An extraordinary extent of the Glide Urban Center’s early work was focused on issues related to queer communities, as Dr. Susan Stryker, LGBTQ historian, summarizes:

Glide Memorial Church was the midwife of the modern LGBTQ movement, not just in San Francisco, but nationally. Its early support for addressing the social costs of anti-gay and anti-transgender discrimination from an ecumenical perspective was absolutely crucial for gaining mainstream attention to these issues. The Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH), based at Glide, was absolutely pathbreaking. The CRH Mardi Gras Ball, in 1965, which was raided by police, was a largely unheralded turning point in civil rights and sexual liberation struggles. Under the leadership of Rev. Cecil Williams and other socially progressive ministers, Glide integrated pastoral care for LGBTQ people into its broader sense of Christian mission. Glide was home to the first organization to support dispossessed and abandoned queer kids and sex-workers living on the streets of the Tenderloin, and to the first support groups for transgender individuals. The church was, and remains, a vital nexus for promoting the radical idea—which should not be radical at all—that all people are of equal worth and deserve to live in health and happiness with basic dignity and adequate food and shelter.189

The following are notable programs that were sponsored, funded, and/or hosted by Glide.