Perspectives on Urban Gay Tourism and Gay Community Building of the Past

University of Nevada, Reno

Movement and Change: Perspectives on Urban Gay Tourism and Gay Community Building of the Past

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilments of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography

John Jeffery Auer IV

Dr. Kate A. Berry/Dissertation Advisor

August, 2019

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by

JOHN JEFFERY AUER IV

Entitled

Movement and Change: Perspectives on Urban Gay Tourism and Gay Community Building of the Past

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Kate Berry, PhD , Advisor

Jessie Clark, PhD, Committee Member

Victoria Randlett, PhD, Committee Member

Alicia Barber, PhD, Committee Member

Todd Felts, EdD, Graduate School Representative

David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School

August 2019 i

Abstract

This research examines the movement and changes associated with people who historically identified as gay and today are part of the LGBTQ spectrum, both through long-term moves to establish new homes and become part of new communities as well as through episodic, short moves as tourists. This dissertation addresses questions about how and why movement associated with gay urban enclaves has changed as well as considers the ways in which gay tourism has changed during the last half century.

One set of questions address how age played a role in the rise and decline of gay urban enclaves in big cities and also how this related to the corresponding increases in gay community building in small cities and rural areas. The argument is made that increased movement of middle-aged and older-aged gay men away from big city enclaves to small cities and rural areas since about 2000 has contributed to the loss of gay urban enclaves and the loss of gay culture within them. At the same time, gay culture has developed in small cities and rural areas as middle-aged and older-aged gay men move in and contribute to gay community building.

Another set of questions address how and where annual events for gay tourism flourished and changed in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the conditions associated with these events that elicited backlash against gay people. The focus is on the National

Reno Gay Rodeo, which became the largest annual gay tourist event in the U.S. until local politicians and conservative activists twice attempted to stop the rodeo. This ii backlash ensued because gay people were labelled as inherently immoral as were the gay- friendly spaces associated with the rodeo.

A final set of questions address how and where more permanent gay places in cities – bathhouses – developed and then were eliminated. Serving both as centers for gay community building and gay tourism in the early 1970s, nationwide there was an expansion of gay bathhouses in cities. Yet, the sole gay bathhouse in Las Vegas, Nevada was eliminated as part of a backlash against the Sexual Revolution.

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Dedication

This work is dedicated to my husband and my family. iv

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my advisor, Kate Berry for her support and guidance throughout the years. Kate knew I was actually a Geographer at heart. She has been extremely generous with her time and advice. Kate has been a wonderful mentor to me in the

Geography department. She has helped me to maintain perspective throughout this rigorous project.

I am extremely grateful to Jessie Clark, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of my work. She has been wonderful in welcoming me to the Geography Department. Jessie selflessly gave me more than her time and effort on this project.

I am very grateful to Victoria Randlett for helping a new student in the department feel welcome and for providing me with her crash course on urban geography. Her knowledge on the city of Las Vegas proved extremely helpful in pulling this project together.

I am extremely grateful to Alicia Barber; as the preeminent historical expert on

Reno history I couldn’t have done this without her. From the first moment I took an Oral

History class with Alicia, I knew she was an amazing teacher and historian. For her continued belief in my work, I thank her.

My heartfelt gratitude goes to Todd Felts. Two former big city gay guys found friendship and working relationships here in Reno. I can’t imagine how I would have pulled this off without him, both personally and professionally. Thank you. v

Table of Contents Abstract ...... i Acknowledgments...... iv List of Figures ...... vii Preface ...... 1 Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 5 Gay Tourism of the Past...... 5

A Note on the History of Terminology ...... 7

A Brief Overview of the Historical Geography of Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada ...... 8

Intersections of Gay Tourism and Gay Community Building ...... 10

Chapter 2: Gay Men’s Moving In and Out of US Cities...... 17 Chapter 3: The National Reno Gay Rodeo: 1976-1984 ...... 37 Introduction ...... 37

Being temporary made a difference. If the rodeo happened every day throughout the year,

even during the early years when attendance was low, although Reno was gay-friendly there

likely would not have had been tacit or active support of as many straight residents.

