"Out with Love"

Are religious faith and LGBTQ life incompatible? It may seem so, if we focus only on the ways some conservative religious leaders cast gay men, lesbians, and transgender people as a threat to all that makes America great. But the reality is more complicated.

Religion, activism, and LGBTQ life are intertwined in 20th century St. Louis. Still, religious communities were built upon the foundations of a divided city, and inequality and segregation shaped them deeply.

Scroll down or use the navigation menu at the top to explore these intertwining topics.

A note on terminology: During the 1960s-1990s there was very little attention to the concerns of bisexual or transgender people within faith-based groups, so within this page we will use “lesbian and gay” rather than “LGBTQ” when describing their activities and scope.  For more general references, we will retain “LGBTQ.” A longer explanation of the terminology used in this mapping project is found on the  About page .

Many LGBTQ people have worked hard to claim space in religious communities. This is especially true in St. Louis, where participation in religious institutions has historically been strong.

Starting in the 1960s, while many opposed it, some religious congregations in St. Louis began to foster gay and lesbian inclusion.

For instance, the United Church of Christ (UCC) in St. Louis is listed in this 1967 booklet as a place to obtain gay and lesbian educational films.

In the 1970s and 1980s gay and lesbian-oriented church and fellowship groups were key to LGBTQ people becoming more politically active. At this time, when few “secular” LGBTQ organizations existed in St. Louis (other than the lesbian-feminist community) religious groups provided connections for those seeking social opportunities and political solidarity.

Religion became a center of life for a number of gay and lesbian St. Louisans, not just for those exploring their faith.

Looking at maps shows how faith-based groups connected gay and lesbian people across the St. Louis region. 

Exploring this history fully requires a look at how race and gender inequality were (and are) deeply embedded in many LGBTQ faith-based groups.

Since most religious institutions in the 20th century followed a patriarchal structure that privileged men, and since many gay men and lesbians socialized separately, it is not surprising to also find this separation in LGBTQ faith-based organizations.

The racial dynamics of faith-groups were similarly complex.

Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other established Protestant faiths divided over r ace and slavery in the 1800s , resulting in separate organizations that continue to the present day.

Catholic churches organized by neighborhood resulted in all-white and all-Black parishes, even after the St. Louis diocese officially desegregated in 1947.   ¹  

And even when churches and synagogues in St. Louis did look at segregation, such as with the 1960s interfaith "Conference on Religion and Race," efforts were aimed at secular discrimination in housing, employment, and voting rights. Changing patterns of racial division within spaces of worship was not one of their goals.

Stories suggest that Black LGBTQ Christians in St. Louis may have found enough community in the churches they grew up in that they were less compelled to seek alternatives or to organize explicitly “gay” groups.

Even though Black LGBTQ churchgoers might hear sermons that condemned homosexuality, they recognized each other and were valued for their contributions to their congregations.

Throughout the U.S., the Black church tradition brought together LGBTQ congregants in church choirs and youth groups. This held true in St. Louis: activist and writer Keith Boykin, who grew up in the city, recalled that his Uncle Michael was a “flamboyant gay man” as well as “a popular church organist and gospel musician” before his death in 1980.   ³  

On the other hand, many Black gays and lesbians were disheartened and outraged when the community's religious leaders remained silent in the face of the AIDS crisis that took so many lives.

The exceptions were rare, but important. 

 John Selders Jr.  was drawn into HIV/AIDS activism when a deacon in his father's St. Louis church came out as gay and as a person with AIDS. After successfully urging the church leaders to retain the deacon, John became an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. By 1992, he was the program director of the Northside AIDS Outreach Project, began coordinating local observances of the  Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, and ultimately began pastoring a UCC congregation in St. Louis.   ⁴   

Read more in the section:  Religion and HIV / AIDS in St. Louis 

The segregated nature of lesbian and gay spiritual life in St. Louis had important consequences.

Patterns of neighborhood segregation as well as different worship styles likely persuaded some activists to believe it was 'natural' that St. Louis’s white and Black gays would not come together in spiritual spaces. The invisibility-in-plain-sight of segregated worship also was intensified by a reliance on existing friendship networks for recruitment to gay and lesbian spiritual fellowships. These differences contributed to the “whiteness” of gay and lesbian religious groups in St. Louis.

In the 1970s and 1980s, faith-based groups were often the public “face” of gay rights in St. Louis.

 ^{In this section:  Episcopal   MCC   Agape   Catholic   Jewish}   

Among Protestants and Catholics, the urban mission movement emerged after World War II as some clergy began advocating for pluralist ideals centered on “brotherhood” and racial inclusion.

