Council on Religion and the Homosexual

The Council on Religion and the Homosexual was formed in 1964, about ten years before I arrived in San Francisco. In the mid-1970s, I became its co-chair, and participated in its fight against the Briggs Initiative. Founding members of the Council were still on board when I arrived, and they told me the stories of its founding.

The group was formed to connect homosexual activists with religious leaders for mutual dialogue and education. Its founders included clergymen (and they all were men) from various Christian churches. They were joined by leaders of the gay rights groups of the time: the Mattachine Society, the Society for Individual Rights, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the founding mothers of the Daughters of Bilitis lesbian organization. When they incorporated as the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, they may have been the first corporation in the U.S. to use the word “homosexual” in its name.

No story of CRH is complete without the tale of the New Year’s Eve Ball. The clergy and activists decided to fund-raise by holding a ball at California Hall on Polk Street. The ministers feared that the police would try to break up the party, so they told them their plans. The police response was to pressure the hall’s owners to cancel the event. After that didn’t work, some of the police may have agreed not to interfere with the dance.

Nevertheless, on the night of the ball, the police pointed floodlights at the hall’s entrance and photographed everyone who entered the hall. Taking their pictures was what the police did to intimidate gay men; publishing their pictures in newspapers often ended their jobs and destroyed their family lives.

The five hundred or so attendees were joined by about fifty police officers, whose very presence was threatening. The straight religious folk experienced police harassment for themselves, as peaceful partygoers confronted by so many officers and paddy wagons.

Then several officers demanded to go inside. CRH had hired three lawyers, foreseeing such a request. They told the officers that the party was a private one, and that they had to buy tickets to enter. The police promptly arrested not only the three lawyers but also a ticket taker standing nearby.

Randy Shilts described these events in his book on Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street. He wrote: “The ministers held an angry press conference the next morning, likening the SFPD to the Gestapo and demanding an investigation. Even the Catholic archbishop was reportedly up in arms. For this, if no other reason, City Hall had to respond.”

The arrested lawyers were defended at trial by ACLU attorneys, who got the charges dropped. City Hall assigned police officers to “smooth relations with the city’s gays.”

           Not only did police harassment decrease, but incumbents and aspiring politicians recognized the size of the gay community and began to seek their vote. In exchange for gay support, San Francisco assemblymen Willie Brown and John Burton introduced a bill to repeal the statute forbidding gay sex. Dianne Feinstein credited the gay vote for making her president of the Board of Supervisors. This led to her becoming the mayor of San Francisco, and now she’s the senior Senator from California.

So the New Year’s Ball was a seminal step in turning gays from an oppressed minority into a powerful political constituency.