Gay Pride, Boston, June 21, 1977: It was a hot Saturday afternoon on Boston Common, and
the crowd listening to speeches was restless. At long last, Charley Shively (professor of
history at Boston College and a founder of Fag Rag, one of the first gay-liberation
publications in the country) began his keynote speech. Sounding like a cross between
William Jennings Bryan and an angry drag queen, Shively declared that even with a
doctorate from Harvard University he was not allowed to teach gay history. He burned his
Harvard diploma. He then shouted that his insurance company would not honor his 20-year
relationship with his lover, and burned his insurance policy.

Shively denounced the economic exploitation of gay people in straight-owned bars and
burned a dollar bill. He read the Massachusetts statutes criminalizing sodomy. "Burn
it, burn it!" the now-frenzied crowd screamed. As pages of the penal code went up in
smoke, Shively opened his family Bible and read from Leviticus. It took a few moments
before the crowd fully understood the pièce de résistance of Shively’s political
theater. Suddenly, the once-united crowd split. "Burn it, burn it!" yelled those
who saw the Bible (and, by implication, religion) as central to the oppression of gay
people. "Don’t burn it! Stop him, stop him!" screamed the rest. As Shively
ripped the pages from the black-bound volume and lit them, the crowd went wild: fighting
broke out, some people stormed the stage to rescue the word of God, and others shouted
with joy.

In the 20 years since Shively burned his Bible, the general feeling about organized
religion in the queer community has become, if not more tolerant, at least less
reflexively hostile. Gay and lesbian religious groups have taken a more prominent place in
a number of community events, and many advocates for gay civil rights focus on promoting
the image of gay people being as no less religious than their heterosexual counterparts.
But the place of organized religion in gay political activism is still a contentious
topic. Witness the anger and resentment many gay men and lesbians are voicing at the
announcement that the Metropolitan Community Church (officially called the United
Federation of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), but commonly referred to as MCC), a
Pentecostal, evangelical gay church, will cosponsor, along with the largest gay rights
lobbying group in the U.S., the Human Rights Campaign, the Millennium March on Washington,
which also carries the slogan "For Faith and Family."

This distress is summed up by Richard Schneider, editor of the Harvard Gay and
Lesbian Review, who says: "I am not a religious person; this is a secular
political movement. MCC’s sponsorship implies a fundamental system of beliefs and views
about life that I either reject or don’t care about. America is based on a theory of
separation of church and state. The gay movement should be as well. MCC has no business
sponsoring a secular political event."

Reactions like Schneider’s betray a deep-seated ambivalence toward the role of
organized (gay) religion in the secular struggle for civil rights. Religion, like sex, is
one of those topics on which everyone has an opinion. Given the church’s horrendous
history as a source of persecution and oppression for queers, gay people have a
particularly contentious relationship with religion. The MCC’s visible role in political
organizing a spokesgroup for a broad spectrum of gay people ignites the suspicions and
fears of those who are not connected to organized religion.

An added problem is that the MCC is not just a religious group; it is emphatically
Christian, with roots in the most conservative of American Protestant traditions. Is it
any wonder that nonbelievers are irked at having to march under the auspices of an
organization that, to them, represents a dangerous, even repulsive view of the world? Some
gay and lesbian Jews maintain that given the overwhelming dominance of Christianity in
U.S. culture, MCC prominence in organizing the march is, on the face of it, an act of
erasure. Even the use of the word Millennium in the name of the march, is based on a
Christian marking of time.

The Human Rights Campaign and the MCC have, until now, skirted addressing these
complicated issues; their unstated position has always been that the MCC, as a community
institution, has every right to sponsor a national march. But a memo circulated widely on
the Internet by MCC’s founder Reverend Troy Perry to the Church’s General Council gives
some indication how Perry and his co-religionists might see the situation. In addressing
why MCC should sponsor the march Perry argues that it fits neatly into MCC’s mission:

Dear Saints:

I am writing to bring you up-to-date on the proposed Millennium March on Washington,
and to share with you why I believe it is vital for UFMCC to exercise a leadership role in
this event.

It Helps Fulfill Ufmcc’s Mission Statement: Our Mission Statement calls upon UFMCC to
"embody and proclaim…liberation. Christian social action and justice." Human
rights movements around the world have historically used public marches and rallies on
behalf of the work of social action and justice. Through the Millennium March, UFMCC is
going to boldly proclaim our unyielding commitment to this vital work. But the march will
do more than simply proclaim–it will give each of us an opportunity to live out our faith
and our commitment in a very public way.

