Attached to Paper Session
Meeting Preference
On October 14, 1979, over a thousand queer and trans people of color gathered at Harambee House near Howard University for the Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, organized by the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG). Widely recognized as a moment marking a new chapter in gay and lesbian politics, one in which LGBTQ people of color organized around their views and priorities independent of the mainstream gay rights movement, less frequently discussed is the religious nature of this shift—illustrated, for instance, by the fact that many of the NCBLG’s founders were themselves clergy in the Metropolitan Community Churches. Drawing on the history of the NCBLG, this paper gestures towards the strategies LGBTQ communities of color employed to negotiate the neoliberalization of gay and lesbian politics in the late twentieth century—and the ways they articulated modes of resistance to it through their religio-political engagements.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
On October 14, 1979, over a thousand queer and trans people of color gathered at Harambee House near Howard University for the Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, organized by the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG). Widely recognized as a moment marking a new chapter in gay and lesbian politics, one in which LGBTQ people of color organized around their views and priorities independent of the mainstream gay rights movement, less frequently discussed is the religious nature of this shift—illustrated, for instance, by the fact that many of the NCBLG’s founders were themselves clergy in the Metropolitan Community Churches. Drawing on the history of the NCBLG, this paper gestures towards the strategies LGBTQ communities of color employed to negotiate the neoliberalization of gay and lesbian politics in the late twentieth century—and the ways they articulated modes of resistance to it through their religio-political engagements.