“A Sign of Things to Come?” Religion’s Role in Defining Sexuality Politics in Iowa

On October 14, 1977, Anita Bryant gave a press conference before her concert in Des Moines, Iowa where she was infamously pied in the face. Queer activist, Thom Higgins, took credit for the act of protest through his role as a member of a Minneapolis group called the “Church of the Chosen People” which Higgins referred to as a “pagan religion.” This juxtaposition of religiosity: Bryant’s conservative Christianity and Higgin’s pagan group that emphasized the unlearning of religious bigotry frames this project’s examination of how religion became a foundational tool in the development of queer and anti-queer activism in Iowa during the late twentieth century. The project argues that religiosity served as a vessel for the formation of ideologies concerning queer rights and became a significant factor in the development of queer identity in this rural Midwestern space. Specifically in Iowa, religiosity created a confrontational space between queer and anti-queer activists through its role as a “binding agent” in the “middle-ground” that was the cross-section of the urban and the rural in Iowa. Religion served as the bridge that connected rural and urban Iowa where queer and anti-queer activists participated in activism efforts that simultaneously conformed and broke social norms of both urban and rural spaces. These fractures included intradenominational battles between various Christian denominations with some clergymen advocating for queer inclusion in their respective churches as well as queer Iowans in rural communities embracing their Christian faith as part of their activism in an effort to reconcile their rural and queer livelihoods. This project dissects the role religiosity played in the formation of queer activism in Iowa in an attempt to underscore not only the existence, but the political significance of queer identities in the rural Midwest that often contradicted those of urban spaces.