Permanency would have also resulted in the rodeo being associated with more permanent

gay places that existed throughout the year. Permanent gay places in the 1970s existed in

some urban areas (see chapter 4 for more detailed discussion), but these were often contested

because there mere presence could remind heterosexual residents that gay people were

around. As the rodeo created temporary gay places it may have been more palatable because

of the assumption that the gay people attending them would eventually leave and this may

have reduced the chance of gay bashing during the rodeo’s early years. Yet, during the short

time the rodeo existed each summer, it created and re-created gay places at the fairgrounds,

the hosting hotel, and around the city in ways that overrode normal rules of that area...... 39 vi

This chapter details the rise and fall of the National Reno Gay Rodeo, with a focus on the

linkages between the growth of the rodeo and the subsequent conservative backlash. What I

show is that the National Reno Gay Rodeo is an example of how there is a vacillation

between acceptance of gay tourism and gay bashing that follows, providing insights into the

willingness of society to accept gay tourism, as well as the changes that ensue when gay

tourism is left unsupported...... 40

Origins of the National Reno Gay Rodeo ...... 40

Spaces for a Growing, Gay, Sex-Free Rodeo ...... 4544

AIDS Hysteria and the Demise of the Rodeo ...... 57

Conclusion ...... 66

Chapter Four: Geographies of Gay Bathhouses in the 1970s ...... 69 References ...... 118

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List of Figures

FIGURE 1: Author with Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Washington DC, October 11, 2016

FIGURE 2: Reno Gay Rodeo Program 1979

FIGURE 3: March 9, 1981 Advertisement for MGM Grand Reno in Reno Evening Gazette

FIGURE 4: New York Magazine November 4, 1968

FIGURE 5: New York City Bathhouses in 1930s and 1970s

FIGURE 6: Bathhouse in Relation to Downtown

FIGURE 7: Bathhouse in Relation to Las Vegas Strip

FIGURE 8: Sir Gay Advertisement 1971 Yellow Pages

FIGURE 9: Vegas Club Baths Advertisement David September 1973

FIGURE 10: 1971 Gay Bathhouses in Urban Centers- Based on the Damron Guide by County Location

FIGURE 11: 1975 Gay Bathhouses in Urban Centers- Based on the Damron Guide by County Location

FIGURE 12: Cover of Magpie, August 1968

FIGURE 13: Ad for gay travel agency in Magpie October 11, 1968

FIGURE 14: Cover of May/June 1968 Issue of Vector Magazine

FIGURE 15: Jackson Travel Advertisement Vector Magazine June 1969

FIGURE 16: Coltours Advertisement and February,1973 Ciao cover

FIGURE 17: Advocate Newspaper September 29, 1978

FIGURE 18: Advocate Newspaper September 29, 1978

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FIGURE 19: Cover Damron 1972 Edition

FIGURE 20: Damron Guide Code Explanations 1972 Edition

FIGRURE 21: Nebraska and Nevada Section in 1972 Damron Guide

Preface When I arrived in Reno, Nevada in 2005, having moved from Long Beach,

California, it was part of a long adventure that had taken me all over the US. As a mixed- raced gay man, I looked at my surroundings through a unique lens. Even though Reno is located just a few miles from the California border, the city was vastly different from where I had lived over the years. As I made my way through the LGBTQ places in Reno

I was struck by the smallness of the city, but also by the number of bars for a city its size.

I was a gay man in the “Biggest Little City in the World.” By the time I arrived in

Nevada, much had already happened. Its past acceptance of gay communities and welcoming of gay tourists intrigued me and prompted me to start exploring what had happened before I arrived.

With Reno as my home, I began to study the history of its LGBTQ spaces, but there seemed to be an almost a complete lack of written secondary sources. This prompted me to start writing for a popular local gay magazine, Reno Out, in 2008 and the following year I wrote about Reno’s gay geography and history in “LGBTQ Life in Reno, Nevada:

1969-2009,” for a special issue of Outhistory.org that commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. I continued writing about gay Reno during the fall of

20091 and about the same time I entered the History PhD program at the University of

Nevada, Reno, choosing Reno and Las Vegas’ LGBTQ history as the theme for my dissertation. Over time it became apparent that I was oriented more toward human geography and that my subjectivity as a researcher influenced my data collection and

1 I wrote until September 2009 on Reno LGBT history for the now-defunct website Standupshowup.com. 2 interpretation.2 I eventually moved to Geography program, but at the time I started working on reading LGBTQ scholarship and collecting primary sources for both cities. In

2012 I started writing my first scholarly piece on Reno’s LGBTQ history that was published in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.3 During this period, it also became apparent that there was no centralized repository for Reno’s LGBTQ history.4 Soon after I came up with the idea of starting a central repository within the state for its history called the Nevada LGBT Archives, choosing to go with the more historic, LGBT, in the title, as opposed to the newer, LGBTQ. By January 2016 a non- profit had been formed and the archives was born.5

That same year I was contacted by the National Park Service to write a chapter for a book on LGBTQ urban history of the US. They originally contacted me to write a chapter about anywhere in the American southwest and asked specifically about Los

Angeles. I countered with Reno. I suggested that my original research had shown Reno had a long history of places of national importance in the larger framework of national

LGBTQ history. I also made the argument that in the general LGBTQ history, there tended to be only a focus on the largest cities in the US, while my work showed that there were smaller thriving communities in US cities.6 I argued that if the goal was to have

