#troyperry

"WE'RE NOT AFRAID ANYMORE," Reverend Troy Perry leads a gay rights picket from Hollywood High School to the local Los Angeles Police Station to protest ongoing harassment of the city's queer community, Los Angeles, California, March 1969. Photo by Pat Rocco, c/o @onearchives. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #TroyPerry #Resist #Sunday (at Los Angeles, California)

Happy Birthday, Reverend Troy Perry! Picture: Rev. Perry (b. July 27, 1940), Los Angeles, California, 1973. Photo © Anthony Friedkin. From a young age, Troy Perry described himself as a "religious fanatic," and he was a licensed Baptist preacher by the age of fifteen. After his marriage in 1959, he and his wife moved from Florida to Illinois, where Perry attended seminary and served as a preacher at a small Church of God. When Perry was nineteen, church administrators confronted him with information about a sexual relationship he had had with another man, and Perry was forced to leave the church immediately. Soon after his family (which now included two sons) moved to Southern California, his wife discovered his hidden copy of Donald Webster Cory’s “The Homosexual in America,” and the marriage quickly dissolved. In 1968, after renouncing his religion and serving in the U.S. Army for two years, Perry survived a suicide attempt and witnessed the devastating impact that raids on gay bars had on some of his friends, experiences that inspired him to offer a place for gay people to worship freely. Thus, in late 1968, Perry placed an ad in “The Advocate” announcing the first meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC); while only twelve people attended the MCC’s first service, the Los Angeles congregation had over a thousand members by 1971. The MCC now has over three hundred congregations worldwide. While the place of religion within the gay liberation movement has been a source of great debate since the movement began, Reverend Perry’s impact on gay liberation is almost universally recognized as positive. From the 1968 Patch protest to the 1971 March on Albany, from the response to the Upstairs Lounge disaster to the defeat of the Briggs Initiative, from the community’s reaction to the AIDS epidemic through the fight for marriage equality, Reverend Perry helped lead the way. Reverend Troy Perry, who lives in Los Angeles with his longtime partner, turns seventy-six today. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #queerhistorymatters #haveprideinhistory #troyperry (at Los Angeles, California)

Reverend Troy Perry, founder, Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the country's first LGBT-friendly Christian denomination, standing in the Church's headquarters after a fire of "suspicious origin" destroyed the building, Los Angeles, January 28, 1973. Photo by Anthony Friedkin. Later that year, in June 1973, as MCC members hosted a post-Pride Parade gathering at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans, the wooden staircase leading to the bar's only entrance was set ablaze; thirty-two people, including MCC Reverend Bill Lawson, died in the deadliest conflagration in New Orleans history. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #gay #bi #lesbian #trans #pride #metropolitancommunitychurch #troyperry #upstairslounge #anthonyfriedkin #shouldersofgiants (at Union Square, Los Angeles)

Wedding of Ron Douglas & Jack Wilson, Los Angeles, June 1970. Photo by Pat Rocco, @onearchives. Douglas and Wilson were married by Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the country's first LGBT-friendly Christian denomination. Between 1968 and 2015, MCC clergy performed more than 240,000 same-sex marriages, and each service included the following blessing: "Your marriage is blessed by God, but is not yet recognized by the government. We're working on that." #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #gay #bi #lesbian #trans #pride #valentinesgay #metropolitancommunitychurch #troyperry #patrocco (at Los Angeles, California)