About the Film

Sweet Evening Breeze and Sue Mundy. Henry Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Rock Hudson. Bob Morgan and Bradley Picklesimer. These are some of the colorful characters who shape The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies, a documentary excavating a 150 year old, gender-bending, sexual outlaw community in the American south of Lexington, Kentucky.

This Kentucky lineage of gay pioneers and rebels grew strong underground. They documented their identity and history as a community through shared storytelling, troves of personal photographs, home movies, and early video. The archives include cross-dressing guerilla soldier Sue Mundy, who fought in the Civil War. Sweet Evening Breeze, the notorious transgender, black drag queen was born in the 1880s and nurtured a community in Lexington until 1987. Artists Henry Faulkner and Bob Morgan worked with, and partied with Tennessee Williams. Hollywood movie star Rock Hudson would come through town as the owner of its only gay bar.

Starting in the 1960s, a collective of artists and drag queens, who called themselves The Pagan Babies, banded together in Lexington to open up and change this pocket of secretive and genteel southern gay society. Through exuberant performances, art, photography, design and music, they created a social and cultural history of an era in transition – from the sexually liberated 1970s to the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s. Artists Bradley Picklesimer and Bob Morgan trace how the community connected their own defiantly open gay lives with those of their elders across history. Rich with shared storytelling traditions, explosive creativity, and the courage to face both the humor and sorrow of their legacy, ‘The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies” weaves together a story of an enduring and fearless gay culture in a place where it was least expected, and most surprising.

Praise for The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies

“The film tells the story of a deep and varied genderqueer and queer community over decades, and it is a jolting reminder about how little we’ve been told about the long history of trans and queer visibility. It’s a story with real heroes, and a lesson in how communities survive and thrive.”

David Getsy
Author of Abstract Bodies, and Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

“An unfiltered lens is focused on the colorful and groundbreaking gender-defying and culture-defining players in Lexington, Kentucky’s alternative punk and gay scene. The film ties people, places and attitudes together with strands from a prior century that connect through the heydays of the 1970s and 80s and up to today’s young gender and cultural outlaw “pagan babies” to be. A fascinating document of combined forces shining with courageous and effervescent creativity in a southern town, that continues to inspire to this day.”

Daniel Hodge, Chair, LGBTQ Resource Center, Gulfport Public Library, Gulfport, Florida

“The East and West Coasts have dominated much of the popular discourse on LGBT life and history. The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies helps fill an important gap by showcasing the ways in which queer life was navigated in Lexington, Kentucky – pushing the boundaries in both the Southern mainstream and even within the sexual and gender bending subculture itself. Spanning over 150 years, The Last Gospel demonstrates the silent, yet central, presence of Lexington to mainstream queer icons like Rock Hudson, to spotlighting local celebrities Henry Faulkner and Sweet Evening Breeze (aka James Herndon). The time given to Sweet Evening Breeze is of particular interest, as Black pioneers are often left out of the history of LGBT life. This film would be good in a variety of courses focusing on queer and gender studies and Southern history.”

Shawn McGuffey, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Boston College/cite>