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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. The earlit mentns of homosexualy prt media took place the 1890s, wh listgs crime blotters the Fort Worth Morng Register llg out offenrs charged wh the “ser crime” of the 1940s gays and lbians beme headle news, though the circumstanc allowed only for their reprentatn certa prcribed rol.