2 Scholar Nathaniel M. Lewis wrote about how he came to this conclusion as he began roughly the same time that I began my work in 2007, “Linked life courses in fieldwork: researcher, participant and field,” Area 49, no. 4 (2017): 395. 3 Jeffery Auer, “Queerest Little City in the World: Gay Reno in the Sixties,” Journal of Homosexuality 60, no. 1 (2013):16-30. 4 By 2010 Special Collections had done an admirable job of collecting mostly Las Vegas history, but by mid-decade they were no longer accepting new finds for either city as they stated they didn’t have the physical space. At this point I was finding new sources for both cities. 5 https://business.facebook.com/NVLGBTArchive/ accessed July 15, 2019. 6 For in depth documentation of the small LGBT resort city of Cherry Grove on Fire Island New York see Esther Newton, Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town (New 3 historical markers for sites across the US that it would be more representative if they included some small to mid-sized cities, such as Reno. I successfully made my case and

Reno was placed in the study along with the bigger, more documented cities, such as

New York and San Francisco. I wrote a chapter that was unveiled in October 2016 in

Washington DC. It was one of the highlights of my life to be invited as a speaker at the event and to talk about what it meant to me as a gay man to be part of this groundbreaking project.7 As I stood in front of part of the AIDS quilt and spoke to a packed room full of people (and cameras) in the Penthouse of US Department of the Interior, I looked past everyone to see my husband crying (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Author with Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell Washington DC October 11, 2016

York: Beacon Press, 1993). Another example is documented in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Karen Christel Krahulik, Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort (New York: New York University Press, 2005). 7 https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories/lgbtqthemestudy.htm accessed July 9, 2019. 4

The archive lasted two years as it proved to be difficult to keep it going. There were two successful exhibits, the first one on the National Reno Gay Rodeo, and the second one on the first national lesbian magazine published out of Nevada, The Ladder. Interest remained high, but as with any non-profit, fundraising was especially hard, I also noticed that in Reno, as well as in other cities, gay places were disappearing at an alarming rate.

At that time, scholars such as Amin Ghaziani were just starting to document the disappearance of the gay places within gay urban enclaves.89 With this disappearance it felt like my work was more important than ever. As gay places disappeared, those I had lived in, visited in, worked in, their facts and stories need to be told. This is what drives me as a scholar and researcher and at times makes me feel like I am in a race against the clock.

8 Amin Ghaziani, There Goes the Gayborhood?: Princeton Studies in Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). Petra Doan and Harrison Higgins, “The Demise of Queer Space? Resurgent Gentrification and the Assimilation of LGBT Neighborhoods,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 31, no. 1 (2011):6-25. Christian Licoppe, Carole Anne Riviere, and Julien Morel, “Grindr casual hook-ups as interactional achievements,” New Media & Society, 18, no. 11 (2015): 2540–2558. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/23/gay-bathhouses-us-face-uncertain-future accessed July 22, 2019.

Chapter 1: Introduction

I am interested in the historic movements of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ), both through long-term moves to establish new homes and become part of new communities as well as episodic, short moves as gay tourists. This dissertation addresses questions about how and why movement associated with gay community building has changed as well as considers the ways in which gay tourism has changed during the last half century. Much of my focus is on gay tourism and gay community building in small cities, particularly in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada during the 1970s and 1980s.

This chapter provides an introduction to what follows. I have started with some key historical and geographical background on gay tourism. Next I have provided some information about the terms associated with LGBTQ. This is followed by a discussion about Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada, which are the study areas for chapters that follow.

Finally, I outlines the intersections of gay tourism and gay community building that are at the core of chapters 2 through 5.

Gay Tourism of the Past

Pre-modern gay tourism goes back to the 17th-century customs of the European

Grand Tour.10 At that time, upper-class gay men from the United States and Europe would travel to the Mediterranean in order to study Classical Greek and Roman art,

10 Rosemary Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy c. 1680-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 1-20. 6 which had homosexual themes.11 The places they went did not cater to the gay tourist trade per se, they were places that gay tourists would go, although their presence was not acknowledged. The Grand Tour began to be replaced in the mid-1800s, when more individual gay tourists travelled to the Mediterranean on their own. This was due to a combination of reasons, including more inexpensive and faster ships making the Atlantic crossing and the rise of wealth in America tied to ownership of factories during the

Industrial Revolution.12

Modern gay tourism emerged in the 1960s with travel agents and agencies that specialized in locating safe establishments in global cities for gay men to frequent when traveling.13 At roughly the same time as gay travel agents appeared came the rise of the gay travel guide. The first published gay guides were in the 1960s, but there were unofficially published guides during the 1940s and 1950s, although their circulation was limited.14 Gay travel guides during the 1960s would usually consist of just names of places with an address and, on occasion, a phone number. They were not reliable as the information would not be updated until a new edition was published. Gay travel agencies were taking out ads in the emerging gay press by the late 1960s.15 By the early 1970s,

