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Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights
With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, Heather R. White challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious and sexual past. White argues that today's antigay Christian traditions originated in the 1920s when a group of liberal Protestants began to incorporate psychiatry and psychotherapy into Christian teaching. A new therapeutic orthodoxy, influenced by modern medicine, celebrated heterosexuality as God-given and advocated a compassionate "cure" for homosexuality.
White traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant antihomosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. White highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, White challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.
White traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant antihomosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. White highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, White challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.
260 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 5, 2017
20th-c. American LGBT church history is now a legitimate academic subfield. For scholars interested in it, this is a clear must-read, full of highlights from new archives and insightful re-narrations of familiar events. And if those events aren't familiar-- if you don't know about the clergy-queer dialogues and protest actions in mid-sixties San Francisco, or the role of the Metropolitan Community Churches in spreading Stonewall commemoration-- then this book will probably come as a revelation. Non-specialists might best start with Recruiting Young Love, which covers much of the same ground but with a wider temporal and institutional frame. This is a next step from work like Jordan's, and an excellent one.
July 4, 2017
Living in the era we do I’m sure most LGBT people assume that Christian leaders and churches have always hated the gays. Reforming Sodom by Heather White dispels that myth. Like the myth that the gay rights movement began at Stonewall in 1969, the anti-gay/Christian narrative is well established.
Those with an educated understanding of gay rights history would know already that in 1964, five years before Stonewall, there was mini riot and arrests in San Francisco when a costume party at California Hall was in progress. Most likely those people would also know that this was a fundraising event for a newly established organisation, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Yes, Christian ministers founded the organisation and were supporting homophiles seeking a change in the law and an end to discrimination. This though is only the tip of the iceberg as the author reveals.
There was a well-established movement amongst progressive protestant ministers in the 50’s and 60’s who were passionate about homosexual reform as they were about the civil rights movement. Whilst they were not always totally affirming and some came from a therapeutic model, compassionate and non-judgemental they were none-the-less. Many provided support and spaces for the small, newly evolving homophile movement. It was confined to progressive Protestantism however.
The authors exploration of these facts is well researched and refreshing. I’m extremely grateful for the enormous amount of background work that’s gone into creating Reforming Sodom. Some academics works are not easily accessible to the average reader but once again the author has done an excellent job communicating her research. It’s very readable.
What is missing is an expose of the anti-gay Christian developments that rose so visibly through the evangelical stream of Christianity from the 70’s. As a reader I was fine with this as an abundance of material already exists on that topic and certainly not the purpose of the work. White tells us what we don’t know.
The ‘always anti-gay/Christianity’ myth will take a lot to dislodge. It’s well entrenched. White’s book is a good start at rattling the cage. There are lessons to learn for LGBT Christian advocates here as well. It will be confidence building.
By the way we are currently coming full circle and the growth of LGBT affirming churches and denominations growing exponentially. Whites work demonstrates these ministers were before their time and their message and work was obviously high-jacked later by evangelical and mainstream Christianity.
Sadly, I think that, because of the content, few will take the time to read Reforming Sodom. But if you are a student of gay rights history then taking the time to explore White’s work will give you a less one-sided view and you’ll definitely by more well-informed. I am…….now.
Anthony Venn-Brown
Author of A Life of Unlearning
Those with an educated understanding of gay rights history would know already that in 1964, five years before Stonewall, there was mini riot and arrests in San Francisco when a costume party at California Hall was in progress. Most likely those people would also know that this was a fundraising event for a newly established organisation, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Yes, Christian ministers founded the organisation and were supporting homophiles seeking a change in the law and an end to discrimination. This though is only the tip of the iceberg as the author reveals.
There was a well-established movement amongst progressive protestant ministers in the 50’s and 60’s who were passionate about homosexual reform as they were about the civil rights movement. Whilst they were not always totally affirming and some came from a therapeutic model, compassionate and non-judgemental they were none-the-less. Many provided support and spaces for the small, newly evolving homophile movement. It was confined to progressive Protestantism however.
The authors exploration of these facts is well researched and refreshing. I’m extremely grateful for the enormous amount of background work that’s gone into creating Reforming Sodom. Some academics works are not easily accessible to the average reader but once again the author has done an excellent job communicating her research. It’s very readable.
What is missing is an expose of the anti-gay Christian developments that rose so visibly through the evangelical stream of Christianity from the 70’s. As a reader I was fine with this as an abundance of material already exists on that topic and certainly not the purpose of the work. White tells us what we don’t know.
The ‘always anti-gay/Christianity’ myth will take a lot to dislodge. It’s well entrenched. White’s book is a good start at rattling the cage. There are lessons to learn for LGBT Christian advocates here as well. It will be confidence building.
By the way we are currently coming full circle and the growth of LGBT affirming churches and denominations growing exponentially. Whites work demonstrates these ministers were before their time and their message and work was obviously high-jacked later by evangelical and mainstream Christianity.
Sadly, I think that, because of the content, few will take the time to read Reforming Sodom. But if you are a student of gay rights history then taking the time to explore White’s work will give you a less one-sided view and you’ll definitely by more well-informed. I am…….now.
Anthony Venn-Brown
Author of A Life of Unlearning
April 29, 2016
Listen to my interview with the author at:
http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org...
http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews