Stonewall has been very much in the news these past few days: while the interminable delays over approval of New York’s bill to recognize same-sex marriage was frustrating and stressful, the eventual passage, late on Friday night, coincided with celebrations around New York City’s pride weekend. Inevitably, news coverage, in print and on screen, showed countless images of deliriously happy crowds in front of the modern facade of the Stonewall Inn.

I spent the weekend at the 35th anniversary conference of the UK Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, where I introduced a Catholic perspective on the conference of  theme looking back, looking ahead, so the history of inclusion in Church has been very much on my mind. Later, I will post the full text that I prepared for the conference. Today, for the Stonewall anniversary, I want to share some thoughts on the progress to inclusion for the wider Church.

The Global Impact of Stonewall

I don’t suppose that in 1969 the drag queens who so famously fought back against the routine police raid were thinking too much about their place in history, and still less were they thinking about religion, but most certainly they have had a profound impact on LGBT history, including the history of queer inclusion in church. By standing up to the police, refusing to be browbeaten into meek submission, they were standing up to an important truth, bearing witness to the simple truth of who they were, without shame and without being forced into compliance with externally imposed, heteronormative standards. “Bearing witness” is an important Christian concept, as are the Scriptural injunctions, “Speak the truth in love”, and “the truth shall set you free”. The history of the succeeding 42 years has shown just how far the message, of speaking the truth about minority sexualities and gender diversity, has spread. The example of Stonewall has been followed by annual celebrations that likewise make a public demonstration of our truth, in gay pride parades and festivals. Initially limited to small gay liberation marches in the major cities of Europe and North America, they are now routinely held in major cities and small towns right around the world, on all continents, and in some cases even in the face of strong public or political opposition. The largest of the Pride marches, in Sao Paolo Brazil, typically draws a crowd of three million people, and was also held this weekend.

At the other end of the scale this weekend, was a much smaller celebration, in Chennai, India, where the crowd was estimated at just 500, but notably including friends and family:

 

The Religious Impact of Stonewall

In addition to the geographic expansion, the impact of Stonewall has also expanded beyond the secular and political, to other spheres, including that of religion. As lesbigaytrans people have found the courage to come out publicly in their secular lives, so too have some had the courage to do so in church. There have always been people in the Church history who would today be described as gay, lesbian or trans. They are found in the pages of Scripture, among the early saints and martyrs, held high office as popes, bishops, abbots and abbesses, had their unions blessed in church by standard liturgical rites, and even been buried as same-sex couples in shared graves, in places of honour inside church buildings, in exactly the same way as many married couples were (see “Same-sex Lovers in Church History“). From the time of the inquisition, however, the Christian churches followed popular prejudice, increasing in hostility and persecution of minority groups, including those they called “sodomites”, alongside Jews, gypsies and other social minorities. Conflating homosexuality and heresy, and reacting to both with irrational fear, church and secular authorities attempted to enforce conformity by treating these as not merely sinful, but as capital offences. During the height of the persecution, several thousand men and a few women were executed, often by burning, or condemned to virtual death sentences as galley slaves or in life imprisonment. As late as the twentieth century, there were echoes of this church inspired persecution in the Nazi gay holocaust.

Even before Stonewall, the fightback against persecution by the Christian churches had begun. In 1968 Troy Perry, a former Baptist pastor who had been forced to give up his ministry because he had had relationships with men, launched the Metropolitan Community Church after witnessing a close friend being arrested by the police at the Black Cat Tavern, a Los Angeles gay bar. (In the Catholic Church, Dignity began life as a specific ministry to gay Catholics in 1969, the same year as Stonewall, but earlier in the year).

The example of Stonewall was not the only factor behind the early moves to queer visibility and inclusion in church, but it will certainly have encouraged it. With the passing years, increasing numbers of gay men and lesbians followed up on coming out in the secular world came out by doing so within their congregations.  They development of gay and secular studies as a respectable academic discipline, was followed by the corresponding development of gay and lesbian studies for the churches, as gay and lesbian theology, as exploration of gay and lesbian church history, and as  gay and lesbian Biblical studies.  The emergence of openly gay, lesbian and trans people in the churches, and the accelerating flow of scholarly work in gay/ lesbian or queer religious studies, encouraged other LGBT Christians, and straight allies, to reconsider the traditional opposition to these relationships - and also created a conservative backlash.