11 Stephen Clift, Michael Luongo and Carry Callister, introduction to Gay Tourism: Culture, Identity and Sex, ed. Stephen Clift, Michael Luongo and Carry Callister (New York: Continuum, 2002), 1. 12 Edwin J. Perkins Business and Economic History Vol. 8 Papers Presented at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference (1979) 16-28. Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy (New York: Routledge, 1993). 13 Clift, Luongo, and Callister, Gay Tourism, 4. 14 This period of 1960s guide books chronology is as follows: Guy Strait’s Lavender Baedeker from 1963; The International Guild Guide, from 1964; and Bob Damron’s Address Book, starting publication in 1964. 15 “Gay Travel System,” Magpie, October 1968. “Jackson Travel Presents ‘Trip 69’ to Europe,” Vector, June 1969. 7 more options became available with new publications and gay travel agencies located in more US cities.16

Gay tourism was not welcome in most places. In the 1960s there were no legal requirements that prohibited discrimination of homosexuals in accommodations.

However, gay travel agencies steered groups of gay men to specific places within cities that were reasonably safe. By the late 1960s, these agencies started hosting group tours, where it would be safe for gay men to travel in large numbers. One of the earliest cases in the US of a backlash against modern gay tourism was in Atlantic City, New Jersey.17

Atlantic City started courting gay travelers during the 1940s and a decentralized gay tourist scene developed around individual bars, rooming houses, and beaches.18 Yet in the

1950s and 1960s police harassed men they thought were gay on beaches and closed down gay bars.19 This pattern of harassment associated with gays and sites of gay tourism was not limited to Atlantic City and would become a regular phenomenon throughout the next few decades.

A Note on the History of Terminology

The terminology of what would be today characterized as LGBTQ has changed over time. According to scholar Lillian Faderman, the term “sexual invert” was invented in the

16 The first international gay guide appears in 1970. Spartacus International Gay Guide (Amsterdam: JDS Publications, 1970), The first magazine dedicated solely to gay tourism is published in 1973. Ciao: The World of Gay Travel, February 1973. 17 Bryant Simon, Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2004), 162-163. 18 Simon, Boardwalk of Dreams, 162. 19 Simon, 162. 8 late 19th century as a medical term to document men and women who were sexually attracted to the same sex, as well as individuals whose anatomical birth sex did not match their gender identity.20 The term “homosexual” is also another term from the late 19th century that gained popular usage by the 20th century.21 About the same time that the term “homosexual” became popular, a new term “gay” began to appear as well. By the late 1960s, the term “gay” had been appropriated by a new breed of activists and by the early 1970s there would be references to “gay and lesbian” as an emerging umbrella term.22 This would morph by the early 1990s to “LGBT” and by the 2000s to

“LGBTQ.”23 In that my writing focuses primarily on the period from 1971 through the

2000s, I use the term “gay” because this was the term that would have been used as a blanket term for most of this period.

A Brief Overview of the Historical Geography of Reno and Las Vegas,

Nevada

While the cities of Reno and Las Vegas have different histories,24 both are not only part of the American West, but figure into important narratives about the mythological

Wild West. Moreover, both Reno and Las Vegas have not only profited from tourism, but

20 Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), xiv. 21 Faderman, xiv. 22 Faderman, xiv. 23 Faderman, xiv.. 24 Excellent books detailing this are Alicia Barber, Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2008) and Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005). 9 tourism, centered mostly around casinos, has been an important component of both cities’ cultural and social geographies.

Reno began as a trading post in the mid-19th century, and in 1868 became a stop on the Central Pacific Railroad.25 Reno’s reputation for catering to transients only increased with the rise of the divorce trade after 1900. More tourists came after the legalization of gambling in 1931. This trend continued through World War II, when enlisted soldiers who went to the Pacific took their breaks in Reno.

