ABSTRACT
In discussing the role of homosexuality in the Christian world, it is necessary to engage with the work of John Boswell, whose book Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) is the main scholarly study of the subject. It is a brilliant, detailed and indispensable work, which has stimulated a lively and continuing debate. But it seems to me seriously to overstate its case and at times positively to mislead in a desire to prove that Christianity is not fundamentally hostile to homosexuality and that during the course of the Middle Ages an early tolerance gave way to a later intolerance for reasons not connected with basic Christian teachings.
