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ANTI-GAY STEDFAST BAPTIST WATGA MOVG AGA: ‘NOBODY REALLY WANTS TO LEASE TO ’
Effectively tellg the story of LGBT (Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr) life Fort Worth and Tarrant County is a challenge for many reasons, the biggt obstacle beg s slow transformatn om unspoken secrecy to gradual acceptance and muny visibily. Begng wh muny standards that marked homosexualy as a crime, leadg to an unrground culture fostered semi-gay spac (such as theaters and nightclubs that at tim employed female impersonators) and eventually explicly openly-queer spac such as gay nightclubs, the multi- evolutn of LGBT life remaed largely visible until the rise of “out” culture wh the muny progrsg to public activism and eventually morn-day acceptance.
In many ways, this gradual progrsn paralleled the gay stggle the Uned Stat the neteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuri, but was also— a number of rpects—specific to Texas, the Southwt and “Cowtown. ” Before the turn of the neteenth century and several s thereafter, documentatn of queer life was virtually nonexistent, due large part to the crimalized stat of beg openly gay. Texas passed s first sodomy law 1860, and the ser ramifitns for beg intified as a homosexual uld not only rult imprisonment but also social rejectn, loss of employment, or, some s, ath.