Las Vegas was founded later, in 1905, as a railroad town.26 After World War II, the city of Las Vegas was impacted by the legalization of gambling as well. The downtown area and beginning of the Las Vegas Strip first opened casinos in the 1930s and 1940s, such as the Northern Club in 1931, the El Rancho in 1941, and the Golden Nugget and

Flamingo, both in 1946.27 With the casinos providing connections to Hollywood, the city’s growth and popularity increased.28

Wilbur Zelinsky was one of the first to write about the unique cultural geographies of

Reno and Las Vegas.29 In The Cultural History of the United States, he notes that both cities roughly traced the western border and he calls this part of Nevada the “forbidden fruitlands.”30 In his book, Zelinsky argues that the cities of Reno and Las Vegas, by the early 1970s, established themselves as playgrounds for activities that were considered immoral and/or illegal in other cities in the US at that time. In addition to gambling and

25 Barber, Reno’s Big Gamble, 20. 26 Moehring and Green, Las Vegas, 10. 27 Eugene P. Moehring, Reno, Las Vegas, and the Strip (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014), 41-68. 28 Moehring and Green, 15. 29 Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States (New York: Pearson Education, 1973), 137-138. 30 Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States, 137-138. 10 prostitution, he notes that in Reno and Las Vegas the tolerance for homosexuality exceeded that of other American cities in the early 1970s.31 Nevada’s forbidden fruitlands are evident in its laissez faire environment with generalized tolerance of a wide variety of legal and illegal activities.

Intersections of Gay Tourism and Gay Community Building

This dissertation addresses some of the implications of gay men’s movement for gay community building, gay tourism changes in the National Reno Gay Rodeo, and the closure of a gay bathhouse in Las Vegas. Each of the chapters are informed by my previous work documenting places in which gay community developed in Reno.

Throughout this dissertation I understand place, as Edward S. Casey suggests, through the “characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging.”32 I use the term, gay places, to include gay bars, bathhouses and other private establishments that have long been centers of gay communities. Because gay places were typically privately owned and strategically located, they offered a degree of safety for their patrons, while helping people find one another.33

31 Zelinsky, 137-138. 32 Edward S. Casey, “Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, no. 4 (2001): 683-693. 33 Dennis McBride, Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016).Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (University of California Press, 2005). Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, (New York: Grove Press, 1997). Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (New York: Basic Books 2006). 11

This research is positioned in a larger framework of deconstructing the dominant historical geography of Reno and Las Vegas by bringing to the forefront gay community building and gay tourism. Like Amy Mills’ work on deconstructing material landscapes, this project attempts to better understand and retell stories that rarely make it into dominant narratives; in my case by bringing to light gay men’s geographies and histories that may otherwise be left out.34

My work fits at the intersections of research on gay tourism and gay community building. As cities with a long history with tourism, I have observed that studying Las

Vegas’ and Reno’s gay places for community building cannot be seen as being entirely separate from gay tourism. Gay tourism helps solidify gay places because it contributes to the characteristics that make these places unique to its specific culture. Moreover, in many cases gay people who move to Reno, came to the city initially as tourists.35 Below I provide details about each chapter, along with a few key insights from the relevant literature.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 considers the movement of gay men across the US, first as this led to the emergence of gay urban enclaves and later to their decline. My argument is that the movement of middle-aged and older-aged gay men away from big city enclaves to small cities and rural areas contributes to the loss of gay urban enclaves since about 2000. At

34 Amy Mills, Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance and National Identity in Istanbul (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010). 35 This is notable from oral histories I have done, with the earliest example going as far back as 1962. Jeffery Auer interview with Keith Libby, June 28, 2008. 12 the same time, gay culture changes in small cities and rural areas when middle-aged and older-aged gay men move there and contribute to gay community building.

In my research cities have strong historic ties to sexualities of all kinds, including homosexuality. This builds on the work of Phil Hubbard in Cities and Sexualities,

“…research exploring the relationship between sex and the city has proliferated encompassing studies not just of the urban geographies of lesbian and gay-identified individuals, but the sex lives of a more diverse range of urban dwellers.”36 As Hubbard states urban geographies of gays has been well documented, and I add to that with more research covering the 1990s through the 2000s. Hubbard’s argument about the commercialization of sex and sexualities in cities influences this work, especially his observation that cities rarely limited the marketplace for commercialization of sex and sexuality of all kinds, but at times politicians (and others) impose geographical restrictions on sex and sexualities.37 The geographic limitations placed on sex and sexuality, in this case homosexuality, manifests itself in several gay urban enclaves that are discussed in chapter 2.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 focuses on a yearly event, the National Reno Gay Rodeo, during a period when gay tourism was emerging as a formal tourist market.38 The rodeo became the largest gay tourist event in the US in the early 1980s, in spite of significant attempts to eliminate it. In charting the rodeo from its start in 1976 to its end in 1984, both forbidden fruitlands along with the emergence of gay-friendly spaces associated with the

36 Phil Hubbard, Cities and Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 2012), 10. 37 Hubbard, Cities and Sexualities, 33-35. 38 Clift, Luongo, and Callister, 3-5. 13 rodeo are considered. Although they did not achieve their objectives, there were two attempts by local politicians and conservative activists to stop the rodeo because they felt gay men were inherently immoral, so they tried to eliminate the gay-friendly spaces associated with the rodeo.

