Outlaws to Inlaws: Same-Sex Marriage in the 50s, 60s and 70s

One of the big news stories before Christmas 2013 was the United Methodist church's defrocking of Rev. Frank Schaefer for officiating at his son's marriage. His son is gay, as is the man he married. This week's blog entry is about a different Methodist minister who was removed from the church in 1973 on similar grounds. While in Boston I interviewed Rev. William E. Alberts two days before the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Board of Ordained Ministry announced its decision to defrock Schaefer.

Alberts was not actually defrocked; his bishop deemed him "unappointable" and was subsequently forced to retire after he officiated the marriage of Harry Freeman and Bob Jones, who I'll write about next week. According to Alberts, however, his removal from the church had nothing to do with having officiated a gay marriage. It was a red herring directing attention away from the deeper problem of racism within the Southern New England Methodist conference.

In 1964, Boston's renovated Old West Methodist Church was re-opened, with a grand vision to establish it as the voice of Methodism in Boston. Alberts was brought on board as co-minister with special responsibility to develop experimental programs that provided "services to humanity." As Martin Luther King called for racial justice and Lyndon Johnston called for a War on Poverty, so followed the churches -- at least on the surface.

Rev. Alberts earned a PhD from Boston University in psychology and pastoral counselling in 1961 while serving at Lafayette St. United Methodist Church in Salem, Massachusetts when he was handpicked for the position at Old West. When he took up his new post he quickly forged connections with diverse community members: the Cambridge Street church became home to music groups and a theatre company, and a refuge for hippies, activists, radicals and Cuban relief workers. The experience not only changed the community, it also changed Alberts.

Angered by police violence against the so-called hippies who flocked to Boston in 1968, Alberts dressed like a hippie and was arrested on the Boston Common with two young men. "I used the denial of our rights, upon arrest, to dramatize in a Boston Globe story the mistreatment by police of the thousands of hippies who had flocked to the Boston Common. "In 1971 I was arrested with several other anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at a sing-in in the Cambridge Draft Board office and did 8 days at the Billerica House of Correction; and the Boston Globe published my daily diary ;about that jail experience."

According to Alberts, however, in the eyes of his superiors his most controversial action was to stand with his African American brethren in support of the fight against racism within the church.

In 1969, the New England Black Methodists for Church Renewal (BMCR) requested the conference allocate $500,000 a year for three years for black economic and community development programs. This request was inspired by James Forman's delivery of the Black Manifesto at the Riverside Church in New York City, one of the most prominent white Protestant churches in America. The Manifesto demanded half a billion dollars be given "reparations" from American Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. The funds would be used to establish a farming cooperative, four publishing houses, four black television networks, a research centre for training in communications, a grant to the National Welfare Rights Organization, an International Black Appeal, a black Anti-Defamation League, and a black university. The BMCR was more modest -- requesting, not demanding, for example -- but they were equally steadfast in their commitment to achieving racial justice through and in their church and community.

In a 1970 Boston Globe account of the meeting Alberts, who is of white heritage, and colleague Rev. William B. McClain, who is of African American heritage, described how after the proposal was advanced, "a white racist Christian mind set surfaced." Eventually some funds were granted, but it was a fraction of the original request.

Two years later, when a black pastor was passed over in favour of a white pastor for promotion to a church with a predominantly African American congregation, the BMCR requested a formal investigation into the possibility that racism was a factor in the decision-making process. Once again, Alberts was a vocal supporter who stood with McClain and other BCMR members.

As Alberts sees it, the gay marriage he officiated in April 1973 provided the excuse his superiors needed to get rid of him. The bishop demanded that he not perform the ceremony, but Alberts ignored the warning.

Interestingly, the gay marriage issue did not provide the traction the bishop needed and he resorted to even more sordid tactics to achieve his goal, but that story will have to wait for the book. (So, too, will the twist to this entire affair: the bishop who deemed Alberts "unappointable" was African American.)

Alberts' story reveals something that is becoming increasingly evident in my research. In the mid-1960s, those with authority within organized religion were open to permitting exploration of new ideas about social change and social justice circulating at the time, including the call to embrace homosexuals in Christian community. It quickly became evident, however, that, if taken on board, these ideas would demand radical change, not moderate reform. After a brief period of openness and experimentation, many of the mainline churches made a hasty retreat and retrenched behind their vestments.

