Unrstandg Los Angel (and Wt Hollywood) Gay History: Contuy and Disntuy

Contents:

• JT HOW GAY IS WT HOLLYWOOD?
• IS ITS GAY POPULATN WHY WEHO HOG IS SO EXPENSIVE?
• UNRSTANDG LOS ANGEL (AND WT HOLLYWOOD) GAY HISTORY: CONTUY AND DISNTUY
• WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATN IS GAY [UPDATED MAY 2023]
• WT HOLLYWOOD’S HISTORIC GAY NIGHTCLUB THE ABBEY IS UP FOR SALE
• WT HOLLYWOOD GAY MEN ARE SLUTTIT IN NATN
• GENTRIFITN IS CHANGG CALIFORNIA’S INIC GAY MUNI
• GAYT PLAC IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2020
• WT HOLLYWOOD HAS THIRD-HIGHT PERCENTAGE OF GAY COUPL STATE, CENS ANALYSIS SHOWS

JT HOW GAY IS WT HOLLYWOOD?

LA Pri, one of the natn’s olst and largt LGBTQ pri celebratns, is leavg Wt Hollywood after more than four s the inic gay-iendly a letter to the Wt Hollywood Cy Council on Tuday, Christopher Street Wt, the nonprof that produc LA Pri, says the annual para and ftival will be moved om the cy 2021. ”“Wh s high ncentratn of LGBTQ rints and bs — more than 40% of rints Wt Hollywood intify as LGBTQ and three of the five members of the Wt Hollywood Cy Council are openly gay — the Cy of Wt Hollywood remas the heart of the regn’s LGBTQ muny, ” the cy’s statement reads. Wh 75% of s hoeholds occupied by LGBT people, WeHo easily tops the Castro district San Francis (66%), Dallas’s gay Uptown neighborhood (59%) and even Palm Sprgs (55%) and San Diego’s Hillcrt (55%).

Across metros, mand to live muni wh higher Neighborhood Pri sr has creased most New York, New Orleans, and Boston, where the premium to live gay neighborhoods has creased by 56 percentage pots, 52 percentage pots and 26 percentage pots rpectively.

While Wt Hollywood may be the natn’s (and perhaps the world’s) gayt cy, the mand among gay people to live gay neighborhoods Greater Los Angel as a whole hasn’t creased as much as has other major metropolan areas. WeHo Pri 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebelln, the very reason for Pri’s existence, pletely ignored that earth-shakg event, pretendg like had never LA LGBT Center’s attempted 2019 to falsely rewre s early history and rrectly ced 1969 as the date for s 50th anniversary celebratn even though 1971 was the date ed to memorate s 25th Archiv refed to operate an attempt to provi a venue to asss the impact of Stonewall on the velopment of the Los Angel gay vic 1967 LAPD raid on the Black Cat, a Silver Lake gay bar, and s aftermath is skewed today to the pot of misreprentatn, and there are other exampl.

IS ITS GAY POPULATN WHY WEHO HOG IS SO EXPENSIVE?

To honor the seven men—Harry Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Rudi Gernreich, Dale Jenngs, Jam Gber, Konrad Stevens—who rpond to Hay’s origal ll for a homosexual anizatn that 1951 beme the Mattache Society, named after the masked mattachi urt jters of medieval Europe thought by Hay to be largely homosexual men.

Until the 1969 Stonewall Rebelln, protective super-paranoia based on dividual safety and survival om hetero supremacists’ vlence and physil and psychologil genoci characterized homosexual realy. History, homosexuals intified themselv as an opprsed mory group, affirmed that there was such a thg as a homosexual culture, implied, but never actualized, llective polil actn, and anized succsful, but secret, discsn groups entirely by word of mouth.

(a name rived om Thomas Carlyle’s “A mystic bond of brotherhood mak all men one”) replaced Mattache and started g the scriptive term “homophile” (lover of man or same), importantly broang inty om a solely sexual fn to also clu relatnship.

UNRSTANDG LOS ANGEL (AND WT HOLLYWOOD) GAY HISTORY: CONTUY AND DISNTUY

As Mattache had started homosexuals talkg to each other about their opprsn, albe secretly, the Homophile era was important that, through s pneerg publitns, the wrten word also me out of the closet for the first time. Addnal fg characteristics of the Homophile era clud nyg that a homosexual culture existed, law reform was a panacea, advot for social acceptance for homophil should not be homophil themselv but hetero profsnals (misters, attorneys, psychologists and psychiatrists), and, for safety purpos, psdonyms were wily ed to shield real inti.

