In 1966, the New York State Liquor Authority passed a law that prohibited serving alcoholic beverages to homosexuals. It would be hard to go through the history of the gay bar in America without mentioning Julius Bar in New York City. Just 15 years after the California Supreme Court ruling, on the opposite coast, another battle was brewing in America's largest city. The Black Cat's Supreme Court win would serve as one of the earliest victories for the LGBTQ community in the United States. “ in order to establish 'good cause' for suspension of plaintiff's license, something more must be shown than that many of his patrons were homosexuals and that they used his restaurant and bar as a meeting place.” The owner of the Black Cat took the state to court, and the California Supreme Court ruled:
Famous gay men in american history license#
On the grounds of ‘maintaining a disorderly house’, the police department revoked The Black Cat’s liquor license indefinitely. In response to this, the San Francisco Police Department began a campaign against the bar and its gay clientele. In the 1950’s, San Francisco hotspot The Black Cat was making its name as one of the nation’s most popular gay bars. Despite their often short-lived nature, these early gay bars often served as hugely important battlegrounds in the fight for LGBTQ rights. These establishments would generally open and close with rather short lifespans.
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Over the next several decades, gay and lesbian bars began to pop up all over the country, each one perhaps taking cue from those before it. The Slide was just a meeting place - the LGBTQ community wasn’t going anywhere, except perhaps to a different bar. The paper’s tirade against The Slide would win out, with the bar closing its doors permanently a few months later.Īs anyone could have guessed, though, this was shortsighted, wildly arrogant, and hugely ineffective. These beings, without moral sense or shame, are billed as the chief attraction in that pit of shame.” “ Much has been written about the degradation, corruption, and wickedness in the slums of the city, but there the poor wretches shrink from notoriety, while the abandoned creatures in Stevenson’s “The Slide” make nightly a public exhibition of their evil doings. Joseph Pulitzer’s (yes, that Pulitzer) newspaper New York Evening would suggest, in regards to the Slide: “ London, Paris or Berlin, with all their iniquity, have nothing to parallel this sink of vice and depravity.” Over the coming months, Pulitzer’s paper would continue its vendetta against the Slide, eventually publishing this nugget: Even behind closed doors, the patrons and bar itself were subject to bullying and ignorant criticism from outside forces. The LGBTQ community was not allowed to exist in peace, in their own little bubble. It’s important to note the general public’s reaction and perception to The Slide. Men mingled with one another, some openly arriving in drag, with the occasional woman or prostitute mixed in. We do know that it was quite the hotspot - packed nearly every night. Unfortunately, police reports and mainstream media coverage of a gay bar in 1880 proved to be extremely unreliable and hyperbolic, fueled mostly by pearl-clutching and fear-mongering rather than actual information. Stateside, gay bars seem to have gotten their ‘start’ in the later part of the 1800s, with a New York City hotspot called “The Slide”.
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Although it is nice to think of gay bars as unanimously safe places, where the LGBTQ community could exist without threat, that clearly wasn’t always the case. 25 men were arrested, eight were convicted, and two were hanged (one of which was 16, and neither of which were even present at the White Swan on the night of the raid). In London, a bar called the White Swan was raided under laws against sodomy. However, in 1810, we get our first recorded instance of a gay bar - under admittedly unfortunate circumstances. A history that begins a little more than 200 years ago.īecause of the need for intense secrecy, the very earliest history of the gay bar has been mostly lost.
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In honor of Pride Month, we wanted to highlight the historical significance of gay bars and their impact on equality for all. These bars have served as (not always) safe places for the LGBTQ community to be together, to mingle, and to simply exist as their true selves. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the gay bar within the LGBTQ rights movement over the past couple hundred years. ‘Wild night out’ stories often include, or end in at the neighborhood gay bar. They’re fun spots if you’re gay, straight, or anywhere in between. Today, people tend to equate gay bars as being places to party especially hard.