Daller and the Gay Atheist League of America

In the coming months and years, Grace Cathedral gradually embraced LGBT rights, becoming one of the country’s foremost progressive congregations. However, Daller, aghast at the glacial pace of reform within the Episcopal Church, left Grace in the 1970s and wandered through the spiritual wilderness for much of the decade, only finding solace when he joined the newly formed Gay Atheist League of America (GALA). After graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in Religious Studies, Daller quickly rose through the ranks of GALA, becoming the group’s secretary in 1981. The first national organization dedicated to gay atheism, GALA struggled to attract a substantial membership and eventually folded in 1989. In one prominent pamphlet written in the late 1970s, the group proclaimed that ‘history attests that the Church has been the foremost persecutor of homosexuals for the past two thousand years’.

Ultimately, Daller’s life story serves to remind scholars that much is lost when religion is taken out of queer history. Whether as an Episcopalian or as an avowed atheist, Daller consistently foregrounded questions of spirituality in his gay rights activism.