In part, this movement responded to declining city congregations as white residents headed for the suburbs. Highlighting the impacts of racial and economic inequality, urban mission churches often tried to increase attendance by attracting residents of the racially diverse surrounding neighborhoods.  Since those neighborhoods often included gay, lesbian and bisexual people, some liberal Protestant clergy also extended their pluralist commitments to them. As a result, by the 1950s and 1960s welcoming spiritual spaces for gay and lesbian St. Louisans began to emerge.

During these early years, some liberal Protestant churches, especially Episcopal congregations, went farther, working to foster the emergence of lesbian and gay political groups.

One of the most friendly was Trinity Episcopal Church in the Central West End neighborhood.  Active in the urban mission movement since the early 1950s, Trinity’s congregation was unusually diverse. Black people accounted for about one-third of its members, and it also included white gay men and a few lesbians, many of whom lived in the neighborhood.

The Reverend Arthur L. Walmsley, who served as Trinity’s rector in the 1950s, recalled that he presided over house blessings for same-sex couples who belonged to the congregation. By 1970, when the Reverend Bill Chapman joined the staff, he and his wife Ellie encountered “a lot of gays. A very active—I don’t want to say ‘cohort’ of gay people, because they weren’t a group as far as I could see. Just part of the congregation.” By the early 1970s gay men were serving as elected lay leaders of the congregation.  ⁵  

Other lesbian and gay people of faith, especially those who came from evangelical or fundamentalist traditions, found it necessary to create separate spaces for worship. They had few options until October 1973, when St. Louis’s Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) was founded.

MCC is a nondenominational Christian church with an evangelical worship style dedicated to proclaiming the good news that God loved gay people. The Reverend Troy Perry created the first MCC congregation in Los Angeles, California in 1968; by 1976 there were ninety congregations in six countries.

In the 1980s, more Protestant and nondenominational churches opened their doors to lesbian and gay people, and some new churches organized specifically to serve that population. Little history is documented for most of these smaller churches beyond the fact that they advertised their services in the LGBTQ press. Some seem to have existed for only a year or two. Most were in the city, but they also reached smaller towns throughout the St. Louis region.

These smaller churches rarely had the resources to purchase and maintain their own buildings.  Some moved from rental to rental, teetering on the edge of financial collapse. Group members had to dedicate a great deal of energy to simply ensuring their survival, and they didn’t always succeed.

Agape Church was one of the more long-lasting of these new churches.

As MCC and Agape Church show us, claiming physical space by opening lesbian and gay-centered churches was one way of building spiritual homes. Creating lesbian and gay-centered fellowships to seek full membership in existing denominations was another.

St. Louis gay* Catholics founded a local chapter of  Dignity USA  in 1974. Dignity brought them together to worship and support each other, but their ultimate goal was to persuade archdiocese leaders to recognize them as equal members of God’s family and to welcome them into the sacred space of the church. (*As of yet, there is no documentation that any lesbians were among the earliest members).

In St. Louis, where Catholic institutions molded families, friendship networks, schooling, sports, and political systems, exclusion could be devastating.  Parish boundaries  divided the metro area into smaller neighborhoods. Church buildings shaped the rhythms of everyday life, sorting Catholic St. Louisans into (mostly segregated) schoolrooms, worship spaces, soccer fields, and parish halls for sociability and recreation.

Dignity offered gay and lesbian Catholics a social and spiritual space where they could feel at home. Sexual identity, not parish lines, provided the “glue” that cemented this Catholic community, which met at first monthly, then weekly, in each other’s homes, non-Catholic churches, and finally a parish church in south St. Louis.

Dignity-St. Louis did not accomplish its goal of transforming the Catholic church, but it did transform the lives of its members.

As one active member recalled, "Because of Dignity, I came to terms with the fact that I was not a sinner. I was a Catholic who happened to be gay…. During my years with Dignity, it became more important to me to become a spiritual person, rather than just a Catholic. So I started thinking of myself as a Christian who practices the Catholic faith. The label of Catholic no longer mattered."  ¹⁸  

For this lesbian, finding fellowship with other gay and lesbian Catholics enabled her membership in broader spiritual and sexual communities, allowing her to accept herself in all her complexity.

Lesbian and gay Jews were slower to form their own groups in St. Louis.

The Jewish population of the St. Louis area numbered about 60,000 people in the 1970s and 1980s. And St. Louis’s Jews, like other white residents, had increasingly moved west of the city. In 1981 only 3% of the area’s Jews lived in the city of St. Louis.  ¹⁹ 

Although it is very difficult to trace either religious demographics or sexual identity (the U.S. census does not record religious affiliation, and until recently did not record same-sex relationship status), there is anecdotal evidence that some LGBTQ Jews bucked the trends of white flight and westward migration of St. Louis’s broader Jewish community, moving back to the city as adults.

