Affirmation from A 20th Century Queer Catholic Poet

I found Dunstan Thompson’s poetry collection, I Believe in Love, in Strand Bookstore in New York City a couple of years ago. It’s one of the few collections still in print of his work, and it covers decades of his life. At that point, I’d been Catholic for about a month. The honeymoon period was still there: going to daily mass, praying novenas, saying the rosary. 

Dunstan Thompson

I found different aspects of faith to cover my racial, linguistic, and generational identities. I’d pray to the Saintly Seven–the seven Black American Catholics up for sainthood–attended Spanish Mass, and grew in my devotion to then Blessed (now Saint) Carlo Acutis, the millennial teenager who died when I was alive. 

The only identity of mine that was missing was my queerness. As I grew up, queerness was not something to be talked about, especially in faith spaces. When queer people or queer love did come up, it was always in a negative way, such as reading about  the gay person who came to Christ and renounced their identity, married the opposite sex, or stayed single. No form of queer history was ever taught. It wasn’t until that past year had I even heard of Stonewall.

So, the winter after I became Catholic, I started looking for that intersection of my sexual and religious identities. This search took me to trusty Wikipedia, which had a page of LGBTQ Catholics. There were some names I knew, like Lady Gaga, Andy Warhol, but also many I’d never heard of. One of them was Dustan Thompson.

For many, the name Dunstan Thompson doesn’t ring a bell. Thompson was born in 1918 in Connecticut, growing up in a military family. His father was a naval officer, and for many years the family lived in Annapolis, Maryland, home of the United States Naval Academy.

Dunstan Thompson grew up Catholic, thanks to his religious mother, and went to Catholic schools before ending up at Harvard University in 1936. There, he left his childhood Catholicism and also came out. He was involved in the Harvard literary scene, before dropping out from the school in 1938 and moving to New York to pursue more writing. He started a short lived literary magazine called Vice Versa with another Harvard dropout and future Oscar-winning screenwriter, Harry Brown. Vice Versa ran for three issues before closing, but during this time Thompson embraced the poetry scene the city had to offer. However, the Second World War led to his enlistment in 1942. 

Though he didn’t experience the frontlines, he said he spent most of his time “carrying Coca-Cola bottles to sergeants, and writing the Colonel’s letters to friends back home,” the brutality of the war inspired much of his poetry at this time, such as Memorare, whose title and first line echo the Catholic Memorare to the Blessed Virgin. The poem begins:

Remember, at this moment, O somewhere

The plane falls through the indifferent air

No longer flying the about to be dying

Pilot to any over-the-border disaster, but lying 

Like the boyhood toy, by bad luck destroyed. 

The lost lads are gone God grace them.

His poems also described gay life at the time, and, in fact, were some of the first poems that even used the word “gay” in that sense. Here’s a section from his poem “Largo: For Abraham Williams”:  

Our thoughts like bayonets blood time. What precedents 

Of passion shall we use to brave the coward? Once 

Bombs are as roses, will he kiss the black-heart prince? 

Honor, more heavy than the sea, 

May overwhelm both you and me 

To give no quarter choice at all: gay boys, whom war 

Won janizary; youths, who flung away their shields. So we 

Are mort à Singapore.”

While stationed in the UK, he experienced both London’s gay scene and its literary milieu. He met writers like the legendary T.S Eliot and Cyril Connolly, and he published his first book, Poems (1943), which was met with critical acclaim. 

His second book, Lament for the Sleepwalkers, was published in 1946, after which he was under contract to write a Middle Eastern travel book, called The Phoenix in the Desert (1951). While doing research for the book, he met Philip Trower, a British officer who eventually became his  life partner. They settled in Cley, a British village next the sea in Norfolk, England. 

While living in Cley, Dunstan Thompson experienced a reversion to the Catholic faith, with his partner converting soon after. After speaking with a parish priest, they committed to living  celibately, which they did until Thompson passed in 1975.

This writer’s story was groundbreaking for me. Here was a Catholic, living before the modern gay rights movement, who was gay and had a same-sex relationship. And not only that, he stayed with his partner, albeit celibately, after his reversion. This was a representation of queer Catholic love. Reading his poetry felt like a breath of fresh air, especially when it felt like there were no queer Catholic voices around.

Though voices both inside and outside the church tend to ignore stories like these, Thompson’s life provides us with a deeper understanding of the history of queer Catholic relationships. In a synodal church, these stories must continue to be told so our Church can better minister and support queer people and their relationships.

–Tulio Huggins, New Ways Ministry, August 25, 2026

For further reading:

U.S. Catholic: “Recovering the Catholic voice of poet Dunstan Thompson“