San Diego Gay Neighborhoods

Contents:

• THE METRO AREAS WH THE LARGT, AND SMALLT, GAY POPULATNS
• UCLA STUDY SHOWS DECREASE IN SAN DIEGO GAY POPULATN
• GAYT PLAC IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2020
• CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR.
• MOVG TO LGBT SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!

THE METRO AREAS WH THE LARGT, AND SMALLT, GAY POPULATNS

A new analysis of Gallup survey data offers the most tailed timat yet about where people who intify as gay, lbian, bisexual or transgenr Gallup analysis fds the largt ncentratns the Wt — and not jt the expected plac like San Francis and Portland, Ore. It seems to be a kd of regnal pal of gay life, attractg people om other parts of Utah and the Mormon the other hand, some of the East Coast plac wh famo gay neighborhoods, cludg New York, Miami and Washgton, have a smaller percentage of their populatn who intify as gay — roughly average for a big metropolan area. ” Wilson/The New York TimSan FrancisHistorians often trace San Francis’s role as a gay refuge part to World War II, when the Navy discharged gay sailors, bee of their sexualy, at Treasure Island San Francis Bay.

He is creded wh turng the Castro district of the 1970s to perhaps the untry’s most visible gay neighborhood, a muny and tourist statn that still hums unr a rabow San Francis has ls of a pull, as other parts of the untry have bee ls hostile, the cy is still a statn, cludg for transgenr people. Many of them have fought for some of the untry’s fartht-reachg gay rights polici, cludg the recent expansn of Mediid verage for treatment like hormone therapy and unselg for transgenr people.

Still, Jeana Frazzi, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, says Portland has work to do before n feel like a haven for many transgenr people and gay people of factor behd the data — Portland and elsewhere — may be people’s willgns to tell a pollster that they’re gay, lbian or bisexual. Gay and lbian Amerins are not substantially more ted than the rt of the populatn, acrdg to Gary Gat, a -thor of “The Gay and Lbian Atlas, ” who has studied the Gallup data.

UCLA STUDY SHOWS DECREASE IN SAN DIEGO GAY POPULATN

7 another aspect of the Mormon culture — the importance of muny and fay — go a long way toward explag the pattern, people Salt Lake Cy many gay people who were raised Mormon (or L. “If wasn’t an accint of birth that you were born San Francis and happened to be queer, I don’t thk there’s the immediate pull that you mt move there anymore, ” said Douglas Ray, who teach queer lerature Birmgham and eded “The Queer South, ” an other large metro areas wh relatively small gay populatns clu Hoton, Memphis, Nashville and Raleigh, N. Yet spe dranian laws that threatened to sweep up anyone hapls enough to be ught a homosexual act, same-sex love flourished San Diego, even the cy’s hight social circl.

Protected by their soc-enomic stat om dishonor and prosecutn, upper class upl such as Lee and Teats or Shepard and Tonner did not suffer om stigma or the punishg laws wh which ls fortunate homosexuals of their day had to ntend.

GAYT PLAC IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2020

Gay historian Allan Bébé has famoly suggted that Ameri’s war effort also served to brg together many gays and lbians who had hherto been isolated small towns and ci all across Ameri, and a signifint subculture was th on s way to beg formed. For stance, gay bars such as Bradley’s and Blue Jacket the Gaslamp District proliferated durg the war years; locker clubs such as the Seven Seas Locker Club and Jack’s Steam and Locker Club beme not only facili where ary men uld change to civvi before a night on the town but also cisg grounds where those who were gay found sexual opportuni. Many gays and lbians who had been troduced to port ci such as San Diego durg the war chose to settle them after the war bee they had learned they uld feel eer there than they had back home.

” Lee and Mortimer tend their fulmatns to shock and tillate, but surely a llateral effect was to rm even more gay people of San Diego’s thrivg gay life and to draw them to the cy. The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) was rmed too—and bee homosexuals were prumptive crimals unr state and lol laws, the SDPD went to great lengths to hunt gay men down, even stakg out the streets where gays were known to cise. The SDPD felt jtified crimalizg them bee an era when no distctn was ma between sexual orientatn and genr inty, was assumed that all trans people, ipso facto, mted illegal homosexual sex acts.

Ed Hansen, a closeted mister at San Diego’s Chollas View Methodist Church, who had recently pleted an ternship at San Francis’s ultra-liberal Gli Memorial Methodist Church, started San Diego’s first anized gay group, “Dghters and Sons of Society.

CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR.

” The group offered much-need emotnal support to the muny, but as s ntral name suggts, members sentially kept who they were a secret, which meant that they uld have ltle impact fightg discrimatory laws and homophobic prejudice.

But at the start of that summer, an event at a gay bar New York triggered a transformatn the way gay people everywhere would view themselv and their right to eedom and equaly. But stead of gog quietly to the paddy wagon as gay people had almost always done when arrted police raids, the patrons, fluenced by the many dramatic protts of that , fought back and sparked four nights of rts.

MOVG TO LGBT SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!

” A week after the rts, a group of young radils New York found the Gay Liberatn Front, named to evoke the munist Natnal Liberatn Front of Vietnam, an anizatn admired by many young Amerin leftists. ) In the sprg of 1971, thanks to promotn by the GLF, the San Diego State Experimental College—tablished to perm stunts to explore non-nventnal studi–offered one of the first gay studi urs the untry, “The Homosexual and Society.

Word of GLF reached Chancellor Glenn Dumke, the head of the California State College system, who rmed San Diego State’s print, Mallm Love, that no group lled “Gay” may be associated wh a California State College mp.

Print Love, not unsympathetic to GLF, told the group’s learship that he would ntue to approve their stat as a mp anizatn if they would only excise the word “Gay” om their name. On November 28, 1971, they staged San Diego’s first gay prott: about fifteen GLF members marched ont of the San Diego Police Headquarters rryg signs that mand an end to harassment and mockgly clared “10% of You Are US” (a reference to the Ksey statistic that revealed that one-tenth of Amerins were practicg homosexuals at any given time). GLF activist Js Jsop announced to all the lol news media that would listen (KOGO TV, KFMB, and The San Diego Unn were there), “We are standg together to meet this problem [of police harassment] and will ntue to do so ever creasg numbers until all policemen learn that gay people are no longer easy targets for their sadism.