My Part in the LGBT Rights Movement
Over the years I have told various parts of my participation in the LGTB rights movement in interviews with scholars, journalists, radio and TV commentators. In this memoir, I plan to write a more complete chronology and report of my activities and those of others I knew in the movement. Along the way I will reflect and comment on the rights movement, the church’s reaction and my personal satisfaction with this important activity. The unique part of this effort is that I am a straight person, not gay and a priest of the Episcopal Church. The usual questions asked me were why did you get involved in gay rights though you are straight. What does you church think of you involvement with gay people? Isn’t the Bible against homosexual activity?
I will answer the usual questions right off and get them behind me. I am a straight man and felt the LGBT rights movement was a justice issue not a sexual one. I was active in the civil rights activities for African Americans. The gay rights movement also was a justice issue for a persecuted minority.
What did the church think about my involvement? Some people thought it was fine, others thought I was crazy, gay or deluded. Officials in the church never did anything official against me.
The Bible appears to say some negative things about homosexual activity. I am not a Biblical literalist. Those passages must be looked at in light of the date, the context in which they were uttered and the prejudices of people at the time they were written. None of them are the inspired word of God. Nothing in the Bible is God almighty talking to us directly. Obviously Fundamentalist, literalist and very conservative readers of the Bible would disagree. But “frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn.”
I have kept a scrap book of clippings from newspapers and magazines which mention my name in connection with gay rights. I use that as a source of the chronology. However, I have memories from teen, college, seminary years and from my first jobs before I began to speak publicly about homosexual issues. I will depend on my memories for a large part of what I write.
In August of 1963, I preached a sermon in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. At that time I was held the exalted title of “executive assistant” to the Episcopal Bishop of California, James Albert Pike. At 31 years old I had the privilege of being associated with one of my heroes. Bishop Pike was an outstanding liberal who drew direct connections between the gospel of Jesus and daily life. He spoke out on ot issues at the time of supporting birth control, attempts to limit free speech and had oppose communist witch hunts. As his assistant I was a Canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. A canon is a priest on the staff of the diocese and cathedral.
It was the first time and only time I was ever invited by the Dean of the Cathedral to preach at Grace.
In the sermon in which I said we must treat homosexuals as human beings, learn the complexities of homosexual behavior, be open and loving, become friends with gay people. Do not treat them as a class but as individuals.
The Gospel for the day spoke of the Christian concern for the outcasts. It occurred to me that homosexuals were not only outcasts but also invisible. I pointed out that they were a silent minority in the church, ignored except as financial donors. If the sexual orientation of a priest became public, it was thought necessary to have him removed from his position. That sermon of mine was also patronizing: I naively suggested that homosexuals needed psychological help, but I did call for love, compassion and forgiveness.
I don’t remember any negative feedback from members of the church that Sunday. As a result of the sermon I was invited to appear on a couple of radio stations for interviews. One was with Owen Span with KGO radio. He broadcast from a bar and restaurant in the financial district. I was nervous and don’t remember one thing I said that time.
I received one letter from a gay man who wrote. “Sometimes I go into a church when it is deserted and fall on my knees and weep, not so much for my sins but because I am overcome with despair.
This lack of hope is what keeps me from church, I suppose, although sometimes I get an overwhelming desire to t worship God, even though I often feel I must be already damned by Him”
Not long after that I met Joe Allison of the S.F. News Call Bulletin. We were in the men’s room at Westlake Joe’s restaurant. He asked me who I was and we began to chat. Later, he interviewed me for his column, The Last Angry Man. His article appeared on September 13, 1963. In it I was quoted as saying, “Our attitude generally is that people with this psychic and emotional condition are some kind of animal despised of man and God and not worthy of human concern….They seem to be too much of a threat to our own sexuality – so we despise or even worse ignore the community.”
In addition to my interest in gay rights, I was deeply engaged in the civil rights movement. In the spring of 1964 major Civil rights groups called for picketing protesting the hiring policies of the automobile show rooms along Van Ness Avenue, or Auto Row.
