Delaware’s Gay Ghetto, Rehoboth Beach |

Contents:

• GAY GHETTO
• GAY GHETTO
• WHY GAY GHETTOS ARE BREAKG UP
• THE MYTH OF GAY AFFLUENCE
• SEATTLE NEXT GAY GHETTO
• ‘GAY GHETTOS’ SEEN AS POLICE TARGETS
• HOW GAY GHETTOS AND HIV HELPED LGBTQ PEOPLE
• RSIA’S ‘ANTI-GAY’ LAW PH GAY MUNY TO SHADOWS
• GAY GHETTOS, HOMOSEXUAL HAVENS OR DISCRIMATORY WOKE NONSENSE? BRA’S FIRST LGBT-ONLY HOG PLEX GET GREEN LIGHT
• THE G.O.P. TRI TO BUILD A GAY GHETTO
• GAYBORHOOD
• CHALLENGG THE GAY GHETTO SOUTH AI: TIME TO MOVE ON?
• GAY ENCLAV FACE PROSPECT OF BEG PASSé
• HEALTH-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN: A PARISON OF THOSE LIVG "GAY GHETTOS" WH THOSE LIVG ELSEWHERE.
• HEALTH-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN: A PARISON OF THOSE LIVG "GAY GHETTOS" WH THOSE LIVG ELSEWHERE
• DELAWARE’S GAY GHETTO, REHOBOTH BEACH

GAY GHETTO

Some rather famo Gay Ghettos clu the Castro district of San Francis, Greenwich Village and Chelsea NYC and Dupont Circle Washgton, Mark Edward May 9, 2006FlagGet the Gay Ghetto your Facebook post on Urban Dictnary jt 3 clicksGay GhettoProper noun. Gay people have claimed that there exist wh major ci "gay ghettos", neighborhoods hog large numbers of homosexual men and women as well as gatherg plac where homosexual behavr is generally accepted, and have signated as such certa sectns of Boston, New York, Chigo, San Francis, and Los Angel (Aiken, 1976, p.

The nam e quickly to md—the Castro, Chelsea, Chigo’s Boystown, Dupont Circle Washgton, Wt Hollywood, Boston’s South End—urban neighborhoods, intified primarily wh gay men, that emerged the post-Stonewall era to serve many purpos all at once: rtricted ghetto, imaged muny, ethnic enclave, safe haven, property market, entertament district.

The first is genr: he repeatedly refers to the enclav as “gay and lbian” neighborhoods (which they sort of are), but don’t trace the simultaneo transformatn of distctively lbian urban muni, om Park Slope Brooklyn or L. To the Chigo man who “jt want[s]our ltle ty piece of space the sea of hostile terrory, ” Ghaziani offers the untertuive reassurance that “the survival of a gayborhood do not necsarily require that gays and lbians actually live there.

GAY GHETTO

” Based on his observatns of Chigo, Ghaziani intifi three factors that n save a gay neighborhood: “property ownership among queer bs owners, stutnal anchors of immediate relevance to queer muni, and historic prervatn of s that are meangful for queer people.

Communy stutns such as the LGBT Center the Wt Village and Chigo’s Center on Halstead serve as anchors for gay muni, to be sure; but, as Ghaziani not, affluent rints (gay or straight) have not always weled s that draw queer and trans youth, the homels, and people of lor. That’s the most likely oute for ex-gay neighborhoods: a few signature bs (ever more of them chas) will hold on to serve tourists, suburban gays, school groups, and people who hold mass-mediated fantasi about the sexual liberatn of the 1970s. Evans—a landmark 1996 se that overturned a Colorado state nstutnal amendment prohibg legal protectns for gays and lbians—“Those who engage homosexual nduct tend to ri disproportnate numbers certa muni.

