Under your guidance, we have no fear!

"In the heat of battle the sharpest blades are forged"
It is true, as you confidently say.
For in the spar, such primal endeavours are engorged
And in the heat, strength is the order of the day.

But let not strength lead to compliancy
For even if a chief has been pierced with a blade
He must fulfil his pious duty to be in the longhouse laid.

For the strong must pass down their vitality,
For it must be put community before carnality
And those who fail in their divine duty
Shall be denied Ashpit for all eternity.

Postscript:

Hidden:

While Homosexuality or Homosexual activity is not prohibited by Mauloch, care must be taken that indulgence in such activates does not cause any dishonour (in that it does not interfere in passing on the strongest genetics from the Chief to his children through heterosexual intercourse).

There is a difference between love and procreation. Love is a matter of heart and soul, procreation an activity of bodies. Now, they do coincide more often than not, but emotion and physiology can be engaged separately.

indeed,

Unfavourable opinion, I imagine that all the races of tamriel dont care about homosexuality simply to adjust with current political and social climate. Maybe an opinion maybe fact, maybe we`ll never know...

In Orcish society that which has no use has no relevance and might makes right. A Homosexual Orc will never be the leader of a hold, but that is simply an issue of qualification rather than bias. Being chieftain means producing heirs with like nine different women. Beyond that so long as the homosexual orc is not effeminate it would probably not come up. Grush prefers wine over mead, Torak will face down a troll but will cower like a child in the presence of even the smallest of spiders, and Drakk has no interest in females. Reachmen are probably similar in this regard, as when one worships Daedra you will be exposed to things that make any ethical stand against homosexuality look comical. Realistically Nords would not welcome gays. They are not a tolerant society. The worst sort of biases against gays are likely prevalent in Skyrim. The Empire would take a Roman view on it, with shame being applied only to the submissive male and Lesbianism being considered... well, hot. There is simply no way that gays would be treated well in Hammerfell. It is a mix of African and Islamic influences. For them to tolerate even kinks would be a stretch to lore. That is not to say there are no gay Redguard, merely that those individuals have hard lives even when compared to Skyrim homosexuals. The Mer probably see your orientation as part of your spiritual path, and the Khajiit would take this a step further, reasoning that if the Moons made you gay than there is a reason for that which should not be questioned or belittled. The people of High Rock probably take a more tolernt approach to sexuality, while the Lizardmen would view it as a mutation or abberation in the sap one consumed in infancy.

Chieftain: My son, you are the strongest warrior in the Tribe. Sadly, I cannot name you chieftain.
Eldest: But Father, why!?
Chieftain: Son, you know how you like to do... things to the prisoners?
Eldest: Yes. Is that why I can't be Chieftain?
Chieftain: No. It's that you only do those things to the male prisoners.
Eldest: So?
Chieftain: Oh, my son, how I have failed you. I should have explained how babies are made.
Eldest: They grow from the blood of Malacath?
Chieftain: Have a seat my child.

@Cursegrind: While it's a lot less common in the modern day thanks to gay rights, gay men have slept with women since time immemorial, sometimes several women, creating large families. Sometimes it was done as cover, sometimes to continue the bloodline, sometimes because they didn't understand why they didn't feel satisfied with women, and a whole host of other reasons. This does not preclude them being gay. Being gay, at least from my perspective, is about who you want to be with, not who you are with. I can only imagine that all of this would hold true for Orcs as well. The Chief would do what he needed to until there were an adequate number of offspring, then most likely move on. Or maybe the chief is a bit more flexible/fluid in his sexuality and doesn't mind being with women, even though he prefers men. Whatever the case, a gay chieftain having numerous offspring isn't out of the question. Hell, even if he can't make himself do the deed, there are, shall we say, ways around that. At the very least, surrogate fathers and/or adoption would be viable for Orcs. Keeping it secret, assuming that were desirable, might be a challenge, but probably not impossible. If nothing else, there's always the rather direct route of...eliminating the evidence.

For virtually every other race you mention, you're openly projecting our-world values onto other-world cultures. I'll pick apart Nords as an example, but I really see no point at all in picking apart the rest, as I reject utterly the notion that we can assume that what happened in our cultures would necessarily happen in another, much less a fictional one which is under no obligation to follow any of our rules. Cultures don't always make sense to outsiders.

So, Nords: at this particular point in Nord history, yes, they're fairly conservative, but that may not always have been the case. It could be that they've always accepted relationships between any two people, regardless of gender, and it never occurred to them that it would be any other way. We don't know. If you want to make comparisons to our world, we have historical precedent in the societies of ancient Greece (The Sacred Band of Thebes comes to mind) and to a lesser extent Rome, as you mentioned. And, of course, there's Vikings themselves, since Nords are heavily based on Viking culture. I won't get into much detail here, as the subject would probably start violating forum rules in a hurry. Suffice it to say that male-male interactions were accepted after a fashion, though as noted above for Orcs, conjugal duties were paramount, whatever else you might do outside of that. But again, that takes us back to the question of whether we should assume that much of Viking culture was written into Nord culture. I expect not. If Skyrim's writers say that gender generally wasn't seen as relelvant to relationships, then it's their world and that's the way things work there, regardless of whether it follows comparable cultures in our world.

As for your second post, by the time an Orc has figured out the...errr...ins and outs of gay sex, he's probably got a pretty good idea how straight sex works and the fact that it creates babies. It seems rather unlikely his father would have to explain it to him, but even if he did, that's just as likely with a straight teen (or whatever age Orcs mature at) as with a gay one. Lacking formal education, knowledge will be rather spotty regardless of orientation.

You're argument there could just as well be applied to you're own response. Just because in our world its tolerated now doesn't mean it is in TES. But to be more Frank, referring to my last post, considering the amount of relaxed and inoffensive material and narratives being pushed into every format available it's probably more than safe to assume that EVERY race in tamriel is now actively promoting gay relationships purely to avoid offence. Using available evidence though argonians don't care because they (thanks to eso) can change sex at will apparently, bosmer are known to produce large amounts of offspring through orgies so from that I'm assuming they are pretty fair game, Dummer, breton and altmer are all socially driven to breed into high class and marriage for political gain so I'd argue its a no for them. Similarly Orcs I'd assume might view it as wrong if it interferes with their roll to produce the strongest tribe. Going by that alone I can't honestly believe that such emotional attachments would be allowed among such small tribal communities purely for the reason alone that if the strongest was "allowed" to be gay he wouldn't produce offspring. Imperial and nords probably don't care or there's no evidence to suggest they do. Likewise there doesn't really seem to be enough information to suggest redguards would care either. Khajiit are moon herb smoking wasters so I think it's safe to conclude they don't care. But given current world climate we're probably going to see a TES world with no challenging narratives regarding such "delicate" modern world issues. Maybe an opinion, maybe fact. I guess we'll see. There are several quests in eso in which gay couples are dealing with problems but they are (unless I'm wrong) relevant only to families and their involvement with the quest givers. To be specific I can remember one in valenwood somewhere and one involvong khajiit.