Homosexuality in the Early Christian Church

I started to write this ridiculously long comment to my del.icio.us tag for this article when I realized I might as well just put it all in a posting, b/c that's exactly where I was headed, I was just too tired to realize it.

Assuming you have not read the article it is, in short, about two male saints (in the Catholic sense) who are thought to have been an openly gay couple in the early church. (It can't be too early, however, b/c there is a picture of them which also contains a miniature of Christ but Christ was not portrayed in the earliest Christian art.) Not only were they openly gay, but their marriage, and others, were accepted and normal for that early church.

Let's say all of this is true and historians haven't misread or misunderstood either the text about these two fellows (and it looks like the haven't) or misinterpreted the iconography of the art representing them. The point of the article is that the early church was tolerant and that today's church should do likewise, that sexuality and marriage were fluid in early Christendom and it is only in these modern times that we have become so rigid. Personally I think a review of the last 50 years would prove that last statement untrue, but to deal with the issue at hand...

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