One Saturday afternoon, I took my oldest daughter Leigh to walk with me. A lovely picture of her holding my had, walking on the picket line appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Later several of us clergy sat-in on April 11. We were among 250 people arrested that day. Movie actor Sterling Hayden was among the group. There was enormous media attention paid to us. The clergy got out of the jail the same afternoon. We were convicted and fined for trespassing. The students at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific paid our fines.
The following year several of us clergy from the Bay Area went to Selma, Alabama answering the call to clergy from Martin Luther King, Jr. In March of 1965, he asked us to join him in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The first one was brutally dispersed by police arousing national indignation.
Gay Rights
One day in 1964 while working with Bishop Pike in his office, he handed me a letter addressed to him and he said, “Please answer this and say decline. But maybe you’d ne interested in attending and representing me.”
It was a weekend conference for clergy and homosexuals to be held at the Ralston-White Retreat Center in Mill Valley just over the Golden Gate Bridge in Mill Valley. It was a dialogue set up to discover our mutual humanity. Gay and lesbian leaders felt the clergy could be valuable allies in the gay rights movement if we got to know each other. We listened to each other’s stories, our lives, goals and ambitions.
As I heard of the pain and oppression, as well as the joys and gaiety of homosexuals, I realized here was another oppressed minority, another group of people deprived of their full humanity “in the land of the free and the home of the brave.” I realized that gay rights were a civil rights issue also. I remember taking a walk in the woods with Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. Del said she thought she would be butch like a man and Phyllis the fem more like a woman. Then they laughed and said they no longer lived by this stupid stereotype. They were just two women who loved each other and chose to live together.
Out of this group of clergy and gays was founded the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Our purpose was to develop dialogue between straights and gays in local churches. We felt that if church people could meet openly gay men and women, speak with them, discover their humanity, reconciliation and communication would result.
In 1965, several gay groups sponsored a New Year’s costume ball with proceeds to go to the council. The police were outraged. The vice squad advised us that we clergy were being used by the gay community. One asked,” Aren’t your wives going to be upset by your hanging around with homosexuals?” They even asked us about our theology. The police warned us that we were being used by the gays. They assured us they would make sure that the laws about dinking and unlawful sexual conduct were obeyed.
When we arrived at the event, police photographers took pictures of the 500 people who attended as they were going into the party. The police entered the party looking for lawbreakers. Our lawyers tried to block their entrance, saying it was a private party. Two lawyers were arrested for obstructing justice. When we clergy tried to block the police entrance we were brushed aside and they would not arrest us. Once inside the police arrested two partygoers for disorderly conduct.
Now we clergy were outraged. Seven of us called a press conference denouncing the police and their discrimination against gays. They would never invade a debutante’s ball or Elks Club costume party. We witnessed clear anti-gay discrimination and we decried what we had seen. Later a judge admonished the police for their action and all charges were dropped against partygoers and lawyers.
The picture of us clergy at a press conference protesting the police behavior has been widely used in LGBT rights displays, publicity and historical exhibitions ever since.
Media attention abounded. Articles by Gerald Adams, Richard Hallgren and Donovan Bess and Maitland Zane appeared in the San Francisco newspapers. I had a radio program on KGO called Churchman Face the Issues in which I interviewed politicians, clergy, civil rights leaders and many others. Radio and TV appearances with Jim Dunbar at KGO and other happened regularly for a couple of years.
But things caught up with me. I was part time Director of Urban Work for the Diocese. I was also part time vicar of St. Aidan’s Church in San Francisco. Bishop Pike had encouraged other clergy and me to speak out in Social, political and religious issues. He had been doing it for many years and did not want to be the only person doing so. I had spoken out in favor of the farm workers and Cesar Chavez. This offended rich Episcopalians who owned farms. I defended nudity in North Beach bars, saying there are worse sins than toplessness, offending prudish church people. I wrote an article noting discrimination against blacks in private clubs and clergy spending church money to belong to such groups thus offending Episcopalians who were club members as well as trustees of the Cathedral and the Diocese. All of this was on top of marching in Selma and hob nobbing with homosexuals.
