Front-page Article in San Francisco Chronicle That Announced the Formation of CRH and Featured Robert Cromey

Front-page Article in San Francisco Chronicle That Announced the Formation of CRH and Featured Robert Cromey

San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 1964, pages 1 and 22.

Repository: San Francisco Public Library

Page 1: S.F. Clergyman's View of the Homosexuals
By Richard Hallgren
As every schoolboy knows, America is going through a sexual revolution.
A remarkable San Francisco clergyman cited some of the changes yesterday—sexual promiscuity, increase in unwed mothers, the high divorce rate and "multi-parented" families. "We have a society where, especially in California, successive polygamy is the rule," declared Canon Rob-
See page 22. col. 1

Page 2: Call for a Dialogue
Clergyman Speaks Out On the Homosexuals
From page 1
ert W. Cromey. "We have one wife at a time, but our traditional morality says we have one wife forever and ever."

Homosexuality
The church has ignored this revolution generally said the Episcopalian clergyman, vicar of St. Aidan's Church, and ignored particularly one aspect—homosexuality.
To help remedy the problem, he and some 30 clergymen and homosexuals have formed a unique group—the Council on Religion and the Homosexual.
Canon Cromey, former pastor of a parish in the Bronx, New York has served here nearly three years as an assistant to Episcopal Bishop Jones V. Pike and head of [illegible].
Joining him as trustees of the organization at the Glide Foundation at 330 Ellis Street are the Rev. Ted McIlvenna, director of the Young Adults project of the Methodist Church here, the Rev. Clarence Colwell, metropolitan minister for the United Church of Christ and the Rev. Charles Lewis, director of the Lutheran Church's North Beach Mission.
Canon Cromey
Some bold talk
[illegible] "try to re-think a Christian view [illegible] generally," said Canon Cromey and establish a dialogue between the homosexual and religious communities.
Statistics
There has been no such dialogue, he said, and generally, accepted statistics indicate that one in ten persons "happen to express their love relationships with persons of the same sex.
"That's 80,000 homosexuals or more in San Francisco," he said, "and that's a hell of a lot of people. You can't just say to them, "We don't want to talk to you." [illegible]

World
"I'll probably regret saying this," said the 33-year-old canon. "But it's not so important what people do to each other in bed as how they relate to each other in the world as human beings."
He said homosexuals are "almost completely alienated" from the general community and that the new group could act as a kind of buffer zone. Some homosexuals are church members, but many are alienated, he said, for two reasons—the traditional moral attitude of the church that homosexuality is sinful and the fact that the church is "generally irrelevant to most people including homosexuals."
He said homosexuals generally feel distrust of the "straight" community and feel they're sexually discriminated against—by the police and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

Law
And the people forget that there are various gradations of homosexual behavior—"the average homosexual would say that child molesters, say, are sick and should be removed from society."
The new group, he said, will promote wide-ranging discussion of the situation and will have a long-range goal of assisting homosexuals in their legal problems.

Illegal
"They feel they're not being treated essentially as human beings," he said, citing the law that homosexual relations between persons over 21 are illegal.
"Laws like this are just silly. Certainly, after people are over 21, they should be able to have sexual relations with a lamp, if they want to."
The canon, who is the father of three daughters, said the new group would meet "a great need for a better understanding of human sexuality and its broad variations and manifestations."