Gay Atlanta: Why The Big Peach Is an LGBTQ-Friendly Cy - EveryQueer

Contents:

• ONCE UPON A TIME ATLANTA: STAGG REVOLUTN OM THE GAY BAR
• DRAG, DGS AND DIS: WHEN ATLANTA WAS A CENTER OF THE GAY REVOLUTN
• GAY ATLANTA: WHY THE BIG PEACH IS AN LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CY

ONCE UPON A TIME ATLANTA: STAGG REVOLUTN OM THE GAY BAR

Here’s a look back at some key moments that shaped the cy’s LGBTQ muny over the last five 1969 – Atlanta police raid the Ansley Mall Mi Cema Midtown durg a showg of Andy Warhol’s “Lonome Cowboys, ” a wtern satire that featur gay sex scen.

” The raid, together wh New York Cy’s Stonewall rts six weeks earlier, is the talyst for Atlanta’s gay rights 1971 – More than 100 activists assemble Midtown for Atlanta’s first gay pri march to mark the two-year anniversary of Stonewall. Led by members of the Geia Gay Liberatn Front, which formed rponse to the Ansley raid and other police harassment, participants ph for an end to sodomy laws and discrimatn the workplace, hog and other 1972 – A group of lbian activists form the Atlanta Lbian Femist Alliance, a group that would bee a powerful force the cy’s LGBTQ muny for 1976 – Mayor Maynard Jackson issu Atlanta’s first “Gay Pri Day” proclamatn.

”June 1978 – An appearance by Ana Bryant, the sger and activist who opposed gay rights, at the Southern Baptist Conventn attracts several thoand protters to Atlanta’s World Congrs Center and revigorat the cy’s LGBTQ liberatn movement.

DRAG, DGS AND DIS: WHEN ATLANTA WAS A CENTER OF THE GAY REVOLUTN

In his ncurrg opn, then-Chief Jtice Warren Burger wrote that “to hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to st asi lennia of moral teachg. ”Cred: The Atlanta Journal-ConstutnCred: The Atlanta Journal-ConstutnAugt 1993 – Cobb County adopts a rolutn llg homosexualy “patible wh the standards to which this muny subscrib. Ls than a year later, unr prsure om gay rights advot, the Atlanta Commtee for the Olympic Gam announced was pullg volleyball gam out of Cobb County rponse to the 1996 – A gatherg of Black LGBTQ iends Piedmont Park sparks what eventually be Atlanta Black Pri, an annual Labor Day weekend ftival that now draws upwards of 10, 000 people to the cy for arts, cultural and tnal events.

GAY ATLANTA: WHY THE BIG PEACH IS AN LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CY

2014 – Activists lnch Southern Fried Queer Pri, which foc on empowerg queer and trans people of lor through the 2015 – Gay marriage is legalized for the first time Geia after the Supreme Court l that the Constutn’s equal protectn and due procs cls protect same-sex 2016 – Then-Gov. ExploreDrag, dgs and dis: When Atlanta was a center of the gay revolutnJune 2020 – The Supreme Court, a 6-3 cisn, l that employers nnot fire LGBTQ workers bee of their sexual orientatn or genr inty. Queer history tends to foc on large ci like New York and San Francis, but Atlanta’s actually been a haven for queer and trans Southerners sce the early 20th on for some of Atlanta’s most unique queer history—irrefutable proof that this cy is gay as hoe where Michael Hardwick was arrtedPhotograph by Rachel Garb1.

Her vrl gathered a diffe llectn of gay rights activists to an anized movement, and won new alli to the e: the Southern gay magaze Cise quipped, “Save Our Children actually may have saved the languishg Gay polil movement. Acrdg to Gay Atlanta Flashback, the home beme the Italian rtrant Capri’s 1949, fally transformg to a gay hotspot the bar shuttered durg the Covid panmic, but last year the cy named the buildg a historic landmark, the first protected LGBTQ+ se the Deep South.

“Certaly, ” Jim Auchmutey of the Atlanta Journal-Constutn wr, Atlanta is “the gay oasis of the South—the place wh the most gay bars and the most gay church” of any cy the southeastern Uned Stat. Published a 1987 seri tled “The Shapg of Atlanta, ” Auchmutey’s article scrib the “fluenc” and numero ntributns of gay and lbian Atlantans om their power as a votg bloc to their “renovatn of town neighborhoods. ”2 Further, Auchmutey’s article picts a tensn among Atlanta’s gay-and-lbian-intifyg cizens between those who sire more out, overt, and direct polil actn and those who do not see a need for such activist anizatn.

Powell’s lack of polil actn and personal beliefs on the tactics of gay and lbian activists mak all-the-more ironic that one of the first book-length histori of “Atlanta’s gay revolutn” centers around this send bar he owned, The Sweet Gum Head. Like Auchmutey’s brief survey of gay Atlanta the late 1980s, Mart Padgett’s 2021 history, A Night at the Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Dgs, Dis, and Atlanta’s Gay Revolutn, v rears to trace the velopment, promence, and fluence of Atlanta’s gay muny through Padgett’s refully curated st of important cultural, bs, and polil figur across the 1970s.

Unlike Auchmutey’s article, Padgett’s study both intifi and ntu terviews wh numero “proment” gay Atlantans that shaped Atlanta’s gay muny, some who rried signs the streets and some who flnted the bars.

In his anizatnal choice to follow Smh, Greenwell/Wells, and other “st” members, Padgett is perhaps spired by the work of Mart Duberman, whose 1993 Stonewall siarly traced a handful of historic actors volved the 1960s-1970s “gay revolutn” that encircled the events at the Stonewall Inn and bar New York Cy’s Greenwich Village. Wh ANATSGH Padgett tentnally sts Atlanta as a central se of lol queer worldmakg, placg the cy the pany of the more often celebrated hubs of 1970s gay liberatn like New York Cy and San Francis. ”6 Padgett views the “shapg of Atlanta” as separable om the “gays and lbians” who “streamed om plac” across the south and “fashned an oasis” the cy, largely begng his view durg the 1970s.