Queer Religious Capital: Race, Religion, and the Movement for LGBTQ Rights in Washington, DC, 1961-1996 Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, LGBTQ communities and communities of color throughout the US worked together to combat urban poverty and police violence and to elect the first generation of black political leaders after the Civil Rights/Black Power movements. In Washington, DC, these multiracial and multireligious coalitions played a critical role, making DC’s LGBTQ rights movement one of the most successful in the nation. By century’s end, however, these historic coalitions had come under strain, as the mainstream gay rights movement in DC—as in other urban areas—increasingly embraced neoliberal policies and ideals, like gentrification, aggressive policing, and cuts to both taxes and social services.

Scholars in lesbian and gay/queer studies have long traced this neoliberalization of gay and lesbian politics in the US. No historical work, however, has asked where queer religious people and institutions stood in relation to this trajectory. Picking up on that omission, this dissertation examines the religious history of the movement for LGBTQ rights in late twentieth-century Washington. It foregrounds the role the US capital has played in shaping Americans’ religious and political imaginations. I argue, first, that Washington, DC, as a physical landscape and a national symbol, has served as a moral battleground and a site of contestation on which the nation’s leaders dramatize and work out competing visions for the nation—visions in which religious understandings of sex, gender, and the body have played a pivotal but underappreciated role. Second, I show how queer religious people and institutions in the capital both contributed to the neoliberal trajectory of queer politics in the US and how they resisted this trajectory through their socio-political engagements and religious frameworks. Third and finally, building on a growing body of scholarship on the history of religion and sexuality in the US, I show that contrary to the dominant culture wars narrative, the twentieth-century battle for LGBTQ rights was never solely or even primarily a battle between religious conservatives and secular liberals. Instead, it was often a battle between religious communities with competing and conflicting visions for how to live in pluralistic democracy.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiv

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1 1

“To Effect the Integration of the Individual Homosexual into the Religious Life of the Community”: Religion and the Homophile Movement in Washington, DC, 1961–1967 1

I. The Racial and Sexual Geographies of Mid-Twentieth Century Washington 6

II. Of Bar Raids and Church Basements: The Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual, 1963–1967 15

III. Ambivalent Encounters: The National Council of Churches, the MSW, and the Disenchantment of Homophile Activists 30

IV. Conclusion 36

CHAPTER 2 37

Gay Religion in the Capital: An Origin Story, 1969–1973 37

I. Black Power, Home Rule, and the Racial Politics of Self-Determination 42

II. Gay DC at a Crossroads: Religion and the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) of Washington 49

III. Religion and the Triumph of Militant Gay Liberalism in Washington 66

IV. Conclusion 77

CHAPTER 3 79

“World’s Largest Gay Church Rallies in U.S. Capital”: 79

Religion, Gay Rights, and the Battle for Washington, 1973–1980 79

I. Power and Pentecost after Stonewall: The Pentecostal/Charismatic Roots of the Global Gay Church and the Gay Ecumenical Strategy 85

II. From Pentecost to Politics: Gay Religion on the Hill 98

III. Gay Rights and the Religious Right: A Tale of Two Washingtons 112

IV. Conclusion 127

CHAPTER 4 129

"We Have Met the Enemy...and the Enemy Is Us": 129

Gay Religion in an Age of Fracture, 1978–1985 129

I. The Beginnings of Third World Lesbian and Gay Christian Activism, 1978–1983 134

II. From Liberation to Legibility: Queer Religious Politics in the Age of Reagan-Era Conservatism (Part 1), 1979–1981 144

III. Heretics: Lesbian-Feminisms and the Limits of the UFMCC's Ecumenism, 1979–1981 154

IV. From Liberation to Legibility: Queer Religious Politics in the Age of Reagan-Era Conservatism (Part 2), 1981–1985 164

V. Conclusion 176

CHAPTER 5 180

“The Homosexual Community Has Really Taken Over Our Whole Political Agenda”: Queer Religious Politics in Neoliberal Washington, 1983–1996 180

I. Black Gay Pride and Solidarity: Early Black Gay Coalitional Politics, 1983–1986 187

II. “Priest, Activist, Author”: Reginald Glenn Blaxton and the Religious and Sexual Politics of Late Twentieth-Century Washington 195

III. “Political Gap ‘Widening’” Between DC Mayor and Clergy: Black Political and Religious Realignments in Neoliberal Washington, 1988–1992 209

IV. “What Many of Us Have Worked for All Our Lives Is About to Come into Fruition”: Queer Religious Politics in Neoliberal Washington, 1992–1996 220

V. Conclusion 233

CONCLUSION 236

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Religion
Subfield / Discipline	American Religious Cultures
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Religion, History of GLBT Studies History, United States
Keyword	History Race LGBTQ Washington, DC American religions
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Marla F. Frederick, Harvard University Alison Collis Greene, Emory University
Committee Members	Anthony M. Petro, University of Notre Dame Dianne M. Stewart, Emory University

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