John Boswell’s Religious Restoration
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A Revolutionary Idea and Its Critics

It was Boswell’s contention that, due to its birth in the relatively tolerant Roman era, Christianity was not as belligerent to same-sex eroticism as generally believed. He argued that the Bible is not hostile to modern understandings of homosexuality, having been misinterpreted by modern readings, and claimed that it wasn’t until the 12th or 13th century that any real hostility toward gay people emerged (in keeping with a more xenophobic bias against minorities in general). The later interpretation was then retroactively imposed onto the Bible and early Church tradition to give it a hostile veneer. What was particularly incendiary was Boswell’s assertion that not only was intolerance of homosexuality not an original tenet of Christianity, but there had been pockets of support, even appreciation, for homosexuality throughout the early Christian world, complete with gay priests, bishops, and saints. Boswell even discovered a gay subculture with its own literature, language, and artistic conventions that flourished from about 1050 to 1150. “Homosexual passions became matters of public discussion and were celebrated in spiritual as well as carnal contexts. Opposition to gay sexuality appeared rarely and more as æsthetic partisanship than as moral censure.”

The Vatican ignored Boswell’s book, but popular culture and academia certainly did not. It received favorable reviews in The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Republic, and Commonweal. While the reception in scholarly journals could only be described as mixed, even critics who disputed Boswell’s translations or disagreed with his conclusions could not discredit his facility in languages (of which he knew seventeen fluently), his knowledge of history and philosophy, or his originality of thought. While he didn’t invent the field, GLBT studies was still in its infancy, and he helped to popularize the idea that there was such a thing as gay history, and there was a need for a revision of long-accepted assessments. With his witty approach to his material, bolstered by his famous sexy photo on the book jacket (that unbuttoned shirt!), suddenly gay history didn’t seem so staid or forbidding, and never was it more accessible. Because his book was an academic best seller, it opened the door to other gay and lesbian topics.

The gay press, however, was often merciless in its criticism of the book. Some critics objected to Boswell’s use of the word “gay” to describe people and culture in the Middle Ages. Boswell defined “homosexuality” as “comprising all sexual phenomena between persons of the same gender, whether the result of conscious preference, subliminal desire, or circumstantial exigency.” In contrast, “gay … refers to persons who are conscious of erotic inclination toward their own gender as a distinguishing characteristic or, loosely, to things associated with such people, such as ‘gay poetry.’” Critics branded Boswell’s usage as anachronistic, and he was held up as the ultimate “essentialist” by those identified as “social constructionists” in a debate that raged in the 1980s and ’90s. The latter camp, following Michel Foucault, argued that the whole concept of sexual orientation was a 19th-century invention. Boswell’s famous rebuttal came two years later (in “Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories”): “If the categories ‘homosexual/heterosexual’ and ‘gay/straight’ are the inventions of particular societies rather than real aspects of the human psyche, there is no gay history.”

Is the anti-Boswell critique a fair one? If “gay” is used to describe a person’s core identity as we do today, then it probably is. However, I don’t think Boswell intended such an all-encompassing definition. Consider the case of monks in a monastery who may have observed that some of them had in common an attraction to other men. To say that this trait was central to their sense of who they were would have made no sense to them, if only because their lives as monks, as men of God, would have defined their essential sense of self, eclipsing any sexual inclinations, whether acted upon or just imagined. All Boswell said was that such inclinations existed and are documented, and that they did play a role in the lives of some people in pre-modern times. The question then becomes, can there be a “gay” history even if people didn’t identify themselves that way? Boswell answered in the affirmative, allowing for an inclusive use of the word “gay” that referred to a type of sexual attraction rather than a core identity. In his “Revolutions” essay, Boswell amended his definition of gay persons as “those whose erotic interest is predominantly directed toward their own gender (i.e., regardless of how conscious they are of that as a distinguishing characteristic), as this is how it is used by most American speakers.” This definition seems reasonable to me, and it corresponds to my use of the word “gay” in this essay.

The second charge leveled against Boswell by gay critics was related to his unwillingness to see Christianity as the enemy of gay and lesbian people, his claim that Christianity at its core is not inherently anti-gay. In short, he was condemned as an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, no doubt fueled by his being a practicing member. In his forward, Boswell said that he was writing as an objective historian: “It is the province of the historian not to praise or blame but merely to record and explain. This book is not intended as support or criticism of any particular contemporary points of view, scientific or moral, regarding homosexuality.” So Boswell expressly rejected an advocacy position vis-à-vis the texts he was analyzing; nor did he call for any reforms. Still, it must be said that an advocacy position seems to be baked into his analysis: If gay men played such a pivotal role in one of the foundational institutions of Western civilization, shouldn’t they be accorded tolerance and even respect today?