It Helps Fulfill Ufmcc’s Vision Statement: The UFMCC Vision Statement calls upon us to
address the "justice and faith needs" of people in many cultures and countries
and to "celebrate the inherent worth and dignity of each person." Through the
Millennium March on Washington for Equality, we will effectively address these needs and
bring public attention to the worth and dignity of our people. Our Vision Statement also
calls for us to reach many new members with our message of spiritual hope, and I am
absolutely convinced that the public relations and news value of the march, along with
UFMCC’s leadership role as a co-sponsor, will serve to reach many new friends and members
for UFMCC’s local churches.

It Helps Fulfill Ufmcc’s Ministry Priorities: The Millennium March on Washington has a
direct impact on fulfilling UFMCC’s Ministry Priorities. It is going to provide exemplary
opportunities for leadership development. We will use this event to forge new strategic
alliances and to position UFMCC with non-UFMCC groups. Through networking and technology,
UFMCC will have the opportunity to reach tens of thousands of persons who have not yet
been touched by our local church ministries.

It Helps Fulfill Ufmcc’s Founding Purpose: From the earliest days, UFMCC has been
committed to a three-fold Gospel of Christian salvation, Christian community, and
Christian social action. This march honors our commitment to social action. But in my
heart of hearts, I honestly believe this march will help us fulfill all three of our
founding purposes. In addition to living out our commitment to social action, I am
convinced that it will bring us together in a spirit of community and shared purpose.

And I believe with all my heart that people who need to hear our message of Christian
salvation will have an opportunity to hear and embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ through
our participation. As Perry notes, there has been a long history of churches and organized
religion working for social justice. (And an even longer history of working against social
justice.) One of the most used arguments for the appropriateness of MCC’s sponsorship of
the march is that Black churches played an immeasurably vital role in the Black civil
rights movement. This historical analogy strikes an emotional chord, but is quite wrong.
Black churches and Black Christianity, were far more central to African American lives and
social structure than the MCC (or organized religion in general) is to the gay and lesbian
community. To make the analogy borders on a cultural inappropriateness that is insensitive
and off-base.

But the MCC’s desire to sponsor the Millennium March on Washington brings to the fore
more profound political questions. The most important of these is a questioning of the
limits of "tolerance" and even multiculturalism in organizing. Progressives have
generally embraced religious and cultural tolerance. While agreeing that personal
religious beliefs should not be the basis for social policy, there has been a strong
tendency to "tolerate" and not condemn personal beliefs. For example: it is a
person’s moral right to be against abortion, but that personal belief should not, and
cannot, be the basis for public policy. It is a similar case with homosexuality (and many
other issues.)

Many gay and lesbian civil rights organizers have taken great pains when fighting laws
and referendums championed by the religious right not to criticize the personal beliefs of
"people of faith" (a phrase coined by progressives to generate an atmosphere of
respect towards people of various religious faiths and organizations whether they agreed
with them or not.) Organizers like Suzanne Pharr and think-tank organizations like
Political Research Associates have been very careful not to characterize or condemn
personal religious beliefs as wrong or intrinsically harmful. (And in fact, any savvy
organizer knows that constant, aggressive attacking of personal religious beliefs will not
be very effective. In Perfect Enemies, their book on gay rights organizing in the
U.S., Chris Bull and John Gallagher give examples of the varied results that occur when
organizers both attack or criticize personal religious beliefs, and when they avoid the
topic and focus on the political applications of those beliefs.) The question here is do
we have to "respect" people’s religious beliefs because they are "religious
beliefs" even when they may not be doing immediate harm? Does a gay person, for
instance, have to "respect" the beliefs of a devout fundamentalist Christian
when those beliefs condemn homosexuality as "an abomination?" And if that person
is then attempting to impose those beliefs by law on society, is it possible to fight the
inappropriate application of the beliefs and not the beliefs themselves? Are their limits
to the traditional notion of liberal, or progressive "tolerance?" In the gay
world and gay politics is it important, or necessary, for non-religious people to
accommodate or help promote the agendas of those who are believers?

To a large degree this idea of "tolerance" has permeated the
middle-of-the-road segments of the gay rights movement. It has been generated by an
"if they tolerate us, then we have to tolerate them" attitude–a sort of live
and let live mantra that clearly does not work in reality–but by a desire to reposition
homosexuality as "normal." In this mind-set, the MCC’s sponsorship of the
Millennium March on Washington makes perfect sense, even as there are plenty of gay men
and lesbians who are appalled by it. It is, in essence, a gay marriage of convenience
between secular assimilationists and gay men and lesbians who identify as part of a
religious community. If we are all part of a community struggling to gain certain basic
civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, shouldn’t we all work together.

This, of course, is part of the larger problem: what is the gay civil rights movement
really doing? What are its goals? As contentious as the MCC’s sponsorship of the march is,
the earliest slogan of the event–positioning it as a march "for faith and
family" (wording agreed upon by MCC and HRC)–has caused equal consternation. Though
few would deny that some gay people are involved in faith communities or define themselves
within the most mainstream concepts of "family," the predominance of this theme
in a national march smacks of blatant family-values pandering. Gay people should have
civil rights because they are U.S. citizens and human beings, not because they believe in
God or live in traditional affectional or sexual arrangements.

