“Voices Speak Out”: Gay Christian Public Theologies in 1980s San Francisco

San Francisco and its LGBTQ communities are often depicted as secular. Yet in the 1980s San Francisco housed numerous projects that sought to create new religious possibilities by integrating faith and sexuality in the city’s public life. This paper examines the work of two white, gay Christian theologians who tried to shift gay religious politics in the city, showing how they tried to make a viable public conversation on sexuality and religion, and how those efforts were curtailed by gay politics, church politics, and the ways that AIDS changed both. The first case is Catholic theologian Kevin Gordon, his work with the San Francisco Archdiocese’s Social Justice Commission, and its 1982 report Homosexuality and Social Justice. The second is the Reverend Rick Weatherly and his “Religion and Us” column published in San Francisco’s major gay newspaper, the Bay Area Reporter, from 1981 through 1983. The column introduced readers to the politics of gay religious life locally and nationally. The paper will conclude with reflections on how the theological work of both men was truncated by AIDS, and how AIDS shaped the trajectory of gay religious politics in the city.