1960s: The Mattachine Society Creates Connections

Jack Nicols at a meeting of the Mattachine Society's Committee on Religious Concerns.

Exhibit overview

The need for religious and spiritual meaning and community has existed as long as LGBTQ+ communities, but traditionally, the historical narrative of queerness and religion has been driven by how religious leaders and communities have infliced trauma and harm on queer members. This narrative is valid and acknowledges the religious trauma within the LGBTQ+ community but fails to acknowledge how queer people themselves have been forming inclusive communities of worship for centuries, and how religious communities themselves have committed to welcoming in all peoples. 

This exhibit frames queer religious history in the DMV as a timeline around the pivotal decades of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s largely because this is when considerable documentation was created. It does not negate the fact that religious communities have included and integrated LGBTQ+ individuals into their faith for centuries, and how these individuals have played active leadership roles. It only speaks to the holdings in the Rainbow History Project Collection. 

The Mattachine Society Washington, DC chapter

The first event to mark queer religious development mirrors that of many queer history textbooks: the inception of the Mattachine Society in 1950. Activist Harry Hay originally formed the group in Los Angeles to protect and advocate for the rights of gay men. The Society published a monthly periodical, "ONE: The Homosexual Viewpoint" that was one of the first national publications to document and describe queer experience and community. Not shortly after the magazine was founded in November 1952, the December 1960 issue focused on the topic of faith with its issue, "Homosexual, servant of God."

Mattachine Society chapters soon spread across the United States, and in November 1961, Frank Kamey founded the Mattachine Society of Washington with Jack Nichols, a 23-year-old native Washingtonian. Dr. Kamey's organization also reached out to the religious community through its Committee on Religious Concerns and the Washington Area Council on Reigion and the Homosexual. Soon after the chapter's inception, Nichols and Kamey began reaching out to DC-area religious leaders to forge connections. 

Constitution of the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual

On May 24, 1965, the second meeting between the Mattachine Society of Washington and nine members of the clergy (Congregationalist, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Methodist, and Roman Catholic). This meeting was the formal establishment of the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual. The constitution of the Washington area council on Religion and the Homosexual was formally adopted on December 6, 1965. The purpose of this organization is, as the constitution notes, "to effect the integration of the individual homosexual into the religious life of the community be alloviation of the estrangement and alienation which now exists between the homosexual and the religious community."

New release from the Mattachine Society of Washington on National Conference of Homosexuals in Washington

Given DC's location in the nation's capital, many queer organization and activism events took place on site, drawing in other thinkers and leaders on queer religious leadership and inclusion from around the country. From August 17-19, 1967, delegates from organizations across the United States met for the third National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations. A press conference was held on August 16, 1967, at which time the meeting's chairman, the Rev. Canon Robert Cromey who worked with the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in San Francisco, CA was present. This meeting, along with the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual, paved the way for more formal LGBTQ+ partnership and leadership in the 1970s.