Today's Out Spotlight was an esteemed historian who argued that
homosexuality has always existed, that it has at times enjoyed wide
social acceptance, and that the Church historically allowed same-sex
unions. Today's Out Spotlight is John Boswell.
He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1975 and joined the Yale University history faculty, making full professor in 1982.
An authority on the history of Jews, Muslims, and
Christians in medieval Spain. In 1987, Boswell helped
organize and found the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale, which is
now the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies. He was named the A.
Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990, when he was also
appointed to a two-year term as chair of the Yale history department.
Boswell was a gifted and devoted teacher. His undergraduate lectures in
medieval history were renowned for their organization, erudition, and
wit, with the course often making the "top 10" for highest enrollment.
To enhance the novelty and high interest in his classes, the
multi-talented Boswell would often pen his comments on student papers in
perfectly executed italic script.
In 1980 Boswell published the book for which he is best known:
"Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in
Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth
Century." In this groundbreaking study, Boswell argued against "the
common idea that religious belief-Christian or other-has been the cause
of intolerance in regard to gay people. It "offered a revolutionary interpretation of the Western
tradition, arguing that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay
people throughout its history, but rather, at least until the twelfth
century, had alternately evinced no special concern about homosexuality
or actually celebrated love between men." Scholarly reactions varied.
More importantly, the book brought forward a fresh emphasis on the crime
of rape being the actual sin of Sodom, rather than the homosexual acts
themselves. This idea calls into question any connection between gay
people today and the Biblical Sodomites. The book was named one of the New York Times ten best books of 1980 and received both the American Book Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 1981.
Boswell's second book on homosexuality in history was "The Marriage
of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe," published in 1994.
In it he argues that the Christian ritual of adelphopoiia
("brother-making") is evidence that prior to the Middle Ages, the Church
recognized same-sex relationships. Boswell's thesis has been embraced
by proponents of same-sex unions, although it remains controversial
among scholars.Boswell converted to Roman Catholicism as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary, and remained a devout Catholic for the rest of his life. He was an effective teacher and popular lecturer on several topics, including his life journey as an openly gay Christian man.
After his conversion to Catholicism from the Episcopal Church during he remained a daily-mass Catholic up until his death, despite his
differences with the church over sexual issues. Although he was orthodox
in most of his beliefs, he strongly disagreed with his church's stated
opposition to homosexual behavior and relationships. To a certain degree
much of the work and research Boswell did regarding the Christian
church's historical relationship with homosexuality can be seen as an
attempt to reconcile his sexual orientation with his faith.
John Boswell died of complications from AIDS in the Yale infirmary in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 24, 1994, at age 47.
"It is possible to change ecclesiastical attitudes toward gay people and their sexuality because the objections to homosexuality are not biblical, they are not consistent, they are not part of Jesus' teaching; and they are not even fundamentally Christian."
