Boston UU Gays and Lesbians

Image Description: Graphic of two bugles and text that reads: "BUUGL: Boston Unitarian Univeralist Gays and Lesbians (& Bisexuals!)"

Address: Inside the Arlington Street Church

Years Active: 1977–1993?

Tradition: Unitarian Universalism

Boston UU Gays and Lesbians (BUUGL for short, pronounced “bugle”) was an LGBTQ-focused Unitarian Universalist group housed within Boston’s Arlington Street Church (ASC), and organized as a part of the Unitarian Universalist Office of Lesbian and Gay Concerns (UULGC). Founded in 1977, it was organized by Reverend Robert P. Wheatly, who was the Director of the UULGC from 1977 to 1986. In 1986, the minister F. Jay Deacon took over as the Office’s Director, and ran the group from then until 1993 at the latest. On January 26, 1988, ASC officially began permitting BUUGL to “have free space use and free mailbox use” in the building, and they held services in the Church’s Hunnewell Chapel.

Per ASC’s website, as well as a lecture outlining its history, shortly after BUUGL’s founding, they led a service memorializing Harvey Milk in 1978. (Among those who participated in this service was Reverend Eugene Barnett Navias, who later served in ministerial positions at ASC from 1993 until his death in 2014.)

Early on in its history, BUUGL maintained connections with other queer UU individuals and organizations across the country. An internal letter from January 1981, written by Wheatly, notifies “BUUGLERS” of a UULGC–sponsored potluck dinner to be held at Boston’s King’s Chapel House. Wheatly encourages BUUGL congregants to attend in order to meet “other gay/lesbian UUs” from across the US.

Indeed, other LGBTQ-focused Unitarian Universalist groups across the country helped influence how BUUGL saw itself and its operation. In an undated document, “A NEW BUUGL: A PROPOSAL,” Deacon notes that he wishes to include memorials for AIDS victims in his services; he explicitly mentions Alvin Orloff as an inspiration for this practice. He explains: “This is a service for the gay and lesbian community, and since the gay men’s community is presently being ravaged by AIDS, the service should include this component.”

On February 23, 1987, Deacon wrote to Reverend David H. Cole, the then–Interim Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, attempting to raise funding for BUUGL. Deacon described BUUGL as having “existed in some form for several years; on-again and off-again largely for lack of resources.”

BUUGL described themselves in their frequent advertisements in local LGBTQ+ publication Bay Windows as “a Serious Religious Alternative for the Gay and Lesbian Community,” usually meeting on the fourth Sunday of each month. (A later document, from September 1987, suggested doing twice-monthly meetings, one of which would be business-focused, which seems to have been implemented, according to available documents.) In a June 1987 letter to a potential donor, Deacon outlines the particular welcome Unitarian Universalism offers for queer people. Noting the success of the February 22 event, Deacon writes: “It is my profound hope and conviction that Unitarian Universalism will demonstrate a serious commitment to the proposition that, as a religious movement that welcome[s] gay and lesbian people, it intends also to help us make the too-little-known Unitarian Universalist religious option accessible to our people.” He adds later in the letter that he hopes for BUUGL to offer a non-Christian worship option for queer folks in Boston, alongside the Christian ones already offered by Dignity and MCC Boston.

Following the appointment of Reverend Kim Crawford Harvie as ASC’s minister in 1989, and “attendance [soared] at Sunday worship,” BUUGL began to examine how it organizes itself. A November 3, 1989 letter from BUUGL coordinator Michael Scully to “BUUGL Members & Friends” notes that: “Ever since Kim was nominated for senior minister, we’ve anticipated that BUUGL would have to refine and expand its religious and social programming in order to meet the needs of a growing number of gays, lesbians, and bi’s [sic] coming to ASC.” In light of this, Scully’s letter urges BUUGL to consider how it might reorganize to accommodate “the changing religious and social needs of gays/lesbians/bi’s at ASC”—which, according to Scully, would go beyond Sunday service. (Scully’s letter also suggests discussing potentially adopting the name “BUUGL-B” to better include bisexual congregants.)

Throughout its history, BUUGL programming included lectures on topics of relevance to LGBTQ+ religious folks as well as other local UU ministers leading services, the group marching in Pride Parades, and at least one discussion of “black lesbian and gay history.”

Every pamphlet from BUUGL’s services includes the same blurb at the end about UU belief, which also serves as a summary of the distinctly queer approach BUUGL took to it:

“The Unitarian Universalist approach to religion is fundamentally different from that of more orthodox churches. Rather than assert that life’s ultimate truth has been revealed in some scripture, we assume that, together, we must seek to understand the meaning of our lives. We gather in a sense of wonder before the mystery of life. In our search we have the voices and visions of every period and place in the record of human experience from which to draw. The accumulated wisdom of humankind, reason, intuition, the arts and sciences—and our own lived experience. We have the combined religious traditions of the Unitarians and the Universalists, and the life-truth of our own people, we who call ourselves gay and lesbian. If you seek a place where minds are free and the issues of our lives and times are examined critically and hopefully, you belong here!”

Since BUUGL does not seem to have been extensively archived, there do not seem to be any documents confirming when, exactly, BUUGL stopped meeting. However, since no documents seem to suggest that anybody ran BUUGL after Deacon did, and since Deacon left for Illinois to serve as a minister in 1993, it seems that might have been the last year BUUGL met.

As this entry draws on a thin archive, if you or someone you know has information or documents pertaining to BUUGL and its history, please contact us via email at your convenience.

Sources and Further Information:

https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:DIV.LIB:100924857:VIEW?page=492369606

https://www.ascboston.org/about/history.html

https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/robert-p-wheatly

https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/f-jay-deacon

https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:DIV.LIB:100924857:VIEW?page=492369661

https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:DIV.LIB:100924857:VIEW?page=492369501

https://arlingtonstreet.org/about/history/queer-history/

https://www.croma.org/history/minns-lecture/

https://uuma.org/remembering-the-living-tradition/in-memory-of-eugene-barnett-navias-1928-2014/

https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:DIV.LIB:100924857:VIEW?page=492369649

https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:DIV.LIB:100924857:VIEW?page=492369712