Through the 1960s Jewish congregations and institutions tended to mirror the broader society, remaining silent about or hostile to the inclusion of gay and lesbian Jews. This general antagonism was amplified by concerns about the survival of the Jewish people, intensified by the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Both rising rates of interfaith marriage and the increasing visibility of same-sex couples seemed to pose threats to Jewish reproduction. By the mid-1970s, however, some within St. Louis’s Jewish community began to re-examine these attitudes.

Still, the visibility of lesbian and gay Jews in St. Louis grew only in fits and starts. Not until 1979 did a small group of gay and lesbian Jews organize a havurah to worship and learn together.

In St. Louis there was a deep connection between the emergence of spiritual groups and the growth of LGBTQ visibility politics in the 1970s and 1980s, especially among white gay men. 

In 1977, for example, members of many St. Louis groups helped organize a rally at MCC to protest Anita Bryant’s “Save our Children” (SOC) campaign.

And three years later, in 1980, religious networks were crucial to organizing the "Walk for Charity," widely recognized as St. Louis's first organized gay pride march.

The St. Louis-area campaign against Bryant created an expanding network, linking faith-based communities and political activists in new ways, and connecting Missourians regionally and statewide.

Soon after the spring 1977 rally, members from secular groups (St. Louis Task Force for Human Rights, Blue Max Cycle Club, MLSC and others) and religious groups (including MCC, Integrity, and Lutherans Concerned) met to organize a (short-lived) “gay coalition.”

And, when Bryant brought her crusade to Missouri in the autumn of 1977, some of those who had been involved in the earlier MCC rally joined with area lesbian-feminists to organize St. Louis contingents to Columbia and Joplin. One activist estimated that almost half of the 225 marchers in Joplin had come from St. Louis, making the four-hour trip by bus and car.

In 1980, members of religious groups were crucial to organizing a "Walk for Charity," widely recognized as St. Louis’s first organized gay pride march.

In late 1979, two local groups had independently begun planning for a pride celebration.

One of them, the Magnolia Committee, had a strong representation of faith-based groups. They planned a march on Palm Sunday, suggesting the importance of Christian symbolism to their vision.

The St. Louis Organizing Committee (SLOC), created by folks who had attended the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, chose June for a gay pride week.

Religious fellowships made crucial contributions to lesbian and gay visibility and “pride” within the St. Louis region. In the 1970s and 1980s, as the most visible and lasting LGBTQ organizations, faith-based groups attracted folks who were already interested in activism, while also providing a way others could advocate for recognition within their religion. As organizers of community events, they helped build broader networks among LGBTQ St. Louisans.

At the same time, this anchored the St. Louis LGBTQ rights movement to whiteness. As noted above,  MCC  seems to have included at least some Black worshipers over the course of its history, but so far we have no evidence that other spiritual fellowships did so in these years. Lesbian and gay faith communities (like LGBTQ life more generally) mirrored the racial segregation of St. Louis, and their importance to political organizing therefore reinforced the racial divide amid the gay rights movement, rather than breaking it down. “Fellowship” had its limits.

During the 1980s, the AIDS crisis prompted area churches and synagogues to grapple with same-sex sexuality in new ways.

Some, of course, denounced AIDS as retribution for the sin of homosexuality. But many area churches and synagogues understood HIV/AIDS as requiring “compassion” and “care” to the ill. This created opportunities for cooperation across denominational lines. And it helped funnel needed resources to AIDS service organizations.

But this response presented the problem of AIDS as one that stood outside their congregations. It did not necessarily signal greater inclusion for LGBTQ members.

For example, in 1988, when the United Methodist General Conference met in St. Louis, church leaders spoke of the "healing ministry of the church" and stated "AIDS is not a sin but a virus," while at the same time voting to maintain that homosexual behaviors were "incompatible with Christian teaching."   ²⁷  

Only a few—like  Trinity Episcopal , which already made space for gay men and lesbians—recommitted themselves to building inclusive worship communities that included those living with HIV and AIDS.

In St. Louis, gay men and their allies began advocating for people with HIV/AIDS in 1982. Five years later, ten religious denominations joined an Interfaith Task Force on AIDS. 

The Task Force created a training program for clerical and lay counselors and volunteers. Member denominations distributed information about HIV/AIDS and provided a range of services to people living with the virus, and their families.

Perhaps most important, their fundraising efforts helped lead to the creation of long-lasting support organizations such as Food Outreach and Doorways (both founded 1988).

