KENILWORTH, 21 SEPTEMBER 2003 — The Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has today published a new online edition of a work critically examining controversial views put forward by the gay Christian scholar John Boswell in 1980, notably the thesis that Christian intolerance of homosexuality is a phenomenon that has developed only in recent centuries.
On 14 September 1980, shortly after the publication of Boswell’s book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, the US-based Gay Academic Union convened a forum in New York to discuss and examine his work.
The main speakers at the forum – entitled Sex and the Medieval Church – were Wayne R. Dynes, Warren Johansson and John Lauritsen. Later they published their papers in the form of a monograph entitled Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Christianity: A Critical Examination of John Boswell’s Work. A second enlarged edition, published in 1985, was enhanced by the addition of a substantial annotated bibliography of reviews of Boswell’s book.
Now for the first time the full text of Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Christianity is freely available on the World Wide Web, with a new preface by John Lauritsen and a short biographical note on each of the authors.
Welcoming the republication, PTT secretary George Broadhead said: “John Boswell’s exoneration of the early Christian Church still commands uncritical acceptance among many gay activists – including Christians and non-Christians alike – but Dynes, Johansson and Lauritsen meticulously expose the flaws in Boswell’s arguments. We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to make this scholarly analysis available on the Web so that readers can draw their own conclusions.”