Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

Our book today is Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, John Boswell's immensely researched and groundbreaking 1980 study of, as his subtitle says, "Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century." Boswell gained his greatest amount of fame (he died on Christmas Eve, 1994, from AIDS) for his 1994 book The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe, in which he indulges in some dodgy textual analysis to suggest that the Catholic Church not only tolerated homosexuality but even in some cases officially recognized it. The book was born of deep-seated anger and frustration, and it duly caused those same emotions in Boswell's many friends, colleagues, and readers - mainly because it was overreaching in exactly the way our book today is not.

Instead, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality is a hugely authoritative, widely read, and persuasively argued bombshell, a loud and unswerving assertion that for most of its history, the Christian church simply didn't consider homosexuality that big a deal. Threading its way through Boswell's book (which is lucidly written but not exactly easy going for the layman, since much of its original sourcework is untranslated - Boswell was a whiz with languages - and footnotes positively abound) is the implicit assumption that one of the many classical legacies the Christian era absorbed was the comparatively laid back attitude the classical world took toward most aspects of homosexuality. In most classical societies, no furor was raised over men paying romantic and erotic attention to teenage boys - it was seen as a natural part of the socialization of those boys, since it was usually assumed that the men would be teaching the boys things while they were together (oh calm down Beepy - I mean social, cultural, and literary things) (and there was, traditionally, something emasculating seen in a man romantically besotted with a woman), provided it didn't get taken too far - the men were still expected to marry women and produce male heirs, and it was seen as a weird and dangerous subversion of the norm for the man to be the submissive member of the pair (taking it up the ass, once you're a full-grown tax-paying adult, in other words, was seen as weird).

Boswell is on largely comfortable ground while he's dealing with classical and even late classical antiquity. It's only when he gets to the Middle Ages that he starts to encounter more formalized language in his sources, and it's here he starts needing to organize himself for the massive, systemic persecutions he knows are coming:

It can hardly be maintained that the relatively indulgent attitude adopted by prominent churchmen of the early Middle Ages toward homosexual behavior was due to ignorance of it. It is in the first place not ignored but treated lightly. In the second place, there is evidence of gay sexuality throughout the period, despite the disappearance of a subculture. The barbarians themselves were not necessarily strangers to gay sexuality. Aristotle observed that the Celts publicly honored homosexual relations, Strabo that they considered it a dishonor to decline a homosexual liaison, and Diodorus Siculus that they were "absolutely addicted to homosexual intercourse." Similar observations were made about other groups.

And something of the scope of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality can be seen in the broad extent of the sources Boswell cites. All throughout his book, he deals not only with Christian attitudes toward homosexuality but Islamic ones as well:

Homosexual love imagery was a standard currency of Islamic mystical writings both in and out of Spain. Many of the authors of gay erotic poetry on the Iberian peninsula were teachers of the Qur'an, religious leaders, or judges; almost all wrote conventional religious verse as well as love poetry.

And of course Amis and Amiloun gets a workout - Boswell accurately reports that the abiding love of its title characters was celebrated, not condemned, throughout the Christian world. Boswell's biggest weakness, unfortunately, was an ongoing almost willful misunderstanding of what allegory is and is not, how people indulge in it and how they don't (his was the least allegorical mind imaginable), and as he himself elsewhere was fond of pointing out, there are none so blind as them that will not see ... but then, readers of this book (and despite its formidable textual apparatus, you are all urged to read it) shouldn't be coming to it for sensitive aesthetic interpretations of the works it considers, but rather the sociological stunners Boswell derives from them:

As if from nowhere, love in a thousand guises invaded the landscapes, townships, and monasteries of in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and its warmth revived from long hibernation the fiery passions of ancient Europe. It transformed the ascetic spirituality of the desert fathers into the passionate mysticism of Saint Bernard, breached the barriers of Basil's isolated monastic cells with the tender friendships of Saint Anselm and Aelred, dissolved patristic theology of purely functional sexual relations into the Christian romance that seemed to sweep all before it in the High Middle Ages.