Bishop Pike went on sabbatical leave to Cambridge in England. The Suffragan Bishop Richard Millard was left in charge. He and the council of the diocese decided to end my job as director of Urban Work and hire a stewardship officer. I had a wife and three children now left with a part time salary. Bishop Pike, calling from England, arranged to pay the missing half of my salary from special funds until I could get St. Aidan’s to pay me a full salary.
On Sunday September 26, 1965 “a score or so pickets appeared before the morning service (at Grace Cathedral) They were mostly ‘members of the movement to win just treatment for homosexual.’” They said Cromey “along with other protestant ministers (worked) for fairer treatment of the gay community,” said an article in the SF Chronicle the next day. A spokesman for the cathedral said, It was no secret that the out spoken cleric’s activities have not endeared him to the conservative members of the council.”
“A spokesman for the distinguished group of clergy and laymen who compromise the council some members greatly resented ‘A cleric coming in and laying down the law.’….They felt whether they belonged to segregated clubs or not was a matter of individual conscience.” Bishop Millard said no one was trying to get Cromey. It was just a matter of changing positions and priorities.
The Living Church, an Episcopal magazine carried the story to a nationwide audience. The magazine had published an article by me entitled The Church and the Homosexual in the mid sixties.
I quickly turned to my job as vicar of St. Aidan’s in the new Diamond Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. I could spend more time there as a parish priest. I continued getting people to be sensitive to the issues and concerns of gay people. WE had to dinner party outing with members of the church going to gay resturants which were run by gay people and very welcoming to straight people. We had study groups and speakers on gay rights issues.
I continued to be involved in other public issues. I wrote an articles about segregation in much publicized debutante balls, jazz in church services and segregation in the San Francisco public schools. I also testified in a trial where I thought the use of marijuana was justified in religious practices just as alcohol is used in the church’s sacrament. The defendant lost.
I joined other clergy in supporting gays who were discriminated against in the military who discharged soldiers and sailors just because they were gay.
In 1967 I spent six weeks as a Fellow of the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C. helped clergy fashion and improve their preaching. While at the college I was interviewed by a journalist from Newsweek. We met in the fine library of the college, a photographer took pictures and we talked for an hour.
Newsweek Magazine of February 13, 1967 devoted a long column on God and the Homosexual. It described the development of our Council on Religion and the Homosexual. The article mentioned that I had been “severely criticized by members of the Diocesan Council of California overidentifying with the homosexuals’ problems.
But even among CRH advocates there is disagreement as to how far the church should go in accepting homosexuals. Episcopal Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of California, for instance accepts CRH efforts to free homosexuals from police harassment and oppressive laws but he does not feel that they can maintain healthy relationships like heterosexuals. For the church Myers believes, ‘homosexuality is a pastoral problem dealing with brokenness in humanity. The same as other moral maladies.””
But the aggressive Cromey, father of three children, wants to take the church beyond conventional moral judgments. “The sex act, he argues, is morally neutral. I also believe that two people of the same sex can express love and deepen that love by sexual intercourse. Furthermore, he concludes, in a statement that would surely redden the face of St. Paul, “I say that if two people of the same sex have a loving responsible relationship with each other, they have an obligation to express that love in whatever way they deem appropriate.”
It was gratifying to see more and more articles about homosexuality in major newspapers during the late 60s. Not only the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner but also the N.Y. Times, Wall Street Journal and Chicago Daily News.
In 1970 I resigned as Vicar of St. Aidan’s Church, San Francisco. I set up a private practice as a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Though no longer having a bully pulpit I kept up my interest and involvement in LGBT right and civil rights for all minorities.