Interestingly the MCC’s involvement in the Millennium March on Washington–and the
controversy over the place of religion in gay organizing it has incurred–is offset by
other religious news from New York City. On May 11, New York Mayor Gullianni announced
that the city would extend the same rights in housing, city contracts, and death benefits
that married couples have to the 8,700 unmarried gay and straight couples who have
registered as domestic partners. On May 24, John Cardinal O’Connor, the archbishop of New
York, gave a sermon at high mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral that condemned the proposed
legislation: "Marriage matters supremely to every person and institution in our
society. It is imperative that no law be passed contrary to natural law and Western
tradition by virtually legislating that marriage does not matter." He further noted
that the domestic partner bill "will eventually lead to moral and social changes our
society neither anticipated nor traditionally desired from our earliest days as a people.
An institution as fundamental as the family cannot be manipulated. [Marriage] he concluded
is the "first and vital cell of society."          

While O’Connor referred to his homily as a simple reflection on a social issue and
noted that the church had no right, or intention, to impose its moral beliefs on
non-believers) he did alert the news media, provided them with a platform to film his
sermon, and passed out printed texts of it with the most outrageous statements in bold.
his was also only the latest in a string of O’Connor’s "reflections"–in the
past he inveighed against the gay rights bill, legal abortion, safe-sex or AIDS education
in schools, lax divorce laws, and he forbid Catholic hospitals with city contracts from
giving out any information on birth control. In some instances, such as the City’s gay
rights bill, he managed to change the content substantially. In the light of this
religious interference into public life is there any wonder that many gay and lesbian
people are uncomfortable.

But O’Connor’s newest rampage gives us another insight into how the MCC became a march
sponsor, and why it should come as a surprise. It is a logical outcome of the wrong
direction in which the gay-rights movement has been headed for almost two decades. In the
early 1980s–in response to increasingly vicious attacks by a rapidly growing religious
and political right wing–a change occurred in the movement. Before then, the majority of
gay activists had focused on a clearly defined legal argument: gay rights were basic civil
rights. Gay people’s personal lives, relationships, and sexual habits were of no concern.
But as the religious right continued to demonize homosexuals as sinful, immoral, and
murderous, the gay rights movement recast the image of gay people as "normal."
As a result, gay lives and culture were sanitized. The emblematic bumper sticker was no
longer Gay Rights Now! but Gay Families Are Families, Too; no longer Gay Pride but Hate Is
Not A Family Value. Gay life, in this portrayal, was as American as apple pie, white
picket fences, and church socials on Sunday afternoon.

The problem with this strategy is that it doesn’t work. Homophobia has many causes, but
at heart it is the deeply rooted belief of the dominant heterosexual culture that
homosexuals are intrinsically different and dangerous because they engage in same-gender
sexual activity, that they betray the natural order of the world. Acting like "normal
Americans" does not erase this. When gay people want to act "normal" by
getting legally married, for example, heterosexuals get even more bent out of shape. Look
at the hysteria that fueled the Defense of Marriage Act.

A New York Times poll (April 30, 1997) found that 58 percent of teenage
boys and 47 percent of girls feel that "homosexuality is always wrong." In his
new book One Nation, After All noted sociologist Alan Wolfe discloses that while
almost all of the suburban Americans he interviewed expressed tolerance of a wide range of
sensitive issues such as affirmative action, religious difference, multiculturalism, and
feminism they repeatedly used words like "abnormal," "sinful,"
"unhealthy," "perverted," and "mentally deficient" and were
united in their refusal to see homosexuality as an "alternative that is the moral
equivalent of any other." A New Yorker (January 5, 1998) poll discovered that
if given the choice 56 percent of "average Americans" would rather see their
children unhappily married with no children, then happily partnered in a stable gay
relationship with children, while only 21 percent opted for happy, homo-kids.

Many gay people–even those who vehemently oppose the MCC’s sponsorship of the
Millennium March on Washington–don’t hate organized religion (although there are many who
do). Instead, like most Americans (gay and straight), they feel that religion and politics
should not mix. But even more important, they also understand the realities and politics
of homophobia and queer hatred in their lives. They are fed up with the notion that gay
people should have basic rights under the law because they are "like everyone
else." They are tired of gay people and the gay community being homogenized as
white-bread America, losing their distinctiveness and edge in the process. For many gay
people, the MCC sponsorship and packaging of the march on Washington crosses the line; the
strategy that they represent risks eradicating the unique and startling power and glory of
queerness. It’s enough to make you want to burn a Bible.