In November 1915, popular Baltimore minister and anti-vice reformer Kenneth G. Murray became enmeshed in scandal after he allegedly attempted to engage in sex with another man at the Y.M.C.A. The revelation of Murray’s alleged queerness became a flashpoint in ongoing contestations over anti-vice reform and the legitimacy of using state power to enforce Christian morality. In the hands of his political opponents, most notably H.L. Mencken, Murray’s apparent homosexuality became a tool for vindicating long-standing assertions that men who campaigned for state-enforced morality were hypocritical and motivated in their activism by sexual and gendered pathologies. In tracing print reactions to Murray’s public exposure, this essay argues that homosexuality proved to be a powerful political weapon against progressive anti-vice campaigning like Murray’s because it was capable of reconciling competing stereotypes of religiously motivated anti-vice reformers as simultaneously overly sexual and impotent, feminized and pathologically masculine. The Murray scandal also opened the door for critiques of muscular Christianity, which made it an early example of how the sexual diagnosis of religious figures and reformers could be used to discredit social and religious activism.

1915 年 11 月，受欢迎的巴尔的摩部长和反恶习改革者肯尼斯·G·默里（Kenneth G. Murray）据称试图与基督教青年会的另一名男子发生性关系后陷入丑闻。默里所谓的酷儿的揭露成为正在进行的反恶习争论的焦点改革和使用国家权力强制执行基督教道德的合法性。在他的政治对手，尤其是 HL Mencken 的手中，穆雷明显的同性恋成为了一种工具，可以证明长期以来的主张，即为国家强制道德而竞选的男性是虚伪的，并且在他们的行动中受到性和性别病态的激励。在追踪印刷品对默里公开曝光的反应时，这篇文章认为，同性恋被证明是对抗像默里这样的进步反邪恶运动的有力政治武器，因为它能够调和具有宗教动机的反邪恶改革者的相互竞争的刻板印象，即同时过度性欲和无能、女性化和病态的男性化。默里丑闻也为批评强硬的基督教打开了大门，这使其成为宗教人物和改革者的性诊断如何被用来诋毁社会和宗教激进主义的早期例子。