Interestingly, I learned how to handle phoned death threats from an unusual source: my mother. Some of the battles were public (a near riot in the Columbus City Council meeting when a gay rights ordinance was proposed), some private (I was jumped by a gang of teenagers one night, and was kicked around, most violently in the testicles, which was-how shall I put this?- no fun). There were major battles in those days, all captured in a DVD of the local movement’s history, where I can be seen addressing the annual gay pride march on the Ohio Statehouse lawn and teaching the crowd how best to deal with near-by protestors, holding Bibles and teaching hatred to their little children. It was then called “Stonewall Union,” and now, almost thirty years later is still the largest gay rights group in mid-Ohio under the name “Stonewall Columbus”(the photo is from a Gay Rights March in Washington, Octopictured are Craig Covey, first President of Stonewall Union, my partner Jerry Bunge, and me). In 1981, I joined a fledgling gay activist movement in Columbus at its very start. As the Queer Nation agitators of the next decade put it, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” I came out whenever doing so was relevant for two reasons: I wanted to shock people into thinking about it, and-frankly-I didn’t care much about their reaction (unless it involved enforcing the heterosexual viewpoint with a baseball bat). The Stonewall Riots that had started the modern gay movement weren’t ten years old until 1979. Īfter the early scary part of coming out, and the “no standards” wild phase, eventually I found love and acceptance in the gay world, and even started coming out to casual strangers if they innocently asked questions like, “You married?” In many parts of the country this casualness might seem routine today, but it was shocking in the late 70s. Coming out is a gradual process: you tell this friend, and that friend, and soon you suspect that everyone knows, even at work, and it becomes an open secret. I eventually did figure out gay life, though in the beginning I stayed deep in the closet.
#Gay bar columbus ohio movie
Fellini could have cast a successful movie from the ten patrons lounging around in the Kismet at 8 pm on a Friday night. The huge bar had only about ten people it: very strange people. That night I went to the Kismet (which I also looked up in the phone directory], but, not knowing that (particularly in those very homophobic days) gay night life didn’t start until after midnight, I arrived at 8 pm. After a brief pause, he snarled, “The Kismet,” slamming down the phone. “What’s the name of the gay bar?” I asked.
When the bartender answered, I asked him if this was a gay bar, and, surprised, he said darkly that it was not. I knew it wouldn’t likely be a gay bar, but that didn’t matter. I solved that particular problem by looking up “Cocktail Lounges” in the Yellow Pages, picked out one on Gay Street (yes, there is such a downtown street), and phoned it. How to find a gay bar, for example, was a puzzlement. In January of 1976, when I came to Columbus as a Visiting Professor at the Ohio State University Law School, I also moved to the city to explore the gay world for the first time in my life (I was 32).