Brent D. Shaw

About the author: Brent D. Shaw teaches history at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, and is a former member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a research and education facility.

John Boswell's claim that the Christian church officially recognized same-sex marriages during the Middle Ages is inaccurate. The ceremonies referred to by Boswell did sanction "same-sex unions," but accurate translations of the original Greek texts show that the rituals served to join unrelated men as "brothers," not as married couples or homosexual lovers.

We find ourselves, all of us, in a historical crisis of gender. It has produced highly charged arguments over "Amendment 2" to the constitution of Colorado, and over the various legal actions that have stemmed from that controversial initiative. [Amendment 2 sought...