Perhaps no story better illustrates the way religion, activism, and LGBTQ life are intertwined in St. Louis than what occurred Easter Sunday, 1992.

EASTER SUNDAY, 1992: more than one hundred people gathered in front of the Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End to protest, in their words, “Catholic Church political activity against Gay and Lesbian rights, reproductive rights, and AIDS related issues.”

Brought together by local chapters of ACT-UP, Queer Nation, and Catholics for Free Choice, they picketed, participated in a die-in, and performed skits to "Stop the Church!" However, the local chapter of Dignity did not endorse or support the action. They cited the “pastoral support” Archbishop John May had provided to their own members, as well as people living with AIDS.  ³²  

At first glance, this "Stop the Church!" protest fits common presumptions that religious institutions were homophobic and against the struggle for LGBTQ rights.

But when we notice the absence of Dignity, the story seems more complex.

That Dignity had been meeting for eighteen years reminds us that for many LGBTQ people in St. Louis, spiritual fellowship was a central value and organizing principle of their lives. The group’s distance from other activists, at least in this case, likely indicates the narrow space that these Catholics had to negotiate if they hoped to change church policy and feel fully welcomed within their faith.

But it also suggests how important finding a home in the church was to them. 

Five weeks after the Stop the Church! demonstration, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article that highlighted the ongoing struggles of lesbian and gay St. Louisans who sought acceptance in religious communities. In the midst of persistent differences among clerics and religious institutions about whether and how to include gay and lesbian worshipers and clergy, those interviewed (all self-identified Christians) portrayed their experiences of silencing and exclusion in the church as a “real tragedy.” 

But interviewees also described a variety of paths towards spiritual wholeness. One gay man had found a home at MCC. A former Methodist missionary now incorporated “eastern” and indigenous spiritual practices into his daily life. A lesbian had traveled from Presbyterian to “conservative Protestant” and Catholic communities before finding some comfort at Trinity Episcopal Church, where despite national policy a pastor had blessed her same-sex union. She observed that “there are a lot of gay and lesbian people really looking for a place to worship.”   ³³  

Their stories, and that of the Easter protest, are two sides of the same coin. Religious belief and religious institutions were powerful forces in shaping LGBTQ life in the St. Louis region in the second half of the twentieth century. 

Many LGBTQ St. Louisans experienced religious institutions as homophobic, yet they had different responses to that homophobia. Some called it out in protests. Some simply abandoned organized religion, temporarily or permanently. Some found ways to look past the condemnation of homosexuality, appreciating the other possibilities for community in worshiping together. And some chose to challenge their exclusion from religious communities by creating new places in which they felt welcome.

These diverse ways of bridging the gaps between identity and faith helped many people to lead lives that felt more whole, and they made more visible the lesbian and gay presence in St. Louis.  But they also built upon, and sometimes sharpened, the many ways in which the region as well as the LGBTQ communities within it were divided.

A note on terminology: During the 1960s-1990s there was very little attention to the concerns of bisexual or transgender people within faith-based groups, so within this page we will use “lesbian and gay” rather than “LGBTQ” when describing their activities and scope.  For more general references, we will retain “LGBTQ.” A longer explanation of the terminology used in this mapping project is found on the  About page .

There are many stories of how faith and religion intertwine with LGBTQ life in St. Louis beyond what would fit in this "virtual tour" online essay. And much more history not yet documented from the recent past of the late-1990s through today. If you have stories or history you would like to share, please  contact the Mapping Project  (anonymous contributions welcome).

Books

Ian Darnell, “The Gospel of the Gay Ghetto: Trinity Episcopal Church, the Urban Crisis, and the Origins of Queer Activism in St. Louis,” in Amanda L. Izzo and Benjamin Looker, Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022), pp. 87-111.

Ezra Berkley Nepon, Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda (Thread Makes Blanket Press, 2012)

Michael J. O’Loughlin, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear (Broadleaf Books, 2021)

Anthony M. Petro, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Heather R. White, Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (UNC Press, 2015)

Howell Williams, Homosexuality and the American Catholic Church: Reconfiguring the Silence, 1971-1999 (Florida State Thesis, 2007)  https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:169176/datastream/PDF/view 

Rodney Wilson, “‘The Seed Time of Gay Rights’: Rev. Carol Cureton, the Metropolitan Community Church, and Gay St. Louis, 1969-1980,” in Amanda L. Izzo and Benjamin Looker, Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022), pp. 219-38.

1. Kenneth S. Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest : the Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964-1970 (Routledge, 2006) p. 15-16.

