When The Woodward, Detro's olst-nng gay bar, burned a massive fire last week, spurred a nversatn about the history of the bar self and how to remember and celebrate s signifince the gay muny while lookg toward the future.
Contents:
- THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
- RAISG THE BAR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY BARS
- WH THE WOODWARD’S FUTURE UNCERTA, TAKG STOCK OF DETRO'S DISAPPEARG GAY BARS
THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
In honor of Pri Month, take a ep dive to 200+ years of gay bar history and how they paved the way for the LGBTQ rights movement. * historical gay bars *
Today, people tend to equate gay bars as beg plac to party pecially hard. They’re fun spots if you’re gay, straight, or anywhere between. ‘Wild night out’ stori often clu or end at the neighborhood gay bar.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the gay bar wh the LGBTQ+ rights movement over the past uple hundred years. In honor of Pri Month, we wanted to highlight the historil signifince of gay bars and their impact on equaly for all.
RAISG THE BAR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY BARS
Bee of the need for tense secrecy, the very earlit history of the gay bar has been mostly lost. However, 1810, we get our first rerd stance of a gay bar—unr admtedly unfortunate circumstanc. Although is nice to thk of gay bars as unanimoly safe plac, where the LGBTQ+ muny uld exist whout threat, that clearly wasn’t always the se.
Stati, gay bars seem to have gotten their ‘start’ the later part of the 1800s, wh a New York Cy hotspot lled “The Sli. ” Unfortunately, police reports and mastream media verage of a gay bar 1880 proved to be extremely unreliable and hyperbolic, fueled mostly by pearl-clutchg and fear-mongerg rather than actual rmatn.
WH THE WOODWARD’S FUTURE UNCERTA, TAKG STOCK OF DETRO'S DISAPPEARG GAY BARS
Over the next several s, gay and lbian bars began to pop up all over the untry, each one perhaps takg a cue om those before . Dpe their often short-lived nature, the early gay bars often served as hugely important battlegrounds the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
In the 1950’s, San Francis hotspot The Black Cat was makg s name as one of the natn’s most popular gay bars. In rponse to this, the San Francis Police Department began a mpaign agast the bar and s gay clientele.
“ orr to tablish 'good e' for spensn of platiff's license, somethg more mt be shown than that many of his patrons were homosexuals and that they ed his rtrant and bar as a meetg place.