David Sibley’s work, which analyzes heterosexual fears about gay men’s unrestrained sexuality focuses on how exclusion happens because of such heterosexual fears.39 In terms of the National Reno Gay Rodeo, its geographic proximity to the center of the city as well as the visibility of increasing numbers of gay men triggered homophobic fears about the sexualization of gay men in some straight residents of the city. Sibley also notes how in the 1980s gay men were feared as potential disease hosts that would bring AIDS with them into heterosexual communities.40 Both of these fears were used justified two separate attempts to shut down the rodeo and stop the flow of gay tourists.

One of the central themes of Philip Want’s work is that gay tourism incites backlash against gay people.41 Want analyzes more contemporary gay tourism events and places around the world to observe the situations in which increases in gay tourism led to a backlash that was inspired by homophobia. Especially in Chapter 3, Want’s ideas about gay tourism and backlash inform my perspectives about the nature and impacts of backlash to gay tourism.

39 David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (New York: Routledge 1995), 25. 40 Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West, 111. 41 Phillip Want, “Trouble in Paradise: Homophobia and Resistance to Gay Tourism,” in, Gay Tourism: Culture, Identity, and Sex, ed. Stephen Clift, Michael Luongo and Carry Callister (New York: Continuum Press 2002), 191. 14

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 examines Las Vegas in the early 1970s, focusing on the closure of a gay bathhouse in Las Vegas. Nationwide there was an expansion of gay bathhouses in cities across the US during the early 1970s. Yet in Las Vegas, the sole gay bathhouse was closed as a result of regulatory enforcement actions that were part of an initiative of the newly-elected mayor and city council members to control and eliminate sex-based businesses in the city. The result of the closure was to hamper gay tourism by removing a gay space used by tourists and residents alike. This diminished the capacity for residential gay community building as well.

David Croon studies gay tourism through examining travel guides the 1960s to the 1990s for a variety of exotic locales. He argues that the more recent tourism marketplace had a tendency to give false impressions about travel destinations being more tolerant than they actually were.42 Croon’s analysis suggests that gay and lesbian travelers are often accorded second-class citizenship as tourists. My work builds on the contested nature of gay tourism, but brings it to bear on conflict over bathhouses as urban tourist destinations.

Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams surveyed gay bathhouses across the US in the 1970s and describe the patrons and their interactions within the bathhouse; pointing out that in addition to the impersonal sexual relationships, some patrons found them to be enjoyable and fun.43 In other work on gay bathhouses in New York from about the same

42 David R. Coon, “Sun, Sand, and Citizenship: The Marketing of Gay Tourism,” Journal of Homosexuality 59, no. 4 (2012): 511 -534. 43 Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams, “Gay Baths and the Social Organization of Impersonal Sex,” Social Problems 23, no. 2 (1975): 124 -136. 15 time,44 Joseph Styles found that men went to bathhouses for reasons ranging from a desire for sexual contact to desire to find a long term sexual partner.45 Both articles are significant because their interviews of bathhouse patrons were done before it was common in academia to view gay bathhouses as sites of serious study.46 While not focused on the motivations and psychology of bathhouse patrons, my research also takes bathhouses in the 1970s to be a serious topic for research. It also uncovers some of the external forces that led to negative impressions of bathhouses.

My work on sex-based businesses closed down by local politicians in Las Vegas during the 1970s also draws on Maginn and Steinmetz observations that a city’s relationship to commercialized sexualities is related to the city’s openness towards diverse sexualities.47 They make the case that when cities geographically isolate sex- based businesses, they manifest an unwillingness to tolerate diverse sexualities and an inherent heteronormativity.48 In my research on the Las Vegas bathhouse, I found that the city’s actions to geographically isolate female heterosexual prostitution during the push to legalize prostitution in 1971 foreshadowed further attacks on all non-heteronormative sexual establishments, in particular the gay bathhouse because it was associated with tourism.

Chapter 5

44 Joseph Styles, “Researching Gay Baths,” Outsider/Insider 8, no. 2 (1979): 135 -152. 45 Styles, “Researching Gay Baths,” 146-147. 46 Much psychological work on bathhouses was done during or after the AIDS crisis. An example of this is Dennis J. Haubrich, Ted Myers, Liviana Calzavara, Karen Ryder and Wendy Medwed, “Gay and bisexual men’s experiences of bathhouse culture and sex: ‘looking for love in all the wrong places,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 6, no.1 (2004): 19-29. 47 Paul J. Maginn and Christine Steinmetz, “Spatial and regulatory contours of the (sub)urban sexscape,” in (Sub)Urban Sexscapes: Geographies and Regulation of the Sex Industry, ed. Paul J. Maginn and Christine Steinmetz (New York: Routledge, 2015), 153-156. 48 Maginn and Steinmetz, (Sub)Urban Sexscapes, 153-156. 16

Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by providing succinct summaries of the research in this dissertation, as well as providing detailed information and insights into some important historical sources that can be useful for researchers working on gay community building and gay tourism projects. My larger work is dedicated to keeping places of the past associated with gay community and tourism building alive and in doing this I hope to inspire other researchers to build from what I have done.