In the early 1970’s I lead a series of Encounter Groups for gay men in the offices of SIR, the society for individual rights on Mission St. The groups urged men to tell their stories, fear, anxieties and dreams. I asked me to role-play telling their parents that they were gay. They men told of their fears of losing their jobs, apartments, family and friends if they found out they were gay. There were not many places in those days where men could tell their stories.
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon invited me to attend a meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis held at their home. I was plenty nervous. Fifteen attractive women were there. They had never met a male cleric who was interested in lesbian rights. One woman called herself a lipstick lesbian as she wore conventional women’s’ dresses jewelry, shoes and hairstyles because she really like to be a woman. She said she was laughed at by some of her sister lesbians because she was not butch. All the women had nothing to say that was good about their experience in the churches they had grown up in. I sure learned a lot from that evening and was honored to be there.
During the 1970s I led many groups on a variety of topics, meeting new friends, dealing with anger and communication skills.
I led a number of workshops on human sexuality using sexually explicit films. I insisted the groups watch film with sex between same gender partnered. The straight viewers were often very uncomfortable. The discussions that followed made many of the straight viewers see the rightness of those relationships and the injustice against lesbians and gays.
I spent 1977-78 in Germany working with drug addicts. When I returned I began seeking a job as rector of an Episcopal church. I resumed my private practice.
I approached Jewish Community Center when it advertised for a part time job developing groups for single people. I had done that for Esalen Institute and on my own. In the interview I was told I would not get the job, as I was not Jewish. I charged that the center had a religious bias. I must say it was rather fun poking my Jewish friends and neighbors. There were a couple of newspaper articles.
In October of 1981 I was elected rector of Trinity Episcopal Church at Bush and Gough Streets in San Francisco. I was elected to bring in more people, money and programs. My marketing plan was to reach out to the LGBT community and single and divorced straight people. Few churches had that agenda in 1981. I spoke a couple of time to the then G-40 group, PFLAG and I was known from my activism in the 60s.
I ad a lot of friends in the church who were delighted as I was to a rector agai. mAny people from my private practice were happy for my. My many gay and lesbaian friends were also supportive. In December of 1081, some 500 people showed up at Trinity for my installation as e
In my sermon before 500 people when I was installed as rector, I announced that Trinity was going to be a welcoming church to the LGBT community. There was some criticism and much support for my views.
With a mighty pulpit and ready hand at writing letters to the editor and article to newspapers and articles to magazines. I continued my support for LGBT rights in church, society and civil law.
I supported peter Tachel’s efforts outing Church of England Bishops and priests in 1994. I had regularly urged gays and lesbians to out themselves as a way of freeing themselves and move through the self hatred that afflicted many homosexuals. One lesbian it was harder to tell her mother that she was an churchgoing Episcopalian than to tell he she way a lesbian.
Notes:
From a friend who read just a section of this
Utterly fascinating, Robert. Thank you for sending these paragraphs as well as, of course, your being "there" when doing so was not as easy as it is now.
It is so sad, as well as reflective of the institutional Puny Mind, to be reminded of the self-hate that so many gay and transgendered men and women have. Yearning to be affirmed by ourselves and by the greater society, so many are afraid to take the incremental steps toward standing proudly as worthy members of the Body. What particularly saddened me about Kim was that his overwhelming faith in affirmation of Christianity was not strong enough to overcome his fear of affirming himself.
As you know, he held a number of views that, especially with the benefit of hindsight, did not stand the test of time. The fact that he was filled with contradictions, in some ways, made me all the more intrigued by him. His journey was long and his pace was slow, yet he never stopped moving forward at his own pace.
Given his fear of acknowledging his homosexuality to himself and to most others, I still wonder what led him to trust me and to invite me into some of the non-public parts of his life. What I remember most of our times together in his apartment at Cathedral House and at my apartment during months of recovery following my 1976 back surgery and heart attack was our conversing about things that matter. Never was there any chatting about the insignificant, and never was the dialogue compromised by any assumptions grounded in his position in life or by my youth.
