Perry, Troy

Troy Perry (b. 1940). An American cleric and the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, with a ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) communities, in Los Angeles, California on October 6, 1968.

In 1968, after a suicide attempt, and witnessing a close friend being arrested at The Patch Bar, Perry felt called to return to his faith and to offer a place for gay people to worship God.

Perry put an advertisement in The Advocate announcing a worship service designed for gays in Los Angeles. Twelve people turned up on October 6, 1968, for the first service, and “Nine were my friends who came to console me and to laugh, and three came as a result of the ad.”

After six weeks of services in his living room, the congregation shifted to a women’s club, an auditorium, a church, and finally a theater. In 1971, their own building was dedicated with over a thousand members in attendance.

Perry’s theology has been described as conservative, but social action was a high priority from the beginning of the establishment of the denomination. Perry performed what Time Magazine described as the first public same-sex unions in the U.S. as early as 1968 and ordained women as pastors as early as 1972.