GLLA 2018 Pride Guide

36
GAYLIFE LA PRIDE ISSUE SUMMER 2018
37
GAYLIFE LA PRIDE ISSUE SUMMER 2018
OUR HEROES:
T R OY
PERRY
A CONSERVATIVE
CHRISTIAN ONCE
MARRIED TO A
WOMAN, PERRY
ENDED UP FOUNDING
THE LARGEST LGBT
CHURCH IN THE
WORLD
Troy Perry (July 27, 1940 ). Even as a
young man growing up in Tallahassee,
Florida, Troy Perry says he was a
“religious fanatic.” By the time he was 15
he was a Baptist preacher. By the time he
was 19, he was married to the daughter
of another preacher, with whom he had
two sons. He attended the conservative
Midwest Bible College and Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago and became a Church
of God minister before he turned 21.
continued to be pushed out of the closet
despite himself. One day his wife found
a copy of “The Homosexual in America,”
described as “one of the most influential
works in the history of the gay rights
movement,” under their mattress and
ended their marriage.
Perry spent time as a store clerk and two
years in the Army. In 1968, he saw the
police arrest his date for the night at the
Black Cat Tavern, a gay bar in Silver Lake.
That inspired him to return to preaching,
but this time to a gay audience. Three
years later Perry’s congregation swelled
to more than 1,000 people and it opened
its own church at 22nd and Union streets
in Los Angeles, which was destroyed by a
fire of mysterious origin in 1973.
Perry was interested in diversity in his
congregation and welcomed people of
color. He even had lesbians dressed in
suits serve as ushers. He encouraged
the creation of a lesbian group within
the church called De Colores. While
founding a Christian church for an
LGBT congregation was radical for
its time, Perry’s religious philosophy
was conservative. Nevertheless he
encouraged his congregants to join
even the Los Angeles Gay Liberation
Front, a group that disdained the more
mainstream efforts at acceptance of
other homophile organizations.
Even as he was preaching the Holy
Scripture Perry was struggling with an
attraction to other men. He was forced to
leave his Church of God ministry when
one sexual partner told church leaders
about a liaison. He and his wife and
children moved to Southern California,
where he became minister at a Church
of God of Prophecy. In California, Perry
Today the MCC, a Protestant denomination,
has 222 member congregations in 37
countries and continues to focus on LGBT
people. Perry lives in Los Angeles with his
long term partner, Phillip Ray De Blieck,
who he married under Canadian law
at Metropolitan Community Church of
Toronto.