In the Archives | Dignity

BY John D'Emilio ON June 23, 2017

I have been thoroughly enjoying my explorations of collections at the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives.  Depending on the person or the organization, I come away with a deeper or a broader knowledge than I already had of topics in the history of LGBT life and activism since the 1960s.  I love encountering the particular personal stories or the forgotten dramatic moments that emerge from individual documents in a collection and that are the stuff that makes history come alive.  But, I also have to admit that, with my own history of activism and research, I haven’t found myself dramatically revising what I thought I knew.

Until now, that is.  The collection I’ve explored most recently are the papers of James Bussen, a Chicago activist who, in the early 1970s, was a founder of the local Dignity chapter. He remained continuously active in the organization and later served as its national president in the second half of the 1980s.  For those who don’t know, Dignity was for decades the primary organization giving voice to LGBT Catholics.

Before the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church was like every other Christian community of faith.  Homosexuality was a sin.  Some denominations may have incorporated medical frameworks into their language, but there was little evidence of a significant move toward acceptance and approval.  That began to change in the 1960s as some church activists and reformers began to speak out in support of gays and lesbians.  This tendency accelerated significantly in the 1970s and 1980s. A number of religious denominations began to revisit official teachings on homosexuality and open themselves up to acceptance of LGBT members.

The Roman Catholic Church, however, stood out as moving distinctly against the grain.  In October 1986, with the approval of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger issued a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexuals.”  It took a strong and uncompromising stand against any expression of homosexuality.  The document described homosexual behavior as “an intrinsic moral evil” and a homosexual orientation as “an objective disorder.”  In posing the question as to whether being a sexually active gay man was “a morally acceptable option,” it offered a categorically unambiguous answer: “It is not.”  This 1986 document came to define Roman Catholicism as unremittingly and inflexibly homophobic.  There seemed to be no possibility of change.  And when Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict in 2005, it only confirmed this perspective.

After just a bit of reading through the material in the Bussen papers, however, it became abundantly – and surprisingly – clear to me that one of the effects of the 1986 Letter was to erase from my historical memory, and I suspect the memory of many others as well, a rich history of LGBT activism within the Catholic Church in the U.S. in the 1970s and early 1980s.  At the simplest level, Dignity grew as an organization with impressive speed.  Founded right at the beginning of the 1970s in the wake of the energy released by Stonewall and gay liberation, it expanded from seven chapters in 1973 to 70 by 1977 when it held its 3^rd biennial convention in Chicago.  430 people registered for the national gathering of an organization that had grown to 4000 members.  There were very few LGBT organizations of that size in the 1970s.

But it wasn’t only about size.  Dignity projected a strong message of confidence and militancy.  In its May 1973 newsletter, the editor wrote: “A force is growing within the Church.  It will not be stopped.”  At the end of the decade, the newsletter directed these words to its members: “it will not be theologians sitting in their offices who will one day decide that homosexuality makes sense . . . theologians will come around to thinking that only after a good number of gay people have already made sense of their own lives.”  In other words, come out. Show your pride in how you live and what you do.

The Church, too, was responding in encouraging ways.  In 1976, the Young Adult Ministry of the U.S. Catholic Conference issued a very positive statement about gay men and lesbians.  At the local level, Dignity found itself in dialogue with a number of the more liberal Catholic bishops.  Also in 1976, Dignity received an invitation to attend the “Call to Action” Conference of the Catholic Church in the U.S.  The Conference passed the following resolution: “That the Church actively seek to serve the pastoral needs of those persons with a homosexual orientation; to root out those structures and attitudes which discriminate against homosexuals as persons; and to join the struggle by homosexual men and women for their basic constitutional rights to employment, housing, and immigration.”

The statement took me by surprise.  It was far more positive than anything I might have imagined coming from the Catholic Church.  It also provides context for the 1986 Letter of Cardinal Ratzinger.  Rather than a simple articulation of the standard teachings of Catholicism, it represented an aggressive assault upon serious grassroots efforts that were stirring things up and provoking progressive change.

