Re: Depraved 'Boswell' Sodomites polluting the Land

"Tim" <timof3_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:vy0gb.1145$i8.655_at_newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net...
>
> "Lennier" <notanyspam_at_nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> news:pan.2003.10.05.09.01.02.661430_at_TRACKER...
> > On Sun, 05 Oct 2003 08:09:36 +0100, Tim wrote:
> >
> > >> Personally, I think that an expression of love and affection is
> > >> something to be cherished - especially if it is between two persons
who
> > >> love each other and are committed to sharing their lives with each
> > >> other in a life-long partnership.
> > >
> > > Totally agree!! However they choose to express their love for
> > > one-another in private is no-one else's business.
> >
> > And if they wish to be known as a couple, and to be socially and legally
> > recognised as such - in the same way all married heterosexual couples
are
> > , then why not recognise the quality of their relationship?
>
> Indeed, this is exactly what the Church did, for it's first 1200 years or
> so. John Boswell's book "Christianity, social tolerance, and
homosexuality"
> successfully demonstrates that if the Church today were to bless and
accept
> same-sex relationships in the way you suggest, it would actually be a
> *return* to earlier policy, rather than the introduction of something
> totally new.

 One scholar who knew Boswell said that his psychological motivation for writing the book (this is a theme that was not designed to win favour in academia at that point in time) was to confront the Catholic church, in which he as a Homosexual man did not feel welcome.

 Boswell claimed to know of isolated communities and continuing strands where such tolerance continued to the present. He promised on a few occasions (at least semi-publicly) that he would reveal these in the next volume, Same Sex Unions, produced many years later, and an even more controversial text.

 Boswell argues that
originally homosexuality was tolerated and admired in the urban world of the Roman Empire.

 Yet for much of what we know as the Dark Ages homosexuality was viewed as at most a venial sin,
and legal prohibitions against it were limited and ineffective.

This Homosexual contrived slanted book has a number of major weaknesses that make Boswell much
inferior to such other pioneering works of social history as The Making of the English Working Class or Roll Jordan Roll. His distinction between a more tolerant "urban" and a more intolerant "rural" is hopelessly vague.

Boswell displays a certain tendentiousness throughout the book. At one point Boswell suggests that there was less prejudice against the "passive" position in the Roman Empire because certain emperors indulged in it. But since the emperors in question were Caligula and Nero, one suspects that they were not good examples (Boswell also cites Nero as an example of homosexual marriage).

Much of the book depends on the argument from silence, a questionable procedure when most Classical evidence has been lost to us.  But the largest problem with the book is Boswell's discussion of scripture. Boswell was both a homosexual fornicator and a Catholic and wanted to find a
way to reconcile them.

He was not successful. His chapter starts out by pointing out that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is less about the evils of homosexuality than of abusing strangers.

But then Boswell has to
deal with the discussion of homosexuality in Leviticus, which pronounces it an abomination and demands the death penalty.

Boswell argues that since Paul denounced the law Christians need no longer be bound by it.
This is clearly
tendentious. 2 Timothy refers to the divine inspiration of scripture and the Sermon on the Mount explicitly says that the Law remains in full force until the end. Moreover, Leviticus and Deuteronomy contain moral rules against bestiality, incest and child sacrifice that are still in force.

It is revealing that Boswell does not discuss at all the problem of antinomianism
or the role of Leviticus and Deuteronomy in Christians thought. If one is a Christian it would be most logical to argue that the law is still in force except (a) where the New Testament explicitly challenges it, (b) when it deals with matters that are now irrelevant (sacrifice ritual), or (c) when it deals with specifically Jewish matters.

Boswell also tries to argue that Paul is criticizing not homosexuals but male heterosexuals who betray their
nature by indulging in homosexuality.
This makes the questionable assumption
that people in the first century CE reified people by the sexual acts they committed. Why would Jews like Jesus and Paul, who are so unenthusiastic about marriage, extend to their followers a whole new realm of fornication?

Boswell weakly suggests that because heterosexuals produce children who were commonly abandoned and abused, while homosexuals didn't, Christians viewed homosexuality as a lesser problem. But this is mere suggestion; he gives no evidence of such a well developed moral concern in the book.

It is not surprising therefore then that scholars such as Robin Lane Fox, Ramsay
Macmullen, and David Wright have been critical of Boswell's thesis. Received on Mon Oct 06 2003 - 06:14:34 PDT