WHY GAY GHETTOS ARE BREAKG UP

Some of the most graed public imag of LGBT people are their smopolan, highfalut liftyle; gays, so the story go, live gentrified urban neighborhoods like The Castro San Francis or Chelsea New York, eat artisanal chee, and drk $12 like most stereotyp, the myth of gay affluence is greatly realy, gay Amerins face disproportnately greater enomic challeng than their straight unterparts. In 2012, Experian, a natnal marketg firm, released a bs report claimg that the average hoehold e of a married or partnered gay man is nearly 20 percent more than a straight married or partnered man ($116, 000 pared to $94, 500).

Further rptg the data, not all partnered gay people feel fortable clarg their sexualy surveys, and, a high-earng gay uple is more likely to report their sexual orientatn to a cens-taker than a low-earng uple, makg wealthier gay people overreprented natnal surveys. A study nducted for the Amerin Journal of Soclogy sent two fict, but realistic, rum to more than 1, 700 entry-level, whe-llar job opengs, the only difference between the two beg that one rume listed membership a gay anizatn durg llege, while the other claimed experience a "Progrsive and Socialist Alliance" (sce both groups are nsired left-leang, the purpose was to separate any “gay penalty” om polil discrimatn). * * *Popular culture has helped lnch gay people to the mastream, but for all the benefs that shows such as Will & Grace, Morn Fay, and Glee have had for the LGBT muny on the public’s nscns, few cultural outlets accurately reprent the reali gays and lbians face Ameri today.

When out gay men and lbians moved to ndown urban neighborhoods the late '60s and early '70s, they rented apartments no one else wanted, started bs on blocks where no one else thought bs uld thrive, and had sex unr bh that no one else wanted to have sex unr.

THE MYTH OF GAY AFFLUENCE

Neighborhoods like New York's East Village, San Francis's Castro, Chigo's Lake View, and Seattle's Capol Hill slowly gentrified, wh hors of gays and lbians makg the once dicey neighborhoods safe for florists, rd shops, and sex clubs. And for years, young queers movg to the gay ghettos uld rely on three thgs: cheap apartments, low-payg retail jobs, and lots of other young queers wh cheap apartments and low-payg retail jobs wh whom they uld swap sp and var sexually transmted diseas. Gay ghettos are slowly turng to gay retirement muni, where the only queers who n afford to live the East Village or on Capol Hill are the on who bought apartments and ho 20 years ago when they were still relatively cheap.

SEATTLE NEXT GAY GHETTO

In asssg the fns of var neighborhoods for gay-ghettoizatns, we looked at four creria: Average rent for a stud apartment, potential for a gay dance club, potential public sex environment, and average age of current rints (on the theory that the olr the average rints, the faster the apartment turnover).

WEST SEATTLE Average Rent for Stud Apartment: $569 Potential Gay Dance Palace: Any empty warehoe on Wt Margal Way Potential Public Sex Environment: Lln Park Average Age of Rints: 38 s Seattle's old-guard queers tire of battlg wannab and lossal monthly rents, they are abandong the once sacred Hill by the fistful. An abundance of factors, cludg accsibily, shoppg, nightlife, reasonable rent, and at least one public park wh foliage ample enough to nceal midnight discretn all terme a neighborhood's potential as a gay ghetto.

‘GAY GHETTOS’ SEEN AS POLICE TARGETS

First is important to intify the number of public schools, dayre facili, nursg hom, muny centers, church, and siar tablishments that are not only of posively no e to queer people, but may even reprent a tangible threat to attag the cril mass necsary to create a tly gay ghetto. The ever-tougheng dnk drivg laws and the general repulsivens of public transportatn would make livg Wt Seattle and partyg at Seattle's current gay hotspots -- now exclively Capol Hill and downtown -- nearly impossible.

Although none are exclively gay (yet), Wt Seattle is home to a few funky and potentially queer bars and loung that are ripe for vasn: the Pagoda Room (spicly remiscent of the Hill's Ja Pagoda) and the Lizzard Lounge among them. "The Junctn, " Wt Seattle's hoppg and chic bs district, provis many tablishments dispensable to gay life: mic, book, and retail stor, hairdrsers, galleri, naturopathic physicians and acupuncturists for the immune-impaired, and f. A young woman who intified herself as Kenlee (a non-tradnal name -- a good sign) answered the phone and gave the followg rponse, "I don't get the whole gay thg, really, but que a few of my iends are gay and they are the olt people I know.