Chapter 2: Gay Men’s Moving In and Out of US Cities

It is 1995 and I am in the back of a shuttle. The City of West Hollywood is paying for a group of gay men, lesbian sex workers, and drag queens to help the city officially celebrate Mardi Gras. Everyone is shouting and jumping up and down. We are being shuttled from gay bar to lesbian bar, to restaurants, to dance clubs along Santa Monica

Boulevard. We jump off the bus, run inside a business, scream “Happy Mardi Gras,” put beads on patrons, run back to bus, and do it over and over again. Some patrons love it, some hate it, others do not care. It is so big, so gay, so West Hollywood. I am young. It feels like it had always been this way, that it will always be this way. It seems impossible to think otherwise. Yet, it is but one moment in time and place.

Two decades later I return to West Hollywood for the first time in many years. I am here to attend my Great Aunt’s funeral. My mood is somber. My friend from the

1990s I am staying with convinces me to see the city again. Walking around the city is shocking. The city’s gayness has been diluted. Many gay coffeehouses and small restaurants are gone. Mass corporatization seems to have completely taken over. There is a yogurt shop on Santa Monica Boulevard, located down the block from A Different

Light, the gay bookstore of my youth. The yogurt shop is full of young straight women enjoying a bachelorette party. The city I knew feels like it is gone. What has happened?

Gay Men Moving within the US

This is a story of memories, movement, and changes in urban gay culture in

American cities. What happened in West Hollywood has also been occurring in gay urban enclaves across the United States, including Boystown in Chicago; the West 18

Village in New York, Capitol Hill in Seattle; South Beach in Miami; and the Castro in

San Francisco, among others.49 One aspect of this is evident in closed bars, bathhouses, stores, and restaurants that were primarily patronized by members of gay urban enclaves.

Gay urban enclaves have been important as homes and safe places for gay men, but the marginalization and segregation that originally pushed many there has changed.

At one time, gay urban enclaves were centers of culture building for gay men, as well as safe havens for what would today be characterized as the entire LGBTQ community.50

These enclaves developed their unique culture as LGBTQ pioneers moved into urban areas in great numbers during the 1940s through 2000.51 They provided safe spaces for gay men to communicate, learn, and build a shared culture. Within the city, gay urban enclaves were defined by activities around specific places, such as gay bars, dance clubs, bathhouses, restaurants, and stores.52 Gay identity was informed by creating, inhabiting, and moving through and between gay places in cities in the US. Long distance movement was important as these enclaves served as nodes within broader networks of mobility for

49 Ghaziani, There Goes the Gayborhood, 1-34. Writing about loss in other big cities are Nan Alamilla Boyd, “San Francisco’s Castro district: from gay liberation to tourist destination”, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 9, no 11 (2011): 237-248. Juan Miguel Kanai, “Remaking South Beach: metropolitan gay trajectories under homonormative entrepreneurialism,” Urban Geography, 36, no 3 (2015): 385-402. https://kcts9.org/programs/in-close/there-goes-gayborhood-seattle-s-shifting-queer-geographies accessed July 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/13/end-of-gaytrification-cities-lgbt- communities-gentrification-gay-villages accessed July 1, 2019. 50 Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis. Donald F. Reuter. Greetings from the Gayborhood: A Nostalgic Look at Gay Neighborhoods (New York: Abram’s Image, 2008). David Carter. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010). 51 Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990). Reuter, Greetings from the Gayborhood. 52 Mark Thompson, Advocate Days & Other Stories (Bar Harbor, ME: Queer Mojo, 2009). Matthew Reimer, We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation (New York: Ten Speed Press, 2019). 19 gay men across the country.53 Such geographies, both within and beyond the city, were associated with building gay identities and facilitated growth and change in gay urban enclaves. Today, as many of these gay enclaves change or disappear, not only do gay places become something associated with the past, but the processes that constitute gay culture and their geographies change too.

