To access the extended version of this episode, join our Patreon. Our community awaits with legs open and lips parted 🤤
www.patreon.com/historicalhomos
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Do all Christians hate gays?
Amazingly: no. Despite how annoying we all are.
In fact, millions and millions of Christians ARE themselves...very gay.
So why is it that we automatically associate Christianity with homophobia?
The answer lies in the brief, but fascinating history of gay evangelical activism you'll find in this episode.
Before the gay rights movement, American Christians weren't more homophobic than anyone else. Homophobia was common in America, but it wasn't yet one of the defining features of American Christianity.
But then: a sexy bear of a Pentecostal pastor, Reverend Troy Perry, launched a successful gay church (the MCC) in 1968. And then: a feminist evangelical lesbian wrote a book about how gays were – surprise! – people, too.
Things started to change: people's hearts and minds shifted on homosexuality. And that's when the Religious Right first got organised. That's when televangelists and Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant began to wage a campaign not just against gay evangelical activists, but all gay people.
The modern assumption – that all Christians "hate f*gs" (and anyone else they deem queer) – was born.
So this Christmas, while you're putting on your Sunday best (read: Elf-themed jockstrap), join Bash and his fabulous guest, Professor William Stell, as they explore this little-known corner of Christian homophobia.
William Stell is a professor of American religion and queer history at NYU, and his book, Born Again Queer, will be published in May 2026.
Now get ready to get wet and wild, because the gay evangelical hot tub is open and the water is a pipingly warm...human temperature.
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🤑 Subscribe to our Patreon, if you have the means and/or the madness to do so.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our monthly newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
✍️ Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
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Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest: William Stell
Copyright Sebastian Hendra 2025
To access the full version of this episode, join our Patreon. Our community awaits with legs open and lips parted 🤤
www.patreon.com/historicalhomos
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LEATHER. It's hot, it's taut, it's everything everybody else is not.
But when did it become so big in the gay community?
My guest today, Race Bannon, leather community activist and co-host of the On Guard podcast, taught me a few things I never knew about leather that I bet you don't either:
1) Leather is all about play: it seems hyper-masc and dark. But really it's a bunch of beautiful horny people expressing themselves erotically and inventively. In a world where adults are never allowed to play, leather allows all people, queer or not, to explore their true selves.
2) Leather literally saved lives. The leather community was at the vanguard of the AIDS epidemic, providing sex education and support to show gay men in particular how to express desire and intimacy without penetrative/fluid-exchanging sex.
3) Leather is a protest! Leather began because queer men wanted to be seen as masculine - in the 1950s, that was radical. And in the 1980s, The Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, which is now one of the biggest leather festivals in America, launched as an anti-gentrification demonstration uniting queer communities in the SoMa neighbourhood in San Francisco.
Leathermen have much to teach us, in and out of the sack, and you can start by diving into this episode where the water is a deliciously...human temperature.
–
🤑 Subscribe to our Patreon, if you have the means and the madness to do so.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our monthly newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
✍️ Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
–
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest: Race Bannon
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★