Same Sex Marriage

Here's an interesting 1998 article on early Christian same-sex marriage in the Irish Times (although the link is to something called drizzle.com, I did confirm through a search, that the article does exist on the Irish Times site, albeit in a subscriber-protected area). Worth reading for anyone who opposes gay marriage for religious reasons. Here's a quote:

Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved both as a concept and as a ritual. Prof [of History at Yale, John] Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings such as blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the "Office of Same Sex Union" (10th and 11th century Greek) or the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th/early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) has recorded.

Boswell's book, The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Pre- Modern Europe, lists in detail some same sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century "Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union" having invoked St Serge and St Bacchus, called on God to "vouchsafe unto these thy servants [N and N] grace to love one another and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints." The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded."

Wikipedia has more on John Boswell and the subject. Others argue that while these adelphopoiia ceremonies were not necessariy homoerotic they did go beyond the modern notion of friendship, getting closer to the "eternal soul-union" that we might identify with modern marriage.

My take away: even if these ceremonies aren't strictly speaking "gay marriage", they do call into question the assertion that marriage as the union of a man and woman only has been an unchanging pillar of Christian society – it seems much more likely that various unions with various social meanings have been performed and celebrated within the Chuch since the early days. The meaning of love, commitment, kinship, and parenthood are continuing to change as the world around us changes and so should our institutions.

Posted by richard at March 2, 2004 07:44 PM