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 . . .
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Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia and has worked as a teacher and a federal investigator. He is the author of The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity and the forthcoming License to Sin (both from Spence Publishing). Dr. Podles and his wife have six children and live in Naples, Florida. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
more on sex from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Man, Woman & the Mystery of Christ
An Evangelical Protestant Perspective by Russell D. Moore
32.5—September/October 2019
on the Inhuman Transformation of Transgenderism by Anthony Esolen
31.6—November/December 2018
on the Church's Response to the Anti-marriage Tide by Diane Woerner
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more from the online archives
21.1—January/February 2008
John Chrysostom’s Discovery of the Blessings & Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Aquilina
30.2—March/April 2017
Our Path to Holiness Runs Straight Through Calvary by Robin Phillips
