Histories: Nation, Religion, and Gay Men

This paper will discuss the American Gay Atheists, a Houston-based secularist organization whose activism opposed, among other things, gay-affirming Christian groups, who inspired vitriol from those in the AGA who found their continued affiliation with Christianity “deluded” and “masochistic.” This paper will examine how the anti-religious evangelism of AGA’s members kept the gay atheist activists a distinct minority in Houston’s larger gay community, where many local religious (mostly but not exclusively Christian) organizations were vocal allies in supporting LGBT causes. The particular landscape of Texas at that time created a context where groups existed together and in conflict outside of prevailing gay-vs.-religion narratives. Examining AGA’s history and legacy sheds light on the complicated interactions between gay and lesbian groups, religious identity, and political activism deep in the heart of the AIDS epidemic

Prior to 1973 the APA classified “homosexuality” as being a mental illness in their diagnostic manual, the DSM. In 1974, the DSM changed the designation of homosexuality from a mental illness to that of “distress about one’s sexuality.” Almost immediately upon this manual being published there was an outcry from religious groups in the USA who saw this as a development that circumvented the long-held belief of conservative Christians in the USA that homosexuality was a sin against God. In 1973 Love in Action, a fundamentalist Christian organization was formed in California and promised to cure LGBT Christians of their “sexual addiction.” These types of pseudo-psychological and pseudo-theological devices have been documented, famously, in two novels by survivors of “conversion therapy.” This paper will examine the history of this movement, paying attention to the way that theology was manipulated in order to further the ex-gay cause from the 1970s-2023

Substantive due process rights, as recognized by the United States Supreme Court in cases like Lawrence v. Texas and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, strongly correlate with normative and contextual theology within U.S. Christian experiences. The experiences of gay men in Texas provide an opportunity to explore these normative shifts of queer progress within typically liberal Christian communities and the anti-queer normative rhetoric promoted by typically conservative Christian nationalism. This paper reviews the history of substantive due process rights applicable to gay men in the United States, recognizes the current religious and legal norms and contexts influencing gay men in the U.S., more particularly in Texas, and establishes a call to action for the stabilizing of queer-affirming norms against the socio-political challenges brought by the Christian nationalist movement.

                During the early 1920s a handful of students at Illinois’s Todd Seminary for Boys gathered to perform a secret wedding for three of them (Henry, Charlie, and Junior). Henry, who designed the ceremony, married Charlie, one of his sexual partners from the school. Henry explained that while Junior was “not queer” he loved them both enough to join their union. Henry and Charlie wed each other naked in front of their friends while Junior swore his own vows and signed the marriage certificate as their adopted son.

                Henry’s story is interpretively challenging however. The archival source was shaped by coercive pre-IRB research methods. Writing years later, Henry expressed competing desires, sometimes hoping for a heteronormative future where he was “cured,” sometimes pining for the queer family he had lost. The wedding, family, and space he built were also subversively queer in ways that defy easy religious categorization.