It's a slightly idealized painting of what was going on during the so-called "renaissance of the twelfth century," but by the time readers get that far, they'll be very nearly convinced. The only point where Boswell falters, the only place where he shows the germ of the overreaching that will get him into so much trouble in his more famous book, comes when he attempts to dice logic with none other than Saint Thomas Aquinas. As some of you may know - and as generations of students have learned to their dismay - this simply can't be done (or at least the logician who can do it hasn't been born yet - maybe when we make first contact with the Vulcans ...). When Boswell tries it, he's reduced to intentionally misconstruing context and very nearly misreading the Latin:

In the end, Aquinas admits more or less frankly that his characterization of homosexual acts as "unnatural" is a concession to popular sentiment and parlance. Since theologically sins are necessarily "unnatural," it is simply redundant to argue that homosexuality is sinful because it is "unnatural"; homosexual acts would have to be shown to be sinful apart from their "unnaturalness" to be immoral from a theological point of view; but Aquinas could bring to bear no argument against homosexual behavior which would make it more serious than overeating an admitted, moreover, that homosexual desire was the result of a "natural" condition, which would logically have made behavior resulting from it not only inculpable but "good."

A disquisition on Aquinas and the "natural" would consume the resources of the entire Internet, but suffice it to say, Boswell is in this passage on very weak ground. Aquinas condemns homosexuality not because it's what the gals on The View are doing but because as far as his education was concerned, the Bible condemns homosexuality. Fortunately, Boswell regains his lost ground almost immediately, with a spirited discussion of the history of mis-translation of key Biblical and classical terms relating to homosexuality ... a discussion that'll leave you wondering just how much the late Medieval church understood about what it was increasingly condemning.

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality is an important little revolution of a book, one man's passionate attempt to shake some sense into the religion he himself professed (Boswell was, despite many and lengthy attempts by friends of his during his days as a used bookstore-trolling Harvard student to talk him out of it, a convert to Catholicism), to say to that church and the big intolerant world of which it was a microcosm, "I myself am homosexual, and I will use the brain God gave me - and the texts on which your beliefs are based - to prove categorically that this is no evil thing."

Boswell's later work evoked a great deal of pointed textual criticism of the type he would have loved, which only adds to the sadness of his death. But if any part of his subject interests you, do what he would have done: find your nearest gay and lesbian bookstore and search its shelves for treasures. This book is one of them.

Stevesees! '300'!

We here at Stevereads are fully aware of the awesome power we hold over the hearts and minds of the blogosphere. We won't say the knowledge humbles us (that wouldn't be very believable, now would it?), but it does keep us mindful lest our slightest offhand endorsement send the multitudes scurrying out to buy, watch, or snort something that may end up disappointing them.

In a perfect world, we would simply refer you all to Locke's website (which, I agree with him, would really have to be called something a little less creepy than 'lockewatches'), where he would hold forth regularly on all the movies and TV that catches his fancy. You've all seen a glimpse of what that would be like; say what you want about either one of us, but one thing we certainly share in common: we both know how to entertain the troops.

Unfortunately, unlike the rest of us here at Stevereads, Locke's got stuff to do the live-long day. We'll get what he gives us, but a long, rambling website is only in the cards if Santa is very, very good to us.


In the meantime, we here at Stevereads shall shoulder on with our adjunct corollary, Stevesees! True, our impeccable taste in judging movies and performances took a little bit of a pecking at Oscar time, but the memory of the blogosphere is notoriously short, so we can forge ahead with our head held high!

Especially when this installment of Stevesees deals with a sure-fire winning bet. That doesn't happen often, so it's an easy joy to do the reporting when it does.

Of course we're referring to Zach Snyder's film version of Frank Miller's sparse, visionary graphic novel '300.'

Over at the great new literary website Open Letters, the talented young poet/novelist/literary critic John Cotter inaugurates a regular feature called 'Peer Review,' in which the critical reactions to a given thing are put under the microscope and assessed for their various woolly tendencies and drifts. If we did that here for '300,' this entire entry would degenerate into a spittle-flecked rage-fest such as the Interweb has never seen.

The Boston Herald talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and gave it two thumbs up 'from the Third Reich.' The Boston Globe talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and went on about how its subtext was the straights versus the gays. The New York Times talked about the movie's 'homoeroticism' and went on about the analogies to the Iraq War and American xenophobia.

All of which makes you want to lock all professional reviewers in a small room and then lose the key.

'300' is the story of King Leonidas and his loyal band of Spartans who held the Hot Gates pass against probably no more than 50,000 Pesians and Persian allies (in Herodotus' original account, it's about 100,000; in Frank Miller's graphic novel, it's rounded up to a million - gawd only knows how many it is in the movie). They knew they would die (according to Herodotus, that is - it should be borne in mind throughout ALL discussions of the movie that in all likelihood the events it depicts never in fact happened at all), and just as in Miller's 'Ronin,' that knowledge gives the Spartan almost superhuman abilities.

