John Boswell (1947-1994) was a prominent scholar who researched
and wrote about the importance of gays and lesbians in Christian
history. He was born 65 years ago today on March 20, 1947.
Boswell, a history professor at Yale University, wrote such
influential classics as Christianity, Social Tolerance, and
Homosexuality (1980) and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe
(1994). Boswell converted from the Episcopal Church of his
upbringing to Roman Catholicism at age 16. He attended mass
daily until his death, even though as an openly gay Christian he
disagreed with church teachings on homosexuality. He also helped
found Yale’s Lesbian and Gay Studies Center in the late 1980s. A
linguistic genius, he used his knowledge of more than 15
languages to argue that the Roman Catholic Church did not
condemn homosexuality until at least the 12th century in his
book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay
People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era
to the 14th Century. Using some of his l