After Boswell

After the book was published, Boswell gave major addresses to two gay Christian groups, Integrity (Episcopalians) and Dignity (Roman Catholics), in which he tried to spell out these implications, arguing that knowledge of history could be used to fight prejudice in today’s society. Boswell pointed out that Church teachings on usury and slavery had changed, so why couldn’t its position on same-sex relationships? LGBT critics were especially incensed by the idea of using Christian history to promote contemporary reform, because for them Christianity was always the great enemy of gay rights. These activists had little desire to alter what had always been for them an effective marketing tool. Boswell confounded their agenda, with some of his critics insinuating that his religious faith might have caused him, perhaps unconsciously, to alter or misinterpret the data to reach his (favorable) conclusions. In this way, Boswell became as much an enemy of the mainstream gay establishment as he was of the institutional Catholic Church.

To understand the impact Boswell’s book had on the average gay religious person, we must return to the zeitgeist of the late 1970s. Even though the left-leaning gay establishment saw religion as patriarchal, hierarchical, and the root of gay oppression, some gay churches and religious organizations supported and invigorated the gay liberation movement throughout this period. The newly founded Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), groups like Dignity and Integrity, and some individual liberal churches, both Protestant and Catholic, helped gay people to accept their sexuality. Religious leaders encouraged their adherents to embrace their sexual orientation and see it as a central component of their spiritual identity. Gay religious groups offered an alternative to bars, clubs, and bathhouses, as well as a community of like-minded LGBT people. Many of these organizations had channels to institutional churches, acting as back doors that allowed their leaders to lobby church officials to be more accepting of gay people, including those seeking ordination into mainstream churches. Same-sex weddings were being done in churches, often illicitly, long before marriage equality became a political issue. In fact, a convincing case could be made that the emergence of the right-wing attacks against homosexuality, including Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign to repeal an anti-discrimination law in Dade County, Florida, was in part a reaction to the success of gay religious movements at this time and their accompanying sympathetic treatment by the media.

What Boswell’s book offered was scholarly support for a nascent gay religious movement that was making inroads, albeit slowly, into the attitudes of the more liberal Protestant denominations. His book acted as testimony that Christianity was not of necessity a cause of gay oppression, notwithstanding the widespread misinterpretation of its texts and its history. Ironically, despite his focus on Catholicism, Boswell became a hero to many Protestants, with Lutheran and Presbyterian task forces on homosexuality calling him as a witness and citing his work to bolster a more tolerant attitude toward LGBT members. Boswell gave a deposition in Colorado’s Amendment Two case, which eventually landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the law was overturned in 1996. Meanwhile, secular gay rights organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign would in time realize that they needed to engage constructively with religious organizations. Most importantly, Boswell gave ammunition and support to many gay Christians of all denominations in their personal struggles to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. One was not alone in such struggles; there were historical antecedents to which one could turn for strength and inspiration.

Psychologically, Boswell’s book was a tonic for many LGBT people, because he convincingly documented a history of affirmative gay contributions: “Gay people were prominent, influential, and respected at many levels of society in most of Europe, and left a permanent mark on the cultural monuments of the age, both religious and secular. Homosexual passions became matters of public discussion and were celebrated in spiritual as well as carnal contexts.” Being as brilliant as he was, a professor at Yale and now a genuine media celebrity, Boswell had a gravitas and a national platform with which to advance his powerful new argument. His book, which came out just before the onset of AIDS, became a reference tool with which to counterbalance statements by homophobes like Jerry Falwell, who stated that “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” Tragically, this epidemic would claim Boswell himself on Christmas Eve, 1994, at age 47.

Boswell documented the accomplishments of gay people throughout Christian history in a way that could now be celebrated. He offered not one or a few examples but whole chapters filled with notable people and events. The Roman Catholic Church could no longer say that its traditions had been categorically hostile toward homosexuality, nor claim that these cases were mere aberrations. To be sure, there were disagreements about some of his conclusions. For example, whether St. Anselm of Canterbury, the 11th-century theologian who originated the ontological argument for the existence of God, was himself gay or whether he supported gay people has been vigorously debated ever since Boswell asserted as much. But prior to Boswell, no one even mentioned such a possibility. And that is the point: now there is a debate where before none had existed. Boswell paved the way for other scholars to rediscover obscure, long-ignored texts and individuals that point to hitherto unacknowledged desires and relationships. Controversies and discussions on what were once unthinkable topics are now publicly aired.

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality won the National Book Award for History in 1981. In 2004, when The Advocate published its 100 Best Gay/Lesbian Nonfiction Books of all time, Boswell’s book was ranked as Number One, edging out Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior Among Males. The final sentence of Boswell’s book seems prophetic: “The writer’s comfort must subsist in the belief that he has at least posted landmarks where there were none before and opened the trails on which others will reach destinations far beyond his own furthest advance.” One day, when all churches accept the presence and achievements of gay people with approbation instead of denial or disapproval, John Boswell will in no small way be responsible.

Brian Bromberger is a freelance writer who works as a staff reporter and arts critic for The Bay Area Reporter.