Going to hear Rev. Troy Perry preach tonight

One of the things I’ve observed as I get older is how easily we forget those who’ve gone before us and the things they went through. Few gay men in their 20s and 30s have any real sense of what we went through in the 1980s with AIDS. I’m among the fortunate ones, alive and well, with a memory of the first reports of a strange gay cancer in New York. I was living in Los Angeles then, 1981, and I can clearly remember sitting on the floor watching television with a group of friends as these reports started coming in. It’s too long, grueling and sad a story, and I’ve told it enough in stories, plays and blog posts to be done with it, but it’s part of my life’s history and always will be. We also tend to be unaware of the pioneers who don’t get all the press. Judging from what I’ve read in other gay media, we had Harvey Milk, and, when Martin Luther King Day rolls around, Bayard Rustin. But there were so many, many more. The Mattachine Society. Morris Kight. The Daughters of Bilitis. And, one day in 1968, a despondent exiled Baptist named Troy Perry who put an ad in a newspaper and started a congregation. It became the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, and it’s doing just fine. Rev. Perry was one of the founders of Christopher Street West, establishing the Los Angeles Pride March, the first and oldest. He also filed the first lawsuit seeking recognition of same-sex marriage. He is, simply, an icon, but not an icon you’ll read about at the big gay blogs. Not, I think, because they don’t care, but because they’re unaware. Even my beloved Rev. Pat Bumgardner, pastor at MCC New York, was given only a single-post mention for being named co-Grand Marshal for this year’s NYC Pride Parade. The real news, it seems, is that Dan Savage and his partner Terry are the other Grand Marshalls. I don’t begrudge anyone any of this, but it always stings a little bit to know so many of us have so little use for our elders. Pat Who? Troy who? Oh, look, it’s Dan Choi! Hurry, we can get a picture with him. Oh, wait, there’s Alan Cumming! I gotta tweet this, I have to! So today Frank and I will be going to the MCCNY Easter banquet. Rev. Pat will be there, along with Rev. Perry. And tonight I’m taking Frank to hear Troy Perry, one of the best, funniest, most humane preachers I’ve ever heard. He’s 71 years old now. I remember seeing him at an LA Pride Parade when I was 19. How can I not think this is a little more significant than the latest Queer Rising marriage action or a kiss-in in the UK? These are people who made these things possible, and I hope we never forget them.]]>