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This past weekend Elise flew to Boston on a last-minute research trip.  Unfortunately in the rush to get to the archives she left her computer at the airport security check point. This Monday she sends a pictogram to explain research's circuitous route.

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A great deal of the research for this project has come from lesbian and gay archives. Scattered across the United States and Canada, they are treasure troves for historians of sexuality. Too few, however, know about their existence, but those who do have a deep passion for preserving the past. One of my best “finds” at ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives in Los Angeles illustrates this perfectly.

When I arrived there in the early summer of 2012, archivist Michael Oliveira was excited to show me their most recent acquisition: photographs of a male couple who had a wedding ceremony in a North Philly apartment sometime in the 1950s. For five decades, the photos sat in the Mandarang family collection. Jackie Mandarang never knew why because she recognized not a soul. One day she asked her father about them.

Your mother used to work in a photomat, he explained. Whenever film came in that the photomat owner deemed inappropriate, he would confiscate it on moral grounds. He did not mind, however, if the staff helped themselves to the prints.

Jackie’s mother tucked the wedding snaps away in her purse and hoped that one day the gentlemen would come in to the shop and she could surreptitiously pass the photos over. They never did, and the pictures ended up among the Mandarang family photos.

In a letter to the archives Jackie explains that she put the photos up for auction on eBay. The successful bidder insisted that she make a copy of the set and send it to ONE for preservation and public use. I am glad he thought to do that, but it does make me wonder how much historical material is in the hands of private collectors, out of reach of the research community. When the value in an object is in its scarcity, can we ever hope that copies will be made available so that we can know our own past?

I got in touch with The Philadelphia Gay News in the hope that, with their help, the photos could be reunited with their rightful owners. They ran a story about the confiscated photos in February 2013, but no one has come forward to claim them. What made the couple decide to get married? Who was it that married them, and how did their friends feel about the ceremony? We will never know.

I had hoped that the article might also prompt people who have stories of their own about same-sex weddings in the '50s, '60s and '70s to get in touch with me, but that didn’t happen either. Even in the age of the Internet, finding each other is a challenging task.

It is a pleasure to share my research findings with a broad audience but the truth is that my underlying hope is that the blog reaches people who participated in or witnessed same-sex weddings, or who opposed them, or who officiated them, or who had any other connection to the subject. If that’s you, please get in touch with me. It that’s not you, please like, share and re-post as far and wide as possible. Don’t let our history be a scarce resource. You can email me at echenier@gmail.com.


[Image Description: two reasonably young men in suits stand at a wedding cake, cutting it together]


[Image Description: 5 men stand together in V: at the center, an officiant holding a large book. On both sides of him, the grooms and their best men. A six th man in a suit, also holding a book, is in the background on the right].

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Last week I wrote about Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. At the same time Perry was building his church in Los Angeles, Father Robert Clement, an ordained priest of the Old Catholic Church of America, was building his congregation in New York City. Also like Perry, Clement was an out and proud gay man. He famously participated in the June 1970 Stonewall march wearing his Catholic collar and carrying a sign that said “Gay People This Is Your Church.” He meant his Church of the Beloved Disciple, which held regular services at the 9th Avenue and 28th Street Episcopalian Church of the Holy Apostles.

Also like Perry, one of the most popular services Clement provided was to bless the unions of same-sex couples. In an interview on the LGBT Religious Archives Network he explains that he and his partner coined the term “Holy Union” to describe this particular rite. He also claims that he was the first to publicly perform Holy Unions, a claim that Troy Perry disputes. Perhaps Outlaws to In-Laws will set the record straight. I’m working on it.

Undisputed is the fact that when, in 1970, Clement wanted to marry his partner John Noble, he asked Troy to officiate. Through his work as a priest serving the lesbian and gay community, Clement had a very high public profile. It is hard to imagine anyone other than Perry filling this role.

The photo, taken at the Robert and John’s wedding reception, appears on the LGBT Religious Archives Network page featuring Clement’s full story. Clement and Noble’s beaming smiles suggest that it was a happy day indeed.

[Image Description: Father Robert Clement and John Noble standing together behind their wedding cake.]

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Archivists are the unsung heroes of the historical profession. They are made all the more special by the fact that in the lesbian and gay archives sector most are unpaid, or underpaid. Theirs is a true labor of love.

Doing research in volunteer-run archives means that services can be patchy. You rely on the goodwill and good humor of others, and luck and happenstance can have as much to do with your research results as a good method and thorough approach.

