Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights

Abstract

Reforming Sodom describes how liberal Protestantism in mid-twentieth-century America tried to contribute to a therapeutic perspective on same sex-behavior and identity. However, while some liberal Protestant clergy provided support for early gay activism, a larger (and ironic) consequence of their efforts was to aid the antigay discourse of the emerging conservative evangelical religious movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Central to Heather R. White's account is the mid-1940s revision of the King James's English Bible into the more modern Revised Standard Version (rsv). While the older version contained nouns referring to men who were “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind,” the rsv replaced such ambiguous language with the term homosexual. It was the first time that the word appeared in a modern English Bible. This new openness revealed both the efforts by some liberal Protestant clergy to become influential allies and advocates of the emerging gay-identity movement and how some gay activists looked to religion as inspiration for their activism. She examines how the 1969 Stonewall Riots and their subsequent commemoration had elements of religious ritual.