The History of LGBTS at Yale - John Boswell

The Origins of Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, 1980-1994

Yale has played a leading role in the development of LGBT and queer studies for almost thirty years. In 1980, the Yale medievalist John Boswell published Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. This magisterial, highly acclaimed, and highly controversial study argued that the modern Catholic Church's condemnation of homosexuality departed from the tolerance and even celebration of homosexual love that had characterized the first millennium of the Church's teachings. The book's electrifying implications for one of the central religious debates of our time made Boswell the best known gay studies scholar of his day. Its phenomenal erudition also earned him an American Book Award and helped establish the scholarly rigor and compelling significance of gay studies.

Six years later, Boswell chaired a committee of faculty and students that established the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale (LGSCY, or "Legacy"), one of the first such centers in the nation and the predecessor of today's LGBTS. Read more: LGBT Studies at Yale University

http://www.yale.edu/lgbts/lgbts_history.html

Plutarch "No sensible person can imagine that the sexes differ in matters of love as they do in matters of clothing.” John Boswell: The Church and the Homosexual

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/1979boswell.html

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century – by John Boswell

http://www.clgs.org/john-e-boswell-lecture

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS)

was established at

Pacific School of Religion in

Berkeley, California

and opened its doors in the fall of 2000.

http://www.clgs.org/about/about-clgs

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

by John Boswell

http://books.google.com/books?id=v-MR5_AdG68C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Christianity,+Social+Tolerance,+and+Homosexuality:+Gay+People+in+Western+Europe+from+the+Beginning+of+the+Christian+Era+to+the+Fourteenth+Century&source=bl&ots=uNQ2ozgLPa&sig=R9igrrnPUaYPgIeE8iNOuNJKHzU&hl=en&ei=03xsTLDoAY3LnAeRo9WyAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false