When I first began contemplating same-sex marriage as a research topic, I contacted the Lesbian Herstory Archives. As luck would have it, the volunteer archivist on duty that day was worked particularly hard to provide detailed answers to researcher's questions. When I asked if the Archives had any material on lesbian weddings before 1980, she found a variety of newspaper clippings and suggested other parts of their collection where I might look. She also chatted up a few of the long-time Archives volunteers and workers, women whose participation in the local lesbian scene went back to the 1960s and '70s New York community. One of them suggested I contact Daisy de Jesus.

A search of the online phone directory got me nowhere. Four years later, I tried again. Her name appeared in a news story about a wedding expo for same-sex couples. The journalist identified where she and her partner lived and I was able to use that information to track her down. In 2012 we sat down together for an interview in her office on Broadway.

In the late 1960s, Daisy was known in the local lesbian bar scene as the woman who conducted marriage ceremonies. It started simply enough. One day two of Daisy's friends told her that they wished they could get married. “I’ll marry you!” Daisy blurted out. And so she did.

The Broadway Central bar where she hung out was terrifically noisy, so she always conducted ceremonies in the hotel lobby.

“But you had to be quick,” she said. “The bouncers would come and kick you back into the bar.”

Daisy married couples for four years. She stopped when she began dating a woman who was possessive of her and resented her constant interaction with other women. Not long after she became involved in Salsa Soul Sisters, a feminist group of women of Latina and African American heritage interested in alternatives to the bar, to butch-fem practices, and to relationship conventions such as marriage.

Daisy’s story reveals how same-sex couples found ways to marry each other at a time when homosexuals were seen as deviant, as immature, and as incapable of forming meaningful, lasting relationships. I would never have been able to document it and share it with you now were it not for the commitment of archivists. That young archivist is named Lisa Cohen, and it is to her we owe this story.

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The headline says it all. In the 1950s, lesbians were “freaks.” This was especially true of butch women who adopted a masculine working-class style. Their style alone communicated volumes: I will not conform to society’s rules; I will not be a “proper” woman; I am a sexually desiring being, and my desire is directed toward women, especially feminine women.


When I first uncovered this image, I was stunned. It is rare to see photographs from this period. Few working-class women had cameras, few could afford to take photos, and most moved so often that photos tended to get lost, misplaced, or thrown out.

But even more than that, I was surprised to learn that these women, whom historians have always characterized as rebels, as heterosexual refuseniks, as the political predecessors to the lesbian and feminist liberationists who denounced marriage and romance as major sources of women’s oppression, got married. Not only that, they did so in the most conventional of ways. As the image of Ivy and Gerry shows, they wore conventional wedding attire. My research is showing that this was only the beginning. Women arranged for an officiant – sometimes a friend, and sometimes a Christian minister sympathetic to same-sex lovers – and exchanged heartfelt vows. Afterwards, many couples celebrated with a multi-tier wedding cake. There was no marriage license, of course, but what did that matter?

How does lesbian marriage fit with the image historians have constructed of butch and fem culture as a rebel culture? Was marriage in this case an act of resistance against heterosexual norms or was it, as some queer critics of today’s marriage equality movement argue, conformist and conservative?

I have been exploring this question in archives and interviews with people who married in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and found that men engaged in the same practice. I have learned that then, as now, “homosexual marriage” was a topic of heated debate among gays and lesbians. Some wondered why anyone would want to give up the freedom from life-long monogamy that lesbians and gays enjoyed. Others thought that such practices made homosexuals look ridiculous and undermined any hope of winning civil rights.

From Outlaws to In-Laws explores the history of same-sex marriage in the United States from the 1950s up to the present-day marriage equality movement. Some have argued that weddings in the 1960s and 1970s were acts of resistance and acts of conformity, but after two years of reflecting on my research findings, I suggest that “resistance” as a category of analysis is not particularly useful in understanding marriage as a cultural practice among lesbians and gays. Without abandoning an understanding of marriage as a political institution, in From Outlaws to In-Laws I want to explore the way love, pleasure, desire and affection are given expression, and how these feelings and their public expression contribute to forming and building community.

If you have a story to share about same-sex marriage before 1980, get in touch with me. I am still collecting histories and artifacts for this project. And if you have a question or comment, I hope you’ll share it below. Thanks for reading, and please share this blog with your friends.

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