John Boswell’s Relig Rtoratn - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• GAY BOSWELL
• WHY ‘GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN’ IS WRONG ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SAME-SEX RELATNSHIPS
• ALPHOPOIIS: THE MYTH OF THE “GAY” BYZANTE MARRIAGE RE
• THE COMMTEE ON LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR HISTORY

GAY BOSWELL

Revisg Christiany, Social Tolerance and Homosexualy over a after I first read , and three and a half s after s publitn, is both an spirg and a prsg experience. Their prcipal objectns (which vary articulacy and logic) are:● that  is anachronistic and misleadg to speak of ‘gay’ people the premorn perd● that Boswell’s terpretatns often exceed what the evince warrants● that Boswell misreprents the medieval Church’s stance on same-sex relatns (nservative Catholic scholars tend to quarrel wh his argument that the early Church was largely unncerned about them, whereas queer theorists sometim plore his ‘whewashg’ of the Church’s persecutn of sexual mori). Boswell’s e of the term ‘gay’ to signate those ‘nsc of erotic preference for their own genr’ any era seems disgenuo and overly limg, particularly when functns to erase bisexualy or sexual fluidy.

WHY ‘GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN’ IS WRONG ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SAME-SEX RELATNSHIPS

In a seri of strips June 1994, recently outed gay character Mark Slackmeyer attempts to pick up a fundamentalist Christian married man, and tells him that the church had, for a lennium, performed gay-marriage ceremoni.

In barely 20 years at Yale, Boswell’s work as a historian managed to set the t among the pigeons to stupendo effect, through years of meticulo scholarship that, if rrect, unrmed the very foundatn of much morn homophobia.

In the troductn to his 1980 Amerin Book Award-wng Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy: Gay People Wtern Europe om the Begng of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, he observed that gay people were “still the objects of severe proscriptive legislatn, wispread public hostily, and var civil rtrats, all wh ostensibly relig jtifitn. The book argued that the Roman Catholic Church had not always been as hostile to gay people, and ed, until the 12th century, had thought homosexualy no more troublg than, say, hypocrisy—or even celebrated love between men. But other crics felt that, spe s attentn to tail, s central this—that Christiany and homosexualy had not always been such uneasy bedfellows—was not only false, but a failed attempt by Boswell, gay and Catholic, to square two aspects of his inty they felt uld not be renciled.

ALPHOPOIIS: THE MYTH OF THE “GAY” BYZANTE MARRIAGE RE

He did not set out to shake up the straight world but rather to clu the gay world the love of Christ… to acquat all wh the fear­some power of that love, the wild­ns, the ‘not tame­ns’ of . But the ia that the ncept of iendship has simply changed rang hollow to him—pecially given that many ancient societi, homosexualy was nventnal and so might well have been part of a normal iendship. ” Elsewhere, however, he claims to have “ntamated the sprg of iendship wh the dirt of lt and darkened s brightns wh the blackns of sire”—yet this is a nigratn not specifilly of homosexual lt and sire, but of sexualy more generally.

” In this early Christian cy, Chrysostom found homosexualy to be so very mon and accepted that “there is some danger that womankd will bee unnecsary wh the future, wh young men stead fulfillg all the needs women ed to. There were ocsnal laws agast them, he poted out, but they were not ually relig on, but civil, where homosexual acts were fed as a way to crease tax ffers. In 1978, the openly gay polician Harvey Milk had been assassated San Francis; a year earlier me Ana Bryant’s anized opposn to gay rights, wh s rhetoric about savg children om gay “recment.

(Southern, O’Brien not, was largely fluenced by havg grown up “a reprsed age where homosexuals were crimals [a word he ed when talkg about homosexualy. In the Gay Books Bullet, Wayne Dyne wrote, cisively: “Christiany is fely guilty of the stigmatizatn and persecutn of same-sex relatns our civilizatn.

THE COMMTEE ON LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR HISTORY

To the many crics who argued that such tegori as “gay” and “straight” were morn nceptns, Boswell rpond: “If the tegori ‘homosexual/heterosexual’ and ‘gay/straight’ are the ventns of particular societi rather than real aspects of the human psyche, there is no gay history. On and off mp, he was adored—by unrgraduat, who clamored to be his class, and graduate stunts; gay and straight members of faculty alike; and by many members of the Catholic muny. In the months leadg up to his ath, Same-Sex Unns Premorn Europe, which had been previewed Doonbury, ced siar levels of ntroversy to Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy.

A nvert to Roman Catholicism as a teenager and an observant Catholic until his untimely ath at the age of 47, Boswell is perhaps bt known for his 1980 book Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy: Gay People Wtern Europe om the Begng of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, which won the 1981 Amerin Book Award for history. In this groundbreakg study of homosexualy the Wtern world, Boswell argued agast “the mon ia that relig belief – Christian or other – has been the e of tolerance regard to gay people.

Due to his ntentn that gay people have existed a variety of cultur throughout time, Boswell was labeled an “sentialist” (a moniker which he accepted only wh qualifitn). In ntrast to the “social nstctnist” view (which poss that gay inti are the creatn of morn Wtern societi), Boswell stnchly fend his views that gay people were prent such diverse settgs as classil Athens, imperial Rome, and medieval Europe.