Almost superhuman. They all still die. But in the process, a movie is delivered the likes of which the waiting world has never seen. There were glimpses, yes - in 'Sin City,' and in Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' - but absolutely nothing in all of cinematic history prepares the customer for the experience of watching '300.'

It isn't at all like watching a video game. It certainly isn't, as one critic maintained, like watching your buddy get a lap-dance. It isn't a grey wash of CGI with no heft or meat on its bones.

Instead, '300' (not 'Sin City,' in which the black-and-white only served to make the seams show - in addition to the known fact that no movie featuring Josh Hartnett in any capacity can possibly be good - nor yet again the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, in which the effects were seamlessly enslaved to the live action) is the very first example of a completely equal marriage of men and machines, of effort and effect.

This movie, this thing, is like nothing ever created before. Time and again, while watching it, the viewer is struck by that one fact: I've never seen anything like this before.

It's not just the exotic imagery and broad vistas - although no imagery has ever been more exotic, and no vistas have ever been broader (except maybe in Akira Kurosawa's 'Dreams,' but even that was circumscribed by non-CGI boundaries). Every single frame of this magnificent movie looks better than it could ever have looked with entirely live actors on an expensively-purchased soundstage in Lower Belgravia. This movie is the moviemaking of the future, at least if movies care about spectacle in the future. In recent memory, only 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' even comes close to it for sheer self-confident otherworldliness.

Here is the sheer eye-popping wonder of the Siege of Gondor, but entirely without the sense of scrimping for cost. Here is the baby-archangel sequence from 'Brazil,' but entirely without the virtually visible strings attached.

It isn't all spectacle - contrary to what every single reviewer has maintained, there's quite a bit of good acting in this movie. Butler himself is quite good as King Leonidas, and his supporting cast turn in uniformly strong performances, especially considering the fact that they were emoting and responding in many cases to empty sceens and blank backgrounds.

There are, then, human elements a-plenty to this movie. But there's no doubt about it: they aren't its point. Its point - its challenge - is to up the visual ante for all future 'epic' movies. In fact, watching this movie - being subsumed into it, really - made me yearn for this same amazing technique to be applied to EVERY epic storyline out there. In the hands of a director as game and capable as Zach Snyder, just imagine how many eye-feasts like '300' could be enfleshed in gorgeous, reality-warping, unprecedented visuals. The technique of '300' would at last make possible a living rendition of Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso' (you all snicker, but only because you haven't read it ... if there is anywhere in literature a precursor to comic books, Ariosto is it) (and yes, I'm aware that a very fragmentary, very partial two-hour 'adaptation' of the 'Orlando Furioso' was already filmed, a weird, utterly unsatisfying movie starring a very young Ron Moss ... but geez! It's SUCH a small fraction of the whole it doesn't warrant serious consideration), or the full panoply of the Mahabarata (once again, yes, I'm aware of the BBC adaptation from a decade or more ago ... in this case a much, much worthier version, but still cripplingly limited when compared to the original), and most of all, most achingly of all, Homer's Iliad - not the latest effort by Wolfgang Peterson, worthy though I alone seem to find it, but the real thing - gods romping everywhere at their will, action in outsized portions - that has never been captured and has never been ABLE to be captured, before now.

Notice I'm not punch-drunk on this new technology ... I'm not, for instance, saying it could be used on a work such as 'War and Peace' (which is, nevertheless, badly in need of SOMETHING ... great works of literature shouldn't languish as long as this one has in between viual adaptations) or even 'Life and Fate.' No, I'm only talking here about works that beg for a gigantic canvas, shot through in unbelievable colors and shapes.

The 'Lord of the Rings' movies are pretty nearly perfect, it's true; but 'The Lord of the Rings' as a novel veers constantly between the high epic and the wee folk boiling potatoes - it couldn't have made use of the techniques of '300,' at least not in the way I'm suggesting. Peter Jackson handled his material with confident genius, but there are no boiled potatoes in '300.' as everyone who's seen it would readily acknowledge. It's grand-scale entertainment, and as such it's beyond comparison with anything that's come before.

One thing above all others: there isn't even a hint of homoeroticism in this movie. Unless all these critics are saying so merely because our Spartan heroes where no shirts and have buff bodies - which, if true, would be pretty damn dumb. The Spartans are topless to denote an easy, offhand fearlessness; the Persians are decadent and effeminate not for petty sexual reasons but to display the enervating effects of unlimited wealth and power. This movie is above all a daring thing, and daring things are always vulnerable to cheap jibes

We here at Stevereads urge you all to ignore such cheap jibes, even the jibes you yourself might already have thought up. Go and see '300.' Go and be amazed.