Pride Month Spotlight: Louie Crew Clay

Throughout June, we’re celebrating LGBTQIA+ people who have shaped our church and our world — trailblazers, advocates, saints, and quietly persistent troublemakers who got us here. Next up: the man who built a home inside the church when the church wasn’t sure it wanted him there.

Louie Crew Clay (1936-2022) founded Integrity USA in 1974 – an organization for LGBTQ+ Episcopalians – while living as an openly gay man in the Deep South. Rather than leaving the Episcopal Church, he spent decades advocating from within, earning respect across the theological spectrum. A professor at Rutgers University and prolific poet, Crew Clay later took the surname Clay when he married his husband Ernest. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The church he loved is better for his decades of quiet, persistent presence in it.