Queer Women and Religious Individualism

3 Queering the Spiritual Marketplace

The Reverend Susan Russell is a priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, just north of Los Angeles. Her main assignment there is to direct a project called Beyond Inclusion, a nationwide effort to convince the Episcopal Church to adopt a formal liturgy for blessing same-sex couples. The project is a ministry of All Saints, a large congregation long known for its social justice activism. Support for LGBT Episcopalians in the Los Angeles area, however , goes far beyond this one church. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, represented by the bishop himself, forms a contingent in the Los Angeles Pride Parade each June. “It’s amazing how . . . healing that is, how sometimes unexpected it is,” Russell reflects. “You know, between the Dykes on Bikes and the boom bar floats, and here comes ‘The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.’” “And our bishop is there with us. . . . Big guy in purple, waving to the crowd.”1    The religious landscape of queer Los Angeles has undergone massive change since the mid-1980s, when, as the Reverend Daniel Smith of West Hollywood Presbyterian Church recalls, “our church, MCC Los Angeles, and the one gay temple in the area, Beth Chayim Chadashim, . . . were the three primary spiritual care providers of the whole [LGBT] community.”2 When I began the research for this book in 2001, there were thirty-one listings under the heading “Religious and Spiritual Organizations” in the Southern California Gay and Lesbian Community Yellow Pages. All of them were in the greater Los Angeles area. Nine of these groups had ads in addition to their listings, and the Episcopal 3 Queering the Spiritual Marketplace • 44 | Queer Women and Religious Individualism Church had a full-page ad listing forty welcoming congregations within the Los Angeles diocese. Most of the listings (twenty-two) as well as the ads (seven) were identifiably Christian; they included LGBT-specific organizations such as Metropolitan Community Churches, Christ Chapel congregations, Evangelicals Concerned, and AXIOS, an organization for Orthodox Christian gays and lesbians . Also included were welcoming congregations of mainstream Christian denominations such as the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church– USA, the Disciples of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and of course the Episcopal Church. A 4½-inch by 2-inch spread at the top of one page asked, “Roman Catholic?” and advertised the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Catholics, an officially sponsored ministry that emphasizes balancing Catholic doctrine with personal conscience. The Los Angeles chapter of Dignity was also represented. Three synagogues appeared in the listings, along with a Unitarian Universalist church, an “Emotional and Spiritual Healing Center,” Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists, and a chapter of the AIDS support organization Shanti. No ex-gay or otherwise nonaffirming organizations were included in either the listings or the ads.3    The Gay and Lesbian Community Yellow Pages serves LGBT people of all genders, so there is no way of knowing whom exactly the organizations placing these ads and listings expect to attract or whom they actually draw. Yet a brief perusal of the June 2001 issue of Los Angeles’ Lesbian News reveals similar results . Next to an ad for “go-go goddesses,” for instance, and just inside the front page of the magazine, is a bold statement: “Even Jesus listened to Madonna (and no, not that Madonna).” This ad for Open Door Ministries, an Evangelical LGBT church southeast of Los Angeles, continues: “‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ . . . even if you’re Gay or Lesbian!”4 A few pages later, across from a story about Los Angeles’ WNBA team, a half-page ad invites readers to “Kick-off Pride Weekend at BCC—The World’s First LGBT Synagogue.”5 Also included is a Dignity ad that subtly challenges readers not to patronize the Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Catholics,6 and the calendar lists over forty religion-related entries for the greater Los Angeles area alone—some of which specifically target women. Even at the Los Angeles Pride Festival in 2001, on the day of the women-focused Dyke March, I found booths representing several different religious organizations and was approached by members of a Buddhist movement known as Soka Gakkai, who asked whether I was interested in chanting “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” for world peace. Apparently religion (or, as many Angelenos would say, “spirituality”) has found a significant place within the LGBT communities of greater Los Angeles.    The twenty-one organizations that played, or recently...