2. "Black Gay Churches" Insight, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1981. Digital copy courtesy of  LGBTQ Religious Archives Network 

3. Keith Boykin, One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), p. 7

4. “Rev. John L. Selders, Jr. | Profile,” LGBTQ Religious Archives Network (February 2005)  https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/john-l-selders-jr .

5. Oral histories of Ellie Chapman and Etta Taylor, July 15, 2011, St. Louis LGBT History Project.

6. Personal conversation, Nan Sweet and Andrea Friedman, June 8, 2022, St. Louis, MO.

7. Earl C. Gottschalk, “Christian Coffee House to Open On Oct. 1 in Gaslight Square,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 30, 1964, p. 16

8. "Around Town Out of Town,” The Phoenix, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1966 (Kansas City).

9. “First Midwest Homophile Conference,” The Phoenix, Vol. 2, No. 3, March-April, 1967 (Kansas City).

10. “Homosexuals Gather for Church Meeting, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 12, 1974, p. 12; “Homosexuals Plan Church Dedication,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 30, 1975, p. 10.

11. Quoted in Rodney Wilson, “‘The Seed Time of Gay Rights’: Rev. Carol Cureton, the Metropolitan Community Church, and Gay St. Louis, 1969-1980,” in Amanda L. Izzo and Benjamin Looker, Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022), p. 226.

12. James E. Adams, “Homosexual Focus for a Church,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 28, 1974, p. 12.

13. Pamela Schaeffer, “Homosexual Congregation Gets Church,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1984, p. 4

14. “Metro-East Finally Gets an Organization,” The Gay News-Telegraph, January 1982, p. 5.

15. Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 29, 1975.  https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.html 

16. “Vatican Stand on Homosexuality Debated,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1986, p. 21

17. Correspondence, The Board of Dignity/St. Louis to “Friend,” March 31, 1991. Folder 86: Dignity – St. Louis 1983-92, Box 2, S0545 St. Louis Lesbian And Gay Archives Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri.

18. Oral history of Geri Henke, November 3, 2017. Documenting the Queer Past in St. Louis Collection (WUA00478), Washington University Library.

19. Demographic Study of Jewish Community in St. Louis, 1981. Berman Jewish DataBank,  https://www.jewishdatabank.org/databank/search-results/study/382  ; St. Louis Jewish Light, July 1974; St. Louis Jewish Light, January 2, 1980.

20. New Jewish Agenda National Platform, 1982, reproduced in Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda, Ezra Berkley Nepon (Thread Makes Blanket Press, 2012) p. 114; "Jewish Feminist Taskforce," New Jewish Agenda: A People's History, Ezra Berkley Nepon; Karen Presley, "Creating 'Inclusive Jewish Community' Is Topic of Meeting" St. Louis Jewish Light, February 5, 1986, p.19;

21. St. Louis Gay and Lesbian Chavurah, Vol. 1, No. 3, April 1994, p. 1; St. Louis Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Chavurah, Vol. 3 [sic], January 1996, p. 2. Digital copy of newsletters located in Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis research files.

22. Interview of Bill Spicer by Jym Andris, October 30, 2011, transcript p. 6.

23. Interview of Marvin Kabakoff by Ian Darnell and Jym Andris, March 5, 2015, St. Louis LGBT History Project.

24. Rick Garcia, Task Force for Human Rights, remarks.  Transcribed by Jym Andris August, 7, 2017 from a copy of a tape made of the event provided by John Hilgeman. 

25. “Gay activists brush shoulders with opponents,” Columbia Missourian, November 22, 1977, p. 1  https://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/colmo7/id/98601/rec/1 

26. Oral history, Frank Sprayberry (SA1038, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Project, State Historical Society of Missouri)

27. Cornerstone Magazine, June 1988, pp. 10-11 (Michigan State Univ. Special Collections, American Radicalism Vertical File, folder "Metropolitan Community Churches," digitized in Political Extremism and Radicalism, Gale Group database.)

28. Carolyn Smith, "Clergy Learns what AIDS is doing to the Community" St. Louis American, February 7, 1991, p.1; Robert Manor, "Religious Groups Deal with AIDS" St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 8, 1987, p.31

29. "May Urges Hospice" St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 20, 1987, p. 1

30. “May Defends Bishops, Condoms Statement,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 14, 1987, p. 28

31. “Split: Bishops Spar Over Condom Statement,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 3, 1988, p. 1c

32. Joseph Kenny, "Group Refuses to Join Protest" St. Louis Review, April -- 1992, p.1, 7.

33. Kathryn Rogers, "Homosexuals Seek Acceptance in Church," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (May 24, 1992) p. 1B, 6B

Oral history, John Hilgeman (SA1038, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Project, State Historical Society of Missouri)