The History of How Gay Bars Beme the Battleground for LGBTQ+ Rights

Contents:

• GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
• THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
• DO WE STILL NEED GAY BARS? THIS AUTHOR’S BOOK TACKL WHY THEY’RE DYG — AND WHY WE SHOULDN’T LET THEM

GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG

Why Not is a gay-iendly bar downtown Budapt wh panoramic vistas, overlookg the Danube, the Liberty Bridge, and the historic Gellért Hotel. Although open late every day of the week, try to arrive at a reasonable hour on Fridays as many people move on to see the midnight show at Alterego, Budapt's inic gay club. Why don't Fayetteville have a gay bar?

There was a moment readg Greggor Mattson’s book, Who Needs Gay Bars?, where I found myself beg credibly fensive. One of the 130 gay bar owners he terviewed is bemoang how his ctomers are no longer ntent to hang wh iends and nverse over a few drks.

THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS

Gay bar patrons want entertament, he says — drag shows, TV watch parti, activi. The differenc are sort of the pot of Mattson’s book, a chronicle of gay bars 39 stat across the untry and throughout Amerin history. “There is no one answer to the qutn ‘Who needs gay bars?

’ bee there is no one ‘who, ’ no one set of ‘needs, ’ and no one kd of ‘gay bar, ’” wr Mattson, a soclogy profsor at Oberl. There are strip clubs and dive bars and f and cktail bars servg both gay and straight people.

Gay bars are not a monolh. But the state of the gay bar has bee a prsg ncern.

DO WE STILL NEED GAY BARS? THIS AUTHOR’S BOOK TACKL WHY THEY’RE DYG — AND WHY WE SHOULDN’T LET THEM

Mattson wr that 50 percent of the untry’s gay bars closed between 2012 and 2021, and that the difficulti have not been evenly felt. But even light of all the threats, gay bars are figurg out how to fill hol muny needs, how to pete wh apps and apathy, how to balance muny tradns wh more clive valu. And what’s more, the “gay bar” as exists popular imagatn — an exclive space by and for eher gay men or women — has never reprented what gay bars actually are.

“Gay bars are not dyg, they’re evolvg. Eater: A big pot you keep g back to is the nebulo ncept of a gay bar.

After all the terviews, are you any closer to beg able to fe what a “gay bar” is? So n a fe be a gay bar?