As gay or lesbian clergy and seminary candidates came out, voluntarily or otherwise, many were forced out of ministry, barred from ordination, or found themselves effectively forced to leave as matter of personal conscience. But still, people continued to come out, to publish, and to organise themselves. In every major denomination, LGBT Christians formed associations for mutual support and community resources, and together with straight allies, encouraged local congregations to declare themselves welcoming or reconciling communities, open to all, and lobbied their national assemblies for the passage of resolutions to remove barriers to LGBT clergy, and to permit same-sex marriage in church.

Meanwhile, the MCC had no need to explicitly declare its support for LGBT inclusion: it had been founded by an openly gay pastor, and began conducting same-sex weddings as far back as 1970, nearly two decades before even the semblance of legal recognition for gay weddings anywhere (in Denmark, 1989). The MCC continued to grow, and was joined by other like-minded churches specifically directed at the needs of LGBT Christians, but unaffiliated with it. These and other groups also found ways to push for inclusion by a range of public protest actions, such as the annual Hands Around the God Box, described by Kittredge Cherry at Jesus in Love Blog.

Protests for LGBT rights in the church have been going on for years. Hands Around the God Box, an interfaith prayer demonstration to end religious homophobia, was held 17 years ago today (June 24, 1994) at the Interchurch Center in New York City. Let’s gain strength for today’s challenges by remembering our past and honoring those who helped us get this far.

More than 500 people from 15 lesbian and gay religious groups joined hands and were linked by a rainbow ribbon that completely encircled the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive. The box-shaped building housed the headquarters of the National Council of Churches (NCC) and many other religious agencies. We are highlighting this historic event here as part of our celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.

via Jesus in Love Blog.

In all denominations, Christians are becoming visible and prominent in all the major pride parades, and rightly so.

There remains a long way to go: most denominations still do not provide for church weddings for all couples, the Methodist church in the US still lags behind the Evangelical Lutherans  and Presbyterians among the mainline Protestants in removing barriers to LGBT ordination, even those that have removed the national barriers still permit local congregations to apply their own discriminatory standards, and the Evangelical and Catholic churches, and virtually all denominations in much of Africa, have not even begun on the path to inclusion.

Nevertheless, it is important to recognise just how far the movement to inclusion in church has come in just a few decades, and especially in the most recent years, when the process appears to have been accelerating. The majority of Mainline Protestants in the US are now in denominations that do not have national barriers to ordination; for Lutherans in much of Europe, the question of clerical sexual orientation is simply not an issue; other denominations are studying and debating these matters, and Assembly resolutions for change are coming ever closer to passing. Swedish and Icelandic Lutherans, many United Church congregations in the US, and specific local jurisdictions of other churches conduct same-sex church weddings. Many more conduct church blessings for same-sex unions.

Even in those denominations that are regarded as most hostile to recognising same-sex couples and LGBT clergy, there has been progress. After the hostile publicity that followed their strenuous support for Proposition 8 in California, there have been some signs of greater moderation by the US Mormons. A large proportion of Catholic theologians now agree with the majority of ordinary Catholics that there is nothing intrinsically sinful or immoral in homoerotic relationships, and that formal Church doctrine on sexuality needs to be revised, and numerous Evangelical leaders have concluded that the traditional interpretations and presentations of Scripture on the subject are flawed, and must be revised. Catholic Masses explicitly designated as welcoming to LGBT Catholics are flourishing in many cities, as are some Baptist congregations.

While acknowledging once again that much remains to be done, let us pause at this time of Pride, to acknowledge the extraordinary impact of those early pioneers, and the witness to truth of the people of Stonewall, on June 27th, 1969, and agree with Kittredge Cherry at Jesus in Love, that indeed it is fitting to think of them as (secular) Saints of Stonewall, and to include them in my gallery of Queer Saints and Martyrs.

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• Methodist Church Billboard: “Being Gay is a Gift from God”
• LGBT Inclusion: Methodist Pressure Mounts.

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