John Boswell

Early Christianity and gay marriage

Some modern interpretators believe that early Christians gave official imprimatur to sexual unions between men, and thus that the Christian churches' attitude towards homosexuality should take this acceptance into account.

Historian John Boswell offers as evidence that early Christians did on occasion accept homosexual relationships the icon of two saints, Saints Serge and Bacchus, in St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai. Boswell argues (though not everyone agrees with him) that it shows them marrying, with Jesus Christ in the role of their 'pronubus' or in modern parallel, best man.

Rites of 'same sex union', which modern interpretators liken to gay marriage, occur in ancient prayer-books of both the western and eastern churches. Some critics of Boswell claim that the rites he refers to were actually rites of adelphopoiesis, literally Greek for brotherhood or "blood brothers". Such an explanation was used when referring to a medieval description of one such ceremony in Ireland. However Boswell's interpretation received the surprising endorsement of one respected conservative Church scholar during a media debate in the issue on the 1990s in Ireland, the scholar saying in his words "regrettably Boswell's scholarship far exceeded those who have criticised him." Other senior academics unconnected with the gay debate, indeed some hostile to homosexuality, also sided with Boswell's interpretation of church documents, and argued that his translation of a latin description of such a ceremony in Ireland was far more accurate than the nineteenth century 'Wright translation' up to that point regarded as definitive.

Boswell also claims that representations of gay marriage are found in drawings, such as of the 'wedding feast' of Emperor Basil to his 'partner', John. One mass 'gay wedding' occurred only a couple of centuries ago in the Cathedral of St. John Lateran, the cathedral seat of the pope as Bishop of Rome. Boswell lists detailed translations of many of these 'rites' in his book The Marriage of Likeness.

A detailed debate on the issue occurred in The Irish Times some years ago and the article which triggered off the debate, a major feature in the 'Rite and Reason' religion column in the paper by a respected Irish historian and religious commentator, has been reproduced on many websites.