Metropolitan Community Church – Tampa

Founded in 1971, Metropolitan Community Church -Tampa (MCC) was Tampa’s first formal LGBT organization, one that fostered community activism and nurtured many subsequent groups.

In 1971, the Rev. Lee Carlton MCC-Tampa

In April 1971, The Rev. Lee Carlton held a worship service outdoors at Ballast Point on Easter Sunday for LGBT folks wanting to establish a branch of the Metropolitan Community Church in Tampa. Early services were held at the Franciscan Retreat Center, and by the next year they had found a home in the Unitarian Church on Concordia Avenue in South Tampa, a building they eventually purchased.

“We wonder if Tampa appreciates what you are doing for it? Perhaps they don’t realize you’ve begun a movement.”
– MCC-Miami to MCC-Tampa on its first worship service, April 1971

To celebrate MCC-Tampa’s first anniversary in April 1972, The Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in Los Angeles, came to preach, as pictured below, in their new sanctuary.

A fundraising letter from MCC-Tampa’s Rev. Lee Carlton as the new congregation, only the second in the Southeast, worked to buy its own church sanctuary. It was already serving as a social services center for the LGBT community, offering counseling, legal advice, and food and
shelter for those in need.

Below is a 1973 feature in Florida Acccent on MCC-Tampa, which boasted its own building in Palma Ceia and 175 members, half of whom were women. “The gays in Tampa are beginning to come out of their closets,” the Rev. Charles Larsen proclaimed.

Celebrating Holy Unions

Bobby Smith and Kay Thompson renew vows, 1973

One of the many needs MCC addressed was the fervent desire of many LGBT people to have their relationships valued, recognized, and formalized. Back in the 1950s, some queer couples had informal commitment ceremonies at Jimmie White’s Tavern. Bobby Smith and Kay Thompson, MCC founders, had a wedding ceremony at their home in 1960. But with the opening of MCC-Tampa, LGBT couples now had a sanctuary and an ordained minister to help them formalize their unions. Bobby and Kay, pictured here, even held a “Renewal of Vows” ceremony in the MCC church in 1973.

Within the first 2 years, Rev. Carlton performed 12 holy union ceremonies. In addition to the exchange of vows and rings, Carlton insisted on providing traditional couples counsel services, as would any minister to a heterosexual couple getting married.

The photographic record of some early MCC-Tampa wedding ceremonies suggests that many of the couples were butch/femme. Some wedding parties, like the ones pictured here, seemed to want to conform to conventional notions of what a bride and groom should look like, even as they defied convention as same-sex couples.

Surviving Vandalism

In 1977, in the wake of Anita Bryant’s successful “Save Our Children” crusade in Miami, where a gay rights ordinance was defeated by voters, vandals attacked MCC-Tampa. They tore the cross off the cupola, threw eggs at the building, broke stained-glass windows, and destroyed the church’s sign.

Building Community

MCC-Tampa’s monthly publication,The Crusader, served as a resource for connecting the community and announcing news and events.

While MCC Tampa offered a place to socialize outside of gay bars, the church was not antagonistic to the bar scene. The Crusader, the church’s monthly publication, published advertisements and news about the bars, noting that a go-go boy at one of the local gay bars was also an usher at MCC-Tampa. A member of the MCC board of directors also served as the manager of Club Tampa, the local bathhouse.

As the first LGBT organization in Tampa, MCC served as something of a community center, incubating numerous other efforts at community organizing. The first meetings of the Bay Area Rights Council (BARC) took place at the MCC’s building in S Tampa, as did the first candidate forums to question those running in local elections about their support of gay rights. The Tampa Bay Gay Men’s Chorus held rehearsals there. Marty Pelham, who opened Tampa’s first LGBT bookstore Tomes & Treasures, was an MCC-Tampa deacon.