I came away from Jim Bussen’s papers with a very strong sense that there’s much to be learned by researching the history of Catholic LGBT activism and the Church’s response in the 1970s and 1980s.  Bussen’s papers, other relevant collections at Gerber/Hart, and many that I’m certain exist in archives around the country will provide the materials.  Without doubt, there’s a book waiting to be written.  I hope someone seizes the opportunity – unless I beat you to it!

What We’re Reading | Happy Holidays Edition

BY Claire Potter ON December 14, 2015

• Jane Hu, “Between Us: A Queer Theorist’s Devoted Husband and Enduring Legacy,” The New Yorker (December 9 2015).
• Deborah Sontag, “`A Whole New Being:’ How Kricket Nimmons Seized the Transgender Moment,” The New York Times (December 12 2015).
• Tracy Baims, “An Open Letter to Mayor Emmanuel,” Windy City Times (December 12 2015).
• Dave Zirin, “Fight Transphobia and Move the Damn Super Bowl,” The Nation (November 5 2015).
• Lauren Gutterman, “Christmas Isn’t For Queers,” Notches | (re)marks on the history of sexuality (December 10 2015).
• Margaret Lyons, “Transparent’s Second Season Is a Stunning Take on Human Existence,” Vulture (December 11 2015.)
• Jehziel,”‘Holler if You Hear Me’ Highlights Gays in the Church,” Ebony (November 20 2015).
• George Cotkin, “`Carol’ and What It was Really LIke to be a Lesbian in the 1950s,” Time (December 10, 2015).

New and Noteworthy

BY Claire Potter ON October 26, 2015

• From Nicholas Syrett and Amanda Littauer, co-chairs of the American Historical Association’s Committee for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History (CLGBTH): “This link will take you to a blog post on the AHA’s website highlighting the program we’ve put together for this year’s AHA in Atlanta. Thanks to all the scholars who assembled or agreed to serve on panels. We’re excited to see you all in Atlanta!” Consider joining: for you senior historians, a lifetime membership is still a smokin’ hot deal at $300. For those who already became lifetime members at bargain-basement prices, try to remember what rate you joined at and top it up to $300.
• U.S. Olympian Gus Kenworthy,  silver medalist in freestyle skiing at last year’s Sochi Winter Games, came out as gay in a cover story for ESPN the Magazine (New York Times, October 22 2015.)
• Dallin Oaks, a leading Mormon Church elder, isn’t endorsing Adam and Steve, but has issues a public statement that  Kim Davis and other public officials are not above the law (New York Times, October 23 2015.) If you know anything about the history of the Mormon Church, and the difficulty it has had reigning in splinter groups that still practice plural marriage, this makes perfect sense.
• Turns out Sappho may have been the first lesbian Mom! Dana Rudolph on the history of LGBT families (Pridesource, October 22 2015.)
• Rutgers historian Timothy Stewart-Winter argues that *trans students are building on a history of feminist campus activism when they fight gender discrimination in higher ed (Chronicle of Higher Education October 18 2015.)

