Three William & Mary campus structures will be renamed in honor of (left to right) John E. Boswell ’69, Arthur A. Matsu ’27 and Hulon L. Willis Sr. M.Ed. ’56. (Photo courtesy William & Mary)
The College of William & Mary, which was founded in 1693 in colonial Williamsburg, Va., announced on April 23 that it has renamed one of its major academic buildings after the late gay historian John E. Boswell.
Boswell, a 1969 College of William & Mary graduate, received his doctorate degree at Harvard University and began his teaching career at Yale University before writing his highly acclaimed 1980 book, “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the 14th Century.”
Using his skills as a linguist who spoke or read 17 languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old Church Slavonic, Boswell uncovered and translated documents that he argues in his book show that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay people throughout its history and at times either was indifferent to homosexuality or celebrated same-sex romantic relationships.
The book, which won a National Book Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 1981, drew international attention and created a stir in both the academic world and the Catholic Church establishment.
Boswell wrote five other books, including the 1994 book, “Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe,” before he died that same year of complications associated with AIDS at the age of 47.
LGBTQ activists have credited Boswell with helping to advance the LGBTQ rights movement and efforts to legalize same-sex marriage through his writings and academic research.
“It brings honor to our 328-year-old institution that we name an academic building for an alumnus who used his William & Mary education to improve the lives of millions of Americans,” said Jeff Trammell, the former William & Mary rector who became the first openly gay chair of the governing body of a major U.S. public university.
“John Boswell’s scholarship inspired the recognition of same-sex relationships here and around the world,” Trammell said in a statement. “And personally, it helped make it possible for William & Mary Chancellor Sandra Day O’Connor to marry my husband and me in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Evan Wolfson, a civil rights attorney and founder and president of the LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom to Marry, said Boswell’s 1980 book had a profound influence on his life and career beginning in his days as a law school student. Among other things, Wolfson said the book inspired him to write his 1983 law school thesis on wining marriage equality for gay people.
“Beyond the evidence that gay love had not always been oppressed or stigmatized, what John E. Boswell’s history taught me was that if things had once been different, we could make them different again,” said Wolfson, who noted that he and
Boswell became friends and Boswell’s work continued to help him in his own legal work on behalf of same-sex marriage rights.
In its statement announcing the building renamed in honor of Boswell, the College of William & Mary announced it has also renamed a campus arcade structure near its sports stadium after Arthur A. Matsu, the college’s first known Asian-American student and football star. The statement says another building was named after Hulon L. Willis Sr., the first African-American student to enroll at William & Mary.
“We move forward as a community, as a university, with our renewed commitment to recognizing individuals who have made lasting, pathbreaking contributions to William & Mary,” said John E. Littel, the college’s current rector, who called Boswell, Matsu, and Willis “trailblazers.”
Trammell said the renaming was part of a process of reexamining names of buildings that in years past had been named after Civil War-era figures of the Confederacy as well as segregationists in later years.
