LAS VEGAS—Directors and staff of the Erotic Heritage Museum report that its co-founder, the Reverend Dr. Ted McIlvenna, has died. He was 86.
The United Methodist minister was instrumental in coordinating educational experiences around human sexuality, including the establishment of the EHM.
“Ted McIlvenna was a titan in the field of sexology,” EHM director Dr. Victoria Hartmann said. “From the time I began my undergraduate work, I knew I wanted to attend the Institute he founded. For nearly 40 years, the Institute was a shining beacon for students of human sexuality, and produced some of the most prolific names in sexology today. I was fortunate to have his oversight during my educational process. His love of art and sexuality led him to co-found the EHM, which, as he explained to me once, was a beautiful marriage seeped in spirituality. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity I had to learn from him.”
McIlvenna was born March 15, 1932, in Epping, New Hampshire. At an early age, he moved with his family to the Pacific Northwest, where his father served as an itinerant Methodist minister and missionary. McIlvenna started college at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, on an athletic scholarship. Upon completing a B.A. degree in sociology and philosophy in 1954 at Williamette College, he was recruited to attend theological school. After an uncomfortable year in a traditional Christian environment, he went to Europe to study systematic theology and philosophy of religion at the University of Edinburgh and University of Florence.
Upon his return to the U.S., McIlvenna became the pastor of Wesley Methodist Church in Hayward, California in 1958. Because of his interest and expertise in social design, McIlvenna joined the staff of the Glide Foundation in downtown San Francisco in 1963. At Glide, he staffed the Young Adult Project, where he developed programs to reach out and meet the needs of young urban adults.
In his community outreach around Glide Church, McIlvenna became acquainted with the San Francisco gay community, witnessing the violence and persecution they often faced. In his efforts to help foster a better understanding of homosexuality among Methodist leaders, who had commissioned him with the task of gay conversion, McIlvenna secured the sponsorship of two national Methodist agencies to convene a consultation of “30 clergy and homosexual persons” from May 31 to June 2, 1964, sharing his belief that people’s sex drives were as individual as fingerprints, and impervious to change.
The positive results of McIlvenna’s retreat led San Francisco participants—both heterosexual clergy and homosexual activists—to organize the “Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH),” where he became the first president and driving force in its initial period of development. McIlvenna was also a key organizer and convener of the “International Consultation on Church, Society, and the Homosexual” in London, England.
Due to growing interest in designing educational experiences dealing with human sexuality, McIlvenna returned to San Francisco in 1968 to become co-director of the National Sex and Drug Forum. In 1976, he helped organize and was the first president of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, where he continued to work as professor of forensic sexology.
Dr. Ted, also known affectionately as “the Night Minister,” served as a consultant to several foundations in developing programs and structures for alternative funding for voluntary organizations. In addition to speaking at numerous conferences, McIlvenna taught and lectured at many colleges and graduate schools, wrote numerous journal articles, authored 17 books, and co-authored eight books. He has produced over 100 films and videos, mostly about sex education. He has also received special awards for several social projects he designed.
In the late 1990s, McIlvenna moved into retired status; British media outlet The Telegraph had wondered where the “porn-again minister” would go next, as he was curator and trustee of the Exodus Trust, collecting and preserving erotic art, relics and devices for decades, resulting in the largest collection in the world.
The Las Vegas Erotic Heritage Museum was originally created between McIlvenna and Déjà Vu founder Harry Mohney in 2006, to maintain a mission of preservation for erotic artifacts, fine art and film. The EHM, opened to the public in 2008, houses more than 24,000 square feet of permanent and featured exhibits, designed to preserve wonders of the erotic imagination as depicted through the artistic expression of acts of sex and love. It is dedicated to the belief that sexual pleasure and fun are natural aspects of the human experience, that such pleasure must be made available to all, and that our individual sexuality belongs to each of us.
“One of our great defenders and educators, friend, and family man, has left us,” Mohney stated. “A man of the cloth, who believed in the health and wellness of sexual education, a man who dedicated his life to protecting individual rights. We send our deepest sympathy.”
In 2014, McIlvenna was the recipient of the Gilbert Baker Pride Founder’s Award, for his activist work on behalf of the LGBT community. A preview for a documentary about his work, The Night Minister, featuring many of today’s sex educators and thought leaders, as well as McIlvenna, may be viewed here.
This October, the Erotic Heritage Museum will celebrate having delivered a decade of sex education and artifact curation to the public. A memorial has been scheduled to occur during this upcoming anniversary celebration, on October 13.
For more information on the Las Vegas Erotic Heritage Museum, visit eroticmuseumvegas.com.