News and Announcements

BY Claire Potter ON November 28, 2014

• CFP: iConference 2015 workshop on Exploring Gender, Race, and Sexuality with Social Media Data Newport Beach, California, USA. March 24, 2015. For more information go here.
• Are you going to the OAH meeting in St. Louis? The “Hey, I Know Your Work!” mentorship program at the conference is designed to connect graduate students, recent graduates, or those in the early stages of their career with seasoned scholars to discuss their research, professional aspirations, or simply to get acquainted.Queer scholars don’t necessarily need queer mentors…but it doesn’t hurt! Sign up now.
• Book event on queer Christianities. Next Wednesday, December 3, the Religious Studies program at Eugene Lang College, The New School, is hosting an evening of events. At 4:30, there is a roundtable on queerness and religion, featuring Lang faculty Karen Bray (“Affect Theory, Alien Prophets, and Queer Prayers”), Dominic Longo (“Why Does Queer Islamic Theology Matter?”) and Michael Pettinger (“Augustine, Experience, and Queer Sin”), followed by a Q&A. At 6:00, immediately following the Roundtable will be a book-release celebration for Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms, a new anthology co-edited by Lang faculty members Michael Pettinger and Mark Larrimore, with NYU’s Kathleen Talvacchia. Michael and Kathy will offer remarks and open a discussion about the book, and a reception will follow. Both events are in the Dorothy Hirshon Suite, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, Room I205, New York, NY 1001.
• Digitizing the AIDS Quilt. Also at The New School, on Monday December 1, 2014, a panel on Digital Memorials and Media Art Activism: Designing Digital Experiences for the AIDS Memorial Quilt 6:00 pm John L. Tishman Auditorium, University Center,
  63 Fifth Avenue, Room U100, New York, NY 10003.
• College of the Holy Cross Hosts First Transgender Digital Archive. The Catholic Education Daily reports that “A College of the Holy Cross professor’s project to develop a “Digital Transgender Archive” (DTA) was recently hailed by Dr. Margaret Freije, dean of the College, who cited the Jesuit mission of Holy Cross in support of the initiative, according to the College’s magazine. Asked whether such an initiative could conflict with the College’s Catholic identity, a Holy Cross spokesperson simply verified the dean’s support for the project.” Do I really have to ask you to click this link to read more about support for this project being led out by Assistant Professor of English KJ Rawson?

Religion Is Calling

BY John D'Emilio ON November 12, 2014

Last weekend, at a national conference in Washington DC of The Reformation Project, an organization founded by activist Matthew Vines to take on the homophobia of Christianity, an historic speech was given.  Dr. David Gushee, a high profile ethicist/theologian in the Evangelical Christian tradition and a Baptist himself, delivered a major address in which he sharply and unambiguously critiqued Christian teaching and practice.  “The Church has inflicted a damaging and ultimately unchristlike body of teaching” against “sexual minorities,” he said.  He characterized it as “a teaching of contempt” that needs to be “discredited and abandoned” and declared that LGBT people “must be accepted and welcomed.”  Though there have been significant Christian voices in the U.S. speaking up for tolerance and acceptance for at least half a century, most of these voices have come from denominations seen to be liberal or “mainline.”  Rarely has it happened that someone in the evangelical fold, and certainly someone with Gushee’s stature and credentials, has spoken so forcefully and uncompromisingly [the text of his comments can be found here.

Reading Gushee’s address reminded me of one of the gaping holes in the literature on U.S. LGBT history: religion.   If you browse through the index of many of the key books on LGBT history written in the last thirty-plus years [I am including my own work here], you’ll notice that religion hardly figures at all.  It is barely mentioned.  There are a few exceptions to this: discussions of the founding and work of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual appear in some books that cover the 1960s; the narrators in E. Patrick Johnson’s Sweet Tea talk about how religion figures in their lives; and John Howard attends to religion in Men Like That.  But, for the most part, religion is absent.

On reflection, the absence isn’t so hard to explain.  The birth and growth of LGBT history in the 1970s and 1980s occurred in the context of a movement that often displayed a left-wing militant flavor. It tended to define religion as one of the key agents of oppression.  And its members were often able to embrace their own homosexuality or gender identity by personally rejecting religion.  Researchers looking to excavate the histories of self-consciously dissident sexual communities or movements of resistance were unlikely to put religion front and center; often we may not even have seen it when it was in front of us!

This absence is unfortunate, given how powerfully religion has figured in the lives of individuals and communities throughout the twentieth century and in the politics of the nation as well.  There is work underway that will start to fill in the gaps.  Heather White for instance will soon be publishing a study of US Christianity’s engagement with issues of same-sex love from the 1940s through the 1970s.  And, there are growing resources available for researching this history and for teaching it as well.  Especially useful is a “sibling” website [it was designed by the same person who did this version of Outhistory, Carl Foote], the LGBT Religious Archives Network site, managed by Mark Bowman.  It contains oral histories, substantial biographical profiles, a series of history “exhibits” and, importantly for researchers, a growing list of manuscript collections and archives related to the intersecting history of LGBT lives and religion.

I am unlikely to ever be the person who makes a significant dent in this gaping hole in our history.  But I’m hoping there’s an army of researchers out there who will.  Go to it!