D’E, lookg back over the attempted erasure of Mattache and the ascenncy of the Homophile effort, wr, “In sum, acmodatn to social norms replaced the affirmatn of a distctive gay inty, llective effort gave way to dividual actn, and nfince the abily of gay men and lbians to terpret their own experience yield to the wisdom of the experts. It is important to unrstand historilly that New York Cy, Los Angel, San Francis and elsewhere the seeds and spiratn for the early Gay Liberatn revolutn did not e om eher the Mattache or the Homophile efforts, whose history most people were unaware of, even many members of the Gay Liberatn Front of Los Angel (GLF), whose cy that history rid. Gay Liberatn was seed largely by the spiratn of and molg by the bravery of lunch unter s-s by black llege stunts, water hos and the ant black civil rights movement, the -your-face anti-Vietnam War protters, early femist thought and actn, and the righteons and zeal of numero other social jtice/social change movements.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATN IS GAY [UPDATED MAY 2023]

Before Stonewall, many gay and lbian people were actively engaged a myriad of progrsive social change efforts, sometim learship posns, but the closet due to the vilent and stutnalized hetero supremacy progrsive circl and society general. After Stonewall, a handful of those activists--other-, like 28-year old me, began to see our own personal fight for eedom as a gay person as well as the Gay Liberatn movement self as an sential part of the social revolutn occurrg around . The word “gay, ” a mid-20th century -word creasgly ed by hip folk that was gay-rived and to which a new gay-fed and gay-fiant inty uld be poured, was married to the word “liberatn.

A Homophile emancipatn md-set (heteros will give our eedom and accept if we behave and act jt like them) was supersed by a liberatn iology and a grassroots, radil prott movement (gay and lbian people will une llectively and antly ee ourselv).

A., GLF, the central anizg enty facilatg the Gay Liberatn movement here, fought back agast hetero supremacy wh direct nontatnal polil actn and a fierce unwillgns to promise on anythg impactg the eedom and well-beg of gay and lbian people.

WT HOLLYWOOD’S HISTORIC GAY NIGHTCLUB THE ABBEY IS UP FOR SALE

After a year and a half of dac monstratns and nontatns, 1971 GLF’s Gay Survival Commtee morphed to the Gay Communy Servic Center (now lled the LA LGBT Center) around which an anized, visible and polilly proactive gay muny alced where none had ever existed before. Om psychologil exile New Mexi and 1979 lerally moved him back—the Mattache and Gay Liberatn historilly uned -creatg another leap forward gay-centered nscns, the Radil Faeri. While the ntemporary Neo-Homophile era is whout doubt many steps higher on the polil and cultural evolutnary ladr than s pre-Stonewall namake, the two eras have a basic ronance wh each other, even though there is no strict one-to-one rrponnce.

The name fs bee today the Neo-Homophile’s unrlyg polil, personal inty, and cultural nscns rembl the earlier nservative Homophile era, but wh a liberal, public relatns veneer. Currently there is the same Homophile assiatn iology (we are no different than heteros except for the object of our sexual sire) wh a largely whe, upper middle-class agenda, often imatg and nformg to hetero culture—for example, marriage, which fails about 50% of the time and which was low on Gay Liberatn’s agenda. Another characteristic of the Neo-Homophile era is s top-down, hierarchil stcture largely based on race, class, wealth and a dly- reformist agenda and nventnal electoral polics.

WT HOLLYWOOD GAY MEN ARE SLUTTIT IN NATN

It is why the grassroots Sprg 2020 Insurrectn, triggered by police vlence toward black people, befuddled Pri and the Wt Hollywood Neo-Homophile tablishment, g a bacle there. Now, the ntug tug-of-war between Christopher Street Wt and the Cy of Wt Hollywood, actg as if each enty owns Pri, and as if the opn of the Los Angel LGBTQ muny is irrelevant, monstrat how far Neo-Homophilism has drifted om the ialism of Gay Liberatn and how imperv has bee to real social change.

