Keynote at ALMS Conference 2011, "Baby, You Are My Religion", Dr. Marie Cartier, 2011/05/13
[caption: ALMS Conference on May 13, 2011]
Cartier: So, this talk is based on my dissertation “Baby, You are My Religion: The emergence of theology in butch-femme/gay women’s pre-Stonewall bar culture and community.” It was 670 pages, and my wife boiled it down to 43 slides. So we’re going to hit the high points. I think–well let’s just go to the first slide.
[reads slide]
Cartier: After entering the bar for the first time, their eyes locked, and she whispered what her heart knew at once, “Baby you are my religion.”
[applause]
[finishes reading slides]
Cartier: That image, I’m sure a lot of you know is the image from Spring Fire. The first famous pulp [novel]. Actually the first lesbian pulp [novel]. And one of the things I’m going to be talking about is the way people–how people found their way to the gay bar. The thesis of the dissertation–and I like how when Angela introduced me I went from crazy to brilliant in– [laughs] I think it was like six words between that–I think that’s what my committee thought too. But the thesis is that for gay people pre-Stonewall, they were exiled from all religious communities. Prior to 1973, as many of you know, gay people were considered the nation’s largest security risk; more of us were let go of our jobs because of McCarthy than because we were homosexual rather than communist. The question was more often are you or have you ever been a homosexual than are you or have you ever been a communist? We were considered mentally ill until 1973, and there was no major or minor religion that considered us anything other than sinners. So to have any place that we could have community was not rare, it was impossible outside of the one public space that was available, which was the gay bar.
So, the thesis of the book is that for people pre-Stonewall, the gay bars operated as an alternate church space. And I’m going to talk about why that’s more important to gay people prior to 1975 than it is for us today. And it has a lot to do with how people prior to 1975 used their religious identity as part of really their foundational “who they were”; and today that’s extremely different.
So, Baby, You are my Religion–
[caption: Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections 2011 International LGBT Conference, May 12-15, 2011; Plummer Park, West Hollywood, Hosted by June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives; In Association with City of West Hollywood, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Library, ONE Archives; Info: MazerLesbianArchives.org]
[END OF VIDEO]
June Mazer Lesbian Archives, West Hollywood, California November 3, 2013 http://www.mazerlesbianarchives.org/
Book: Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall http://mariecartier.com/
Thesis -LGBT History & Bars by Dr. Marie Cartier -"Baby Your My Religion" A Keynote at ALMS 2011 Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections: An International LGBT Conference Filmed for Mazer by Kleis TV
Interviewee: Marie Cartier
Interviewer: None
Transcriber: Andrew S.
Transcriber: Mikhail Z.
Formatter: Serena R.
Recording Date: circa May 12-15, 2011
Release Date: March 4, 2012
Location: Plummer Park in West Hollywood, California
Interview Length: 00:03:05