Our Queer Love Story!
A little Queer history from our Temple!
A bit of random history for all our beloved LGBTQI family members. As most of you know our sanctuary was actually owned by Alexis Muir, the niece of the well know California naturalist John Muir who was here in the 1890-1920 as a member of the growing Bahia community under the leadership of another well know naturalist and vineyard grower John Bosch!
Alexis Muir is immortalized in pop culture as the owner and operator of the 1st openly gay bar in SF called ‘The Stud’ and the eccentric, marijuana-growing landlady Anna Madrigal from from “Tales of the City by author Armistead Maupin. She owned the Isis Oasis from 1974-1978, for the godfather of medical marijuana openly gay air force veteran Dennis Peron, who you may know from the movie “Milk” about the life and times of Harvey Milk, for whom Dennis served as his legislative aide during his time on the SF city council before his tragic death.
The Isis Oasis under Dennis Peron and Alexis Muir acted as both a gay resort and the 1st marijuana commune in the national.
When our beloved founder Lady Loreon Vigne came to establish our interfaith temple dedicated the Divine Feminine here in 1978, she immediately started getting into trouble with the state of California by performing not only same sex marriages and but also transgender weddings for which the state of California sent her a now infamous series of cease and desist letters about her performing such weddings back in the late 70’s and 80’s. To which she just ignored and kept doing it, cause ‘love was love’ to her no matter what.
In 1997, the Isis Oasis Sanctuary not only hosted but helped sponsor the 1st ever ‘Intersex Society of North America’ here held with Lady Loreon’s blessings!
Today we carry on her proud tradition of not only hosting LGBTQI weddings and ceremonies here. One of our longest running yearly retreats here is a lesbian group that has been coming here for over 35 years! Our clergy is about 85% women and I would say over a third identify as LGBTQI.
I wanted to share this because so much of our history gets lost in the cracks. So it is so important to keep these memories alive and kicking.
Love is love,
Rev. Justin Howard
Temple of Isis – www.templeofisis.org
Isis Oasis Sanctuary – www.isisoasissanctuary.org
