Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in Australian Anglicanism

Abstract

David Hilliard (‘Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in Australian Anglicanism’) surveys the relationship of same-sex attracted people to the Anglican Church in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present and how they sought to reconcile their sexuality with their religious faith. He argues that the subject of homosexuality as a moral problem or pastoral issue was almost totally absent from public discussion within the Anglican Church before the 1960s. However, there is evidence from the mid-nineteenth century onwards that some same-sex attracted people, although secretive about their sexuality, were able to find spaces within Anglicanism.