-- Adrian Ryan COLUMBIA CITY Average Rent for Stud Apartment: $408 Potential Gay Dance Club: Cy Electric Potential Public Sex Environment: The shbbery ont of Columbia Funeral Home Average Age of Rints: 32 he ia of a gay neighborhood passed om stunng to obv as I moved om Boston's Northampton, to D. " And so, wh Capol Hill ultimately fallg to people who are willg to pay $1, 600 a month to live close to Wrapp Around the Clock, 's time to pack up our makp s and t rriers, and bravely lonize the Next Gay Neighborhood, like so many fashnable bacteria a h petri dish.

HOW GAY GHETTOS AND HIV HELPED LGBTQ PEOPLE

-- Mary Martone BALLARD Average Rent for Stud Apartment: $532 Potential Gay Dance Club: The Old Pequliar Potential Public Sex Environment: Railroad tracks at far end of Goln Garns Park Average Age of Rints: 43 mage this scenar: Three gay men are kidnapped om ont of the Starbucks at Broadway and Republin on Capol Hill. Starbucks, Seattle's Bt Coffee, an archecturally signifint Seafirst Bank, Ta Del Mar, Payls Sho, flower shops, thrift shops, send-hand cloth, a greasy 24-hour rtrant -- abandoned Ballard, our gay kidnap victims may be far om home, but they quickly feel right at home.

RSIA’S ‘ANTI-GAY’ LAW PH GAY MUNY TO SHADOWS

Open for 18 months now, Ballard Health Club not only boasts an imprsive weight room and all the latt rd equipment, but two elements that no health club hopg to attract gay and lbian clientele n be whout: attractive personal traers and an image-the-erotic-possibili dry sna each locker room. Leary durg the statements om the homosexuals were ma at a news nference yterday afternoon rponse to the disturbanc which followed a homosexual prott news nference was held at the Epispal Church of the Holy Apostl, at 28th Street. ” A statement that was read by one of the men said that three gay groups had held a prott march Saturday night agast what they lled stepped‐up police timidatn and march started at Eighth Avenue and 42d Street, one of the areas scribed as a “gay ghetto.

GAY GHETTOS, HOMOSEXUAL HAVENS OR DISCRIMATORY WOKE NONSENSE? BRA’S FIRST LGBT-ONLY HOG PLEX GET GREEN LIGHT

”Other “gay ghettos” are mid town Third Avenue, Greenwich Village and Central Park Wt, was spokmen said that po lice harassment had creased sce a Gay Peopl Week June and pecially the last three weeks.

A uple of generatns of gay men — my generatn particular — were more than cimated by vis disvered our recently formed ghettos — livg, workg, playg, and havg sex together nse, sular muni — and wiped , when I say the vis helped , I don’t mean that pletely. And Manchter general was seen by many as an example of what a gay-iendly cy should be like, the way an tegrated and clive muny uld work and thrive to the pot where sexualy was not even all that relevant.

THE G.O.P. TRI TO BUILD A GAY GHETTO

This new scheme is aimed at not-so-well-off over-55 LGBTs and nsists of 100 apartments of affordable hog to be erected the leafy Whalley Range suburb to the south of the cy, a uple of om Canal Stt, a 62 year-old gay man who liv Manchter wh his partner of some 40-years, ns an LGBT webse the cy, foced on the Canal Street ‘gay village, ’ and he is a supporter of the new iative. Brtay Newman for The New York TimThis past weekend, the Republin Party Texas voted on an outrageo platform that not only ni the rults of the 2020 printial electn, but also rejects gay marriage and seeks to “protect” mors until they turn 17 agast “predatory sexual behavrs, ” such as drag queens readg stori aloud to queens are predators, trans women are a threat and gay marriage is a vlatn of the “natural orr”: This is all part of the wing and re-energized attack by Republins on L.