The Gay Liberatn perd was centered maly along the North Hollywood-Hollywood-East Hollywood-Silverlake-Echo Park axis, areas more reprentative of the heterogeney of the muny, albe very imperfectly. While many Gay Liberatnists lled for a rtcturg of society to clu enomic fairns, equaly of opportuny, and broar cln of everyone, the rabow palism of the Neo-Homophile perd largely foc on securg larger and larger slic of the money pie wh no llective advocy for larger stctural chang that would benef everybody, particularly ordary LGBTQ ontle workg people. The important Supreme Court’s 2020 lg givg LGBTQ workers legal protect surprised most gay people bee workers’ rights and well-beg are not high on the Neo-Homophile agenda.

The Queer Liberatn perd was characterized by a new, radil polil nscns, moled by BLM, which the wimpy, psychologil nomenclature, “homophobia, ” of the mid-20th century was replaced by a more societally astute, 21st century unrstandg of queer opprsn by their adoptn of the term “systemic and stutnalized heterosexual supremacy”—”hetero supremacy” for short. Concrete mands were ma on the polil system at all levels based on the real needs of gay and lbian people—affordable hog, cent payg jobs, accsible qualy tn, affordable health re—rather than the photo-ops of Neo-Homophile policians and their syphants, and beg a sh w for both polil parti.

GENTRIFITN IS CHANGG CALIFORNIA’S INIC GAY MUNI

After years of ant attacks and nontatns by Queer Liberatn, the Catholic Church was forced to rcd s dogma that queer people were “trsilly morally disorred, ” a victory as important as Gay Liberatn’s 1973 victory over the mental health dtry. For example, one set of qutns may seek self-reported data on same-sex sexual experienc, while another set may seek data surroundg personal intifitn as lbian, gay, or bisexual. In a culturally nservative muny, where gog to church and buildg a fay were heavily emphasized, Ahn felt his gay inty kept him “om beg able to participate Korean culture.

Beg Asian Amerin and LGBTQ+ n feel lonely, wh stutns such as ethnic church often disavowg non-heterosexual relatnships while tradnal LGBTQ+ spac such as gay bars n be unwelg to people of lor.

GAYT PLAC IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2020

“Fdg plac like GAMeBoi, where beg queer and Asian do -exist … It’s not like a 1, 000-year-old Korean cultural rual, but I uld create a new rual, ” said Ahn, a recent Friday, hundreds packed QT Nightlife’s monthly K-Pop Night at Micky’s, a Wt Hollywood gay club a block or so east om the old GAMeBoi posed for selfi a pk Barbie box wh dis balls hangg overhead. ” (Michael Owen Baker / For The Tim) Even historilly gay neighborhoods like Wt Hollywood or San Francis’s Castro district, Asian Amerins have long been ignored or fetishized, seen as feme and weak. In 2019, then-Wt Hollywood Mayor John Duran argued that he did not appropriately touch a member of the Gay Men’s Chos of Los Angel bee “he’s a skny Korean kid wh pimpl on his cheek.

” Asian Amerin advocy groups cricized Duran’s remark, wh API Equaly-LA potg to the long history of discrimatn agast Asian men gay muni such as Wt Hollywood, whose clubs “ed to require three forms of photo intifitn om anyone they perceived as Asian.

While s Boys' Town strip along Santa Moni Boulevard n still rival New York's Greenwich Village and San Francis's Castro district as the gay pal of Ameri, WeHo is a gentrified cy wh velopment-crazed learship. Wedged snugly between two of the most popular gay bars on Santa Moni Boulevard is Block Party, the “gayt” store Wt Hollywood, sellg men’s tank tops, swimwear and short shorts, party-themed wboy hats and everythg Pri om rabow beanie babi to vivid striped jumpsus.

WT HOLLYWOOD HAS THIRD-HIGHT PERCENTAGE OF GAY COUPL STATE, CENS ANALYSIS SHOWS

On this stretch of what is loosely nsired Boystown the historilly gay cy, the three doors are some of the last gay-owned and gay-oriented bs after a steady march of mastream rtrants, bars and other retail have moved . Experts say gay neighborhoods, once a haven for maly gay men, have been shiftg for more than a , driven by gentrifitn and other social factors cludg a wir acceptance of LGBTQ muny. To make matters even more plited, and expensive, Zillow released rearch May showg that gay neighborhoods are so popular that buyers pay a premium to get , sometim hundreds of thoands of dollars.