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Same-Sex Marriage Was Once A Christian Rite

I first caught wind of this research published in a 1980 book from a Facebook post to this site. Subsequently learned of John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Boswell outlines how same-sex unions were blessed by the Christian Church as late as the Middle Ages.

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From dailymail.co.uk:

Historians say the ceremonies included many of the acts involved in heterosexual marriages, with the whole community gathering in a church, the blessing of the couple before an altar and an exchange of holy vows.

A priest officiated in the taking of the Eucharist and there was a wedding feast for guests afterwards.

All of these elements are depicted in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 AD) and his companion John, an article published on the I Heart Chaos blog this week says.

And Prof John Boswell, the late chairman of Yale University’s history department, found there were ceremonies called the Office of Same-Sex Union and the Order for Uniting Two Men in the 10th to 12th centuries.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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