Nestled snugly on Colfax, R&R Bar was a cozy and becoming hole-in-the-wall before dive bars and the grimy. Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today. Denvers oldest gay bar, R&R Bar is a Denver staple. The “Stonewall Riot” beginning June 28, 1969, marked a turning point in the modern gay rights movement. The bar’s clientele were sick and tired of being hassled just for drinking inside a bar. It was, in fact, a police raid that caused the rebellion at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Homosexual conduct, that ambiguous phrase, could still be the cause of a police raid, however. According to a 2011 study by The Journal of Sexual Medicine that surveyed 25,000 gay men in America about their last sexual.
#What is a gay bar license#
A liquor license could not be revoked solely on the grounds that the bar catered to people known to be LGBTQ+. To be (fucked) or not to be (fucked) shouldn’t always be the question. That same year, 1967, New York and New Jersey followed the California idea of a difference between homosexual status and homosexual conduct. This ordinance was upheld in a court ruling, which declared that it functioned to prevent “persons likely to prey upon the public” from recruiting other people for illegal acts. In 1967, Miami prohibited issuing liquor licenses to establishments that employed homosexuals, sold liquor to homosexuals, or allowed two or more homosexuals to congregate on the premises. The meaning of “something more” wasn’t spelled out by the California Supreme Court other than “public displays that manifest sexual desires.” Such ambiguous wording kept the door open to closing gay bars, even if using liquor licensing to do so became less and less viable.īut with fifty states come as many as fifty different laws, and many more local ordinances. Department of Alcohol Beverage Control required “something more” than the mere presence of homosexuals in a California bar for authorities to revoke a liquor license. The state liquor authority had “acted arbitrarily in determining that the mere presence of homosexuals in a public bar was a threat to public welfare and morals.” The court concluded that the state couldn’t conflate homosexual status and homosexual conduct.Ĭalifornia’s state legislature then drafted new laws that allowed for the revocation of liquor licenses in places that were the resort of “prostitutes, pimps, panderers, or sexual perverts.” Despite Stoumen, the laws would be used to harass and close gay bars until these laws were declared unconstitutional, in 1959.
Reilly that the state could not suspend a bar’s liquor license for being a “disorderly house” simply because it catered to LGBTQ+ people.
In what Cain calls the first “successful American ‘gay rights’ case,” in 1951, the California Supreme Court ruled in Stoumen v.
Bars were frequent targets of police raids, and a liquor license might be revoked if officers caught patrons in certain acts. In addition to sodomy laws, they could be charged with vagrancy, loitering, lewd acts, and wearing a disguise (dressing in drag). In ten years' time there could be 6,000 more people living in an area that will have been reinvented for better or worse by the 'build to rent' policy.īut, for now, the area in and around Birmingham Hippodrome, Chinatown and the Gay Village is in a period of startling transition as the following photographs illustrate.In addition to sodomy laws, they could be charged with vagrancy, loitering, lewd acts, and wearing a disguise (dressing in drag).Īdditionally, a broad interpretation of “homosexual acts” in the twentieth century made “lesbians and gay men think of themselves as criminals just for being who they were,” writes Cain. Especially, perhaps, when it's only on the other side of Inge Street to Birmingham Hippodrome.Įlsewhere giant apartment blocks are springing up and ramshackle buildings are being flattened to make way for even more. The decision by the National Trust to open the Back To Backs in 2004 will hopefully help to preserve some of the area's history for all time - and the fact that it's long been the city's most popular attraction is proof that people do love to embrace the past. Whether it's demolition gangs removing familiar landmarks or construction workers building new apartment blocks, Southside is changing at such a phenomenal speed that one thing is clear - it will never look the same again.