sexual acts, such as anal and oral intercourse. In addition, laws have been on the books forbidding same-sex marriage, gay parental rights, and allowing for discrimination in employment, housing, and other services (LeVay, 1996). Gay/ lesbian sexuality has been both criminalized and circumscribed through this public action.
Discrimination has been carried out in public life, but it has originated in fields dealing most deeply with the personal life. Religion began the discriminatory efforts, while psychology took over that task in the 19th century. Both religion and psychology continue to play a role in stigmatizing homosexuality, although psychology removed its label of homosexuality as a mental disorder during the 1970s. Still, there remains a taint.
John Boswell (1996) has sought to trace the history of the church's response to same sex relationships in Europe. For him, the point is not to determine what is or is not correct practice in the present, but to present to people the history of institutional and public dealings with this private issue of romance.
The most important institution during the medieval period was the church. It was fundamentally the ruler of people's lives, as it had not yet been replaced by the state. It sought to regulate the minute details of people's lives in communi
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