Queer Women and Religious Individualism

2 Setting the Stage: Historical Contexts

“All the fruits and nuts are in California.” So goes the saying, referring not only to the state’s bounteous produce but also derisively to gay men (fruits) and followers of new religious movements (nuts). This saying was particularly apropos in the 1960s and 1970s; however, California has a long history of both religious and sexual diversity, and Los Angeles has played a prominent part in that history. Though many of the women who contributed to this book were born and raised elsewhere, at the time of our interviews all were negotiating their religious, sexual, and gender identities in this rich milieu. While I will argue that their reflexive and individualistic approach to identity negotiation is a product of a much larger postmodern context, the specific resources available to these women are directly tied to their geographical and historical location. In the interest of understanding this location and its impact on contemporary queer women in L.A., the present chapter provides a brief overview of religious history in the Los Angeles basin and LGBT history in the city and its environs, before turning to a discussion of L.A.’s LGBT religious history. Religious History The modern story of religious immigration and encounter in the Los Angeles area begins with the Gabrielino people, who before Spanish colo2 Setting the Stage historical contexts • Setting the Stage | 17 nization were in contact with a variety of cultures through traders’ visits to their homes. Though pre-invasion histories are difficult to come by and early European sources on Native Americans must always be treated with some suspicion , it appears that pre-invasion Gabrielino religious practices centered on a single creator deity, with respects paid as well to the sun, moon, and stars, and to Crow, Raven, Owl, and Eagle.1 Spanish contact with the native peoples of coastal North America began with Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s 1542 sea expedition, but active colonization began only when Portolá and Serra’s 1769 land exploration led Spanish soldiers and missionaries to plan a settlement on Gabrielino lands. The resulting San Gabriel mission, founded in 1771, imposed its name on the people of the region (thus “Gabrielino”), along with the forced-labor conditions that characterized the missions’ relationship with native people and the additional violence that came with the accompanying soldiers.2    Though (white) academic sources claim that most speakers of the Gabrielino language died in the nineteenth century and that there was little left of the Gabrielino population, culture, or identity by the beginning of the twentieth century, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of a movement for government recognition of the Gabrielinos. In the 1990 census, 581 people identified as Gabrielino; in 2000, the number had increased to 1,775.3 California recognized the tribe, now also called the Tongva, in 1994. There were efforts in the 1990s to restore a spring considered sacred to the Gabrielino people, and there is ongoing work to revive and strengthen cultural traditions and to attain federal tribal recognition.    The traditional cultural practices of the Gabrielinos characterized the Los Angeles basin until the late eighteenth century, but under Spanish and Mexican rule the area was by law Roman Catholic, and Catholicism has left a strong imprint there. Yet Catholicism has also changed with the times. Though the San Gabriel mission still stands, its literature is now published not only in Spanish but also in English and Vietnamese—two of the many languages represented in twenty-first-century Angeleno Catholicism. Mexican culture continues to influence the city in myriad ways, and over the decades of the twentieth century Mexican influence increasingly combined with that of various other Latin American cultures. Early arrivals brought curanderas (folk healers) and Mexican spiritualists into Los Angeles, and though many Latinos in the region remain affiliated with the Catholic Church, recently the Pentecostal movement has made major inroads in their communities just as it has in many Latin American countries.    TheU.S.conquestofnorthernMexicoin1848,andthesubsequentCalifornia gold rush of 1849, altered Los Angeles significantly. To Anglo eyes, the predominantly Catholic Mexicans in the region became like the Gabrielinos and other native peoples: “perceived as a ‘conquered race,’” in the words of historian 18 | Queer Women and Religious Individualism Antonio Ríos-Bustamante.4 A powerful trend of anti-Catholicism in the United StatesasawholeduringthenineteenthcenturyalsoensuredthatL.A.’sCatholics would receive a rough welcome from their new federal landlords. Protestant missionaries from many different denominations...