When Brothers Dwell in Unity
Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe
by John Boswell
New York: Villard Books, 1994.
(412 pages: $25.00)
reviewed by Leon J. Podles
The late John Boswell has become the chief source of scholarly propaganda for those Christians who wish to approve of homosexual behavior. Boswell has found ceremonies of brother-making ( adelphopoiesis) in medieval liturgical books from Orthodox churches. His thesis is that these ceremonies, which bless a relationship between two men, were gay marriages. He reasons that because homosexuals could have used these blessings as gay marriages, they therefore would have used them as gay marriages, with the implicit consent of the Church hierarchy and laity.
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Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in Old English and Old Icelandic from the University of Virginia and is a senior editor of Touchstone. His latest book is Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine's Press, 2020). He and his wife Mary (author of the Touchstone column "A Thousand Words") are the parents of six children. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
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