Gay marriage sounds like an ultra-contemporary idea. But almost twenty
years ago, a Catholic scholar at Yale shocked the world by publishing a
book packed with evidence that same-sex marriages were sanctioned by the
early Christian Church during an era commonly called the Dark Ages.
John Boswell
was a historian and religious Catholic who dedicated much of his
scholarly life to studying the late Roman Empire and early Christian
Church. Poring over legal and church documents from this era, he
discovered something incredible. There were dozens of records of church
ceremonies where two men were joined in unions that used the same
rituals as heterosexual marriages. (He found almost no records of
lesbian unions, which is probably an artifact of a culture which kept
more records about the lives of men generally.)
Bolstered by this evidence, Boswell published a book in 1994, the year before his death from AIDS, called Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. The book comes out next month for the first time in a digital edition. It was an instant lightening rod for controversy, drawing criticism from both the Catholic Church and sex pundit Camille Paglia. Given the Church's present-day views on gay marriage, these detractors argued, Boswell's history seemed like wishful thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment