Glide Memorial Church, est. 1929

Glide Memorial Church, est. 1929

Members of Glide's staff succeeded in identifying themselves with all sorts of minority groups and grass-roots urban populations - and from time to time succeeded in helping overlooked people - especially those in the Tenderloin - to participate in determining the directions the city will move.

As a result, many people - including church-goers and non-church-goers identify with Glide, ask for help, offer to help, and become an integral part of the mysterious entity everyone finds easy to call simply, "Glide."

Everywhere a person turns in San Francisco, there is someone present from Glide. The small army sometimes openly says it belongs to Glide. But often, without mentioning Glide, it quietly works to attain justice, freedom, and reconciliation in one of the most bureaucratically entangled cities in the Western World.

Glide clergy like Rev. Cecil Williams and Rev. Ted McIlvenna combined with a few homosexual leaders to organize the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in 1964. This organization legitimized the effort to build gay community life under the protection of clergy. The following year (1965), the police raided a homosexual dance organized by the CRH that morally and legally was able to challenge the unjust police actions taken against the gay community. This 'Stonewall' event was the lynch-pin that started churches like Glide in San Francisco to become safe spaces for LGBTQs.

The Glide Story
Booklet published by Glide Foundation, circa 1967-68. Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin Papers.
Held by LGBTQ-RAN