Muny om “vlence and opprsn, ” urtg openly gay donors like Peter Thiel and later referrg to gay marriage as settled law, he would go on to take unprecented steps “to unrme and elimate rights protectg L.

GAYBORHOOD

People, ” as Alphonso David, then the print of the Human Rights Campaign, put Tmp’s exhstive list of transgrsns agast gay people were his admistratn’s attempts to lerally erase them by tryg to block new qutns about sexual orientatn om the cens and tryg to fe transgenr people out of existence, proposg to “fe sex as eher male or female, unchangeable, and termed by the genals that a person is born wh, ” acrdg to The New York, there was the Supreme Court self. Shortly after sanctned gay marriage, Mike Huckabee, a printial ndidate 2016, fumed that the “Supreme Court n no more repeal the laws of nature and nature’s God on marriage than n the law of gravy.

Durg a 2016 lecture, Barrett seemed to fend the jtic who dissented the gay marriage se and qutned whether was up to the urt to ci issu like which bathroom transgenr people should be allowed to that time, Republin state legislators were troducg a number of bathroom bills, an early step their ph to opprs queer people. ) Now, we are wnsg the evable rult, as Republin legislators win the attacks to queerns this year, we saw Florida pass s “Don’t Say Gay” no mistake, this is all part of a renewed, broad-based attack on gay rights and gay culture, to stanch the rise of young people who are g out.

Postwar downtown Philalphia, or “Center Cy, ” as was begng to be lled, had the largt ncentratn of apartments and rental rooms the “Cy of Hom, ” providg gay men, lbians, and transgenred people wh the privacy and urban anonymy they sought. In an era when racism extend even to the LGBT muny, many Ain Amerin gay men and lbians socialized bars or through private parti north of Market Street, North Philalphia, or across the Schuylkill Wt Philalphia.

CHALLENGG THE GAY GHETTO SOUTH AI: TIME TO MOVE ON?

Dpe s semi-sensatnalist subtle—“Philalphia’s homosexuals lead a strange twilight life outsi the law and outsi of society”— the story steered away om the lurid and foced stead on the problems of gay people Philalphia and the burgeong gay polil scene.

In 1972, Philalphians held their first Gay Pri monstratn, wh an timated 10, 000 people marchg om Rtenhoe Square to Inpennce Mall, signalg the end of a “furtive aterny” and the begng of a new, highly visible prence. Center Cy’s gay neighborhood gaed s name 1995 at Outft, a memoratn of Natnal Comg Out Day, when David Warner playfully paraphrased the Mister Rogers children’s song and clared, “It’s a betiful day the Gayborhood! The Philalphia cy police, unr Commissner Frank Rizzo, regularly patrolled this area at night and arrted dividuals who looked lbian, gay, or transgenr, regardls of the dividuals’ volvement wh the clubs that led this street.

Throughout the summer of 1982 Philalphia activists fought for the passage of a “gay rights law, ” an amendment to the cy’s Fair Practic Ordance to prohib discrimatn hog, employment, and public acmodatns on the basis of sexual preference. In the recent past, there has been a proliferatn of different approach femist, as well as queer thkg wh polil criqu around notns of homonormativy and neoliberalism openg up a range of divisns, as well as new allianc between and amongst both theorists and activists (Richardson, 2005, Rhbrook, 2002, Wat and Markwell, 2006). Such spac clu tradnal gay villag and other supposedly normalised s (Casey, 2007, Chas, 2000) recent years, there has been creasg tert chang wh LGTBQ ghettos, 1 villag, preccts and neighbourhoods different ci and regns across the world, particularly, but perhaps not only, the Wt.

