Community & Religious Responses
Increasing Acceptance
While the LGBTQ+ religious community faced backlash from their fellow religious groups, they also increasingly won battles for acceptance. In response to Mountville, PA residents’ opposition to the MCC buying a building there, Rev. Mary Merriman, the MCC pastor at the time, and Rev. Dean Brubaker, a Church of the Brethren pastor, started “study circles” involving MCC members and those who opposed their move. In the end the community withdrew its objection.
A September 21, 1994 Patriot News article about the Harrisburg Men’s chorus
Patriot News December 23, 1995 letter to the editor condemning homosexuality
Looking Forward
Many of the stories in this exhibit show the increasing acceptance LGBTQ+ people are receiving in religious communities, as well as the spaces LGBTQ+ people have created when mainstream religious spaces proved intolerant. While the story of LGBTQ+ people and their relationship to and experiences with religion may be a fraught one, it is one that shows the resilience of this community to insist that it belongs in the same spaces as everyone else, including in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and places of worship of all kinds.
