Utah gay bars

They are wrong and shortsighted. Was it in the s when Utah high school students fought for Gay Straight Alliance clubs?

The beginning of Utah’s gay community

Would it surprise you to hear that Utah had a vibrant gay community before the Millennials were even born and while Generation X was still in elementary school? Forty years ago the first Gay Freedom Day was held in Utah. Before the s these celebrations were held in June to commemorate the uprising at the Stonewall Inn.

Gay liberation was formed out of the urgency to keep the spirit of the Stonewall Uprising continuing, and even had a presence in Salt Lake City as early as October, Thus, people began to meet to raise consciousness and awareness of what it means to be gay. People came to party at The Sun but also to connect with other gay people, and so began establishing a gay identity in a very hostile world.

The emerging gay community was large enough in to have its first schism when gay women broke away from the Metropolitan Community Church to bar an all women Grace Community Church with a female pastor. For most of the s and 80s kegs of beer were legal and keggers were parties where beer flowed from half-barrel metal beer kegs containing up to 16 gallons of beer.

For the remainder of the s the gay community in Salt Lake Gay grew exponentially. The first community protest and demonstration occurred in at the Utah State Fairgrounds, which featured singer Anita Bryant. The former beauty queen was the figurehead of an anti-gay rights movement called Saved Our Children.

In the s, Utah received national attention due to the fact the editor of the Advocatea national gay magazine, was a gay utah from Price, Utah. He published in the magazine, on a regular basis, news about the gay communities struggles against oppression, especially the gay students who were being tortured and persecuted at Brigham Young University.

Like the Mormon pioneers before them these gay and lesbian pioneers made the desert bloom as a rose in an incredibly hostile environment. The s had a myriad of social clubs, service organizations, and bar groups. South Temple, Studio 8 at 8 W. Utah was especially unique in that the newly organized KRCL FM 91 had a local gay program from the beginning called Gayjavu which would become Concerning Gays and Lesbians for the next 20 years.

Eventually the Utah would publish a condensed version of the revolutionary pamphlet for gay rights. It was only natural that Salt Lake City would have several religious and spiritual organizations. In the s there was a major cultural shift away from commemorating the Stonewall Riot, as those born after Stonewall came of age.

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