GAY ENCLAV FACE PROSPECT OF BEG PASSé

This clus ncerns om some LGBTQ nstuenci about the cle – or -gayg – of some queer neighbourhoods (Casey, 2004, Hekma, 2004), upled wh mentary about the emergence of newer plac, sometim poed as mixed, gay-iendly, or post-gay (Ghaziani, 2011, Gorman-Murray, 2006). In this paper, attentn is foced on Wtern theorisatns of “what gay is” and their preoccupatn wh the lk between gay male sexuali and specific forms of gay male space such as gay ghettos and neighbourhoods. Drawg on the South Ain example, is illtrated that (1) differently nstcted gay inti are differently spatialised relative to ntext, and (2) that Wtern experienc relatn to the nstctn and associated cle of gay space is not universal.

HEALTH-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN: A PARISON OF THOSE LIVG "GAY GHETTOS" WH THOSE LIVG ELSEWHERE.

That type of argument should not be one which shows that gay ghettos and neighbourhoods are beg displaced and are clg necsarily negative terms, but rather that they are beg replaced by new kds of spac, which are assumg their cleart forms beyond the Wt, and uld be potg towards greater cln and acceptance of gay argument is veloped through three sectns of discsn and analysis.

In the followg sectn the central ncern that aris is that gay inti nnot be kept stable non-Wtern ntexts, such as South Ai, to facilate the theorisatn of a relatnship between space and sexualised inty/inti. It is argued that relative to experienc elsewhere, the current Wtern disurse requir extensive empiril ttg, as the current theorisatns of gay sexuali relative to space-formatn are regnal Wtern sexualy/space reflectns or narrativ and not (as prently implied) ready for large sle theorisatn.

HEALTH-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN: A PARISON OF THOSE LIVG "GAY GHETTOS" WH THOSE LIVG ELSEWHERE

Current Wtern theory is not only sufficient to expla gay spatial reali the Wtern/Northern ntext self, but totally ignor (and is irrelevant to) the majory gay populatn loted very different and diverse settgs elsewhere. Sectn snippets“Gay” and space theorySce the early 1970s, a range of scholars have argued that the nsy, variety and multiple experienc that the ntemporary urban landspe n offer to s habants has equently led to claims that urban and sexual eedoms go hand hand (Casey, 2004).

The overarchg theme is that durg the 1970s and the early 1980s, a number of social scientists began to observe that gay men Beyond the current disurse: “beg gay” and s spatial exprsnsThere has been creasg bate surroundg sentialised notns of what beg gay might mean (Luongo, 2007, Tamale, 2011, Tucker, 2009). Tucker (2009), along wh others (Habib, 2009, Howell, 2007, Quirogo, 2000; Reid-Pharr, 2002; Ross, 2005; Wallace, 2002), argue that the schema of gay/straight, the closet/out of the closet is beg problematised through s applitn to ntexts/muni/societi that do not place such promence on proclaimg a particular “thentic” sexualSo … movg beyond gay ghettos?

Perhaps one of the great issu holdg back the theorisatn of gay male space is that the preoccupatn of the Wt and s activist past of the 1970s and 1980s which have formed the foc of key thors the gay space bat.

DELAWARE’S GAY GHETTO, REHOBOTH BEACH

Same-sex marriage and the stateGLQ(2005)“It’s somethg you jt have to ignore”: unrstandg and addrsg ntemporary lbian, gay, bisexual and trans safety beyond hate crime paradigmsJournal of Social Policy(2007)K. (Hetero)sexg space: gay men and ‘straight’ space Alai, South AtraliaProfsnal Geographer(1997)Ced by (46)The benefs of an LGBT-clive tourist statn2019, Journal of Dtatn Marketg and ManagementIn dog so, this rearch sheds light on how the narrativ that are nstcted regardg LGBT mobily also affect the non-LGBT market. Such fdgs also rerce Visser’s (2013) observatns that Wtern theorizatn of the lks between gay sexual inty and space are not universally applible and suggt the importance of improved unrstandgs of the signifince of LGBT inty beyond nsolidated gay spac for broar procs of place-makg, promotn and modifitn.