In this paper, I argue that the movement of middle-aged and older-aged gay men away from big city enclaves to small cities and rural areas has contributed to the loss of gay urban enclaves and gay cultural development.54 While not the same, both small cities and rural areas did not foster gay culture in ways that big cities in the US did during the second half of the 20th century. As such big cities, which I define as a metropolitan statistical area with three million or more in population, are distinctive as centers of gay cultural development during the 20th century.55

Movement towards, and then away, from big cities is part of my personal history as well. While gay men leave gay urban enclaves for many different reasons, I found the enclaves I lived in to be comfortable, yet I felt myself drifting away from the bar and dance club culture. Reaching my mid-thirties, I looked to put down roots and commit to a community, so I left the big city for a small one. When middle-aged and older-aged men, such as me, leave gay urban enclaves, their experiences, perceptions, and role in building

53 Simon LeVay and Elisabeth Nonas, City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995). Dan Black, Gary Gates, Seth Sanders and Lowell Taylor, “Why Do Gay Men Live in San Francisco?,” Journal of Urban Economics, 51, no 1 (2002): 54-76. 54 Work rural areas has expanded rapidly in the past ten years. Mary L. Gray, Colin R. Johnson and Brian J. Gilley, Queering the Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2016). Amy L. Stone, “The Geography of Research on LGBTQ Life: Why sociologists should study the South, rural queers, and ordinary cities,” Sociology Compass, 12, no 11 (2018): 1-15. 55 https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk accessed July 17, 2019. 20 culture are no longer readily available, which can change the big cities left behind as well the smaller cities they move to. Middle-aged and older-aged men leaving big cities take with them their own cultural knowledge and lived history and, if enough move, this may diminish the culture of the cities they leave behind. They may also disperse gay culture and transform small cities and rural areas through bringing along the culture and norms of gay urban enclaves.

Using examples from Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco,

I interweave my personal experiences and history of movement with broader discussions about the timing and rationale for gay men’s movement to big cities and the corresponding creation of gay enclaves in the past five decades. I then focus on more recent movement of gay men from big cities to small cities and rural areas in the US through the lens of my own recent experience in Reno, Nevada. In conclusion, I consider the implications of this movement for gay urban enclaves and gay culture.

Gay Men Moving Between Cities

The timing of and rationale for gay men’s moving among American cities is reasonably well documented, especially when discussing men moving from rural areas and small cities into big cities.56 The expansion of gay men and lesbians into large urban areas started in the immediate post-World War II period.57 This initiated what scholar

56 Mickey Lauria and Lawrence Knopp, “Towards an Analysis of the Role of Gay Community in the Urban Renaissance”, Urban Geography, 6, no 2 (1985): 152-169. Janice Fanning Madden and Matthew Ruther, “Gayborhoods: Economic Development and the Concentration of Same-Sex Couples in Neighborhoods Within Large American Cities,” in Regional Science Matters: Studies Dedicated to Walter Isard, ed. Peter Nijikam, Adam Rose, and Karima Kourtit (New York: Spring Press 2015), 399-420. 57 Although lesbians moved to the same large cities as gay men they tended to move to different neighborhoods that were cheaper due to economic reasons surrounding the fact that lesbians made considerably less money than gay men due to sexism alone. They also moved to specific smaller towns that 21

Kath Weston calls “the great gay migration.”58 Weston, herself, came of age during this period and moved to San Francisco in the 1970s. She noted that she was surrounded in the city by others who had moved from rural areas.

The great gay migration happened in tandem with the growth of places for gay culture that developed in big cities after World War II. The emergence of gay places in big cities also provided a key motivation for many to move.59 Allen Bérubé, for example, argues that large numbers of gay men found themselves in San Francisco at the end of

World War II and decided to stay because the anonymity that San Francisco provided gave them more room to explore their sexuality in contrast to their smaller hometowns.60

John Rechy talks about his own move to the largest US city when he moved from El Paso to New York in the early 1950s. Rechy wanted to be part of the emerging gay places associated with Times Square, at a time when other young gay men were moving from small cities and rural areas.61 During the 1960s, Greenwich Village emerged in New York

City as a gay urban enclave where gay men moved in large numbers. Martin Duberman notes that Greenwich Village offered gay men the ultimate in big city life to find themselves.62 Over time, as gay men became involved in and helped grow the gay urban enclave, it offered them the safety in which to express themselves as gay as well as places

gay men tended not to, such as Northampton, Massachusetts for reasons that haven’t fully been explored yet. 58 Kath Weston, “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imagery and the Great Gay Migration. Urban-Rural Differences and the Well-Being of Gay Men and Lesbians,” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, 2, no 3 (1995): 255. 59 Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States (New York: Beacon Press, 2014). 60 Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire. Reuter, Greetings from the Gayborhood. 61 John Rechy, City of Night (New York: Grove Press, 1963). 62 Martin Duberman. Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America (New York: Plume, 2019) 207-263. 22 to meet other gay men.63 Gay men often established their identity within the spaces of a gay urban enclave, while also having the company of other gay men. Michael Rosenfeld suggests other motives for gay men to move to big cities were social taboos associated with homosexuality in their hometowns and lack of family support. Even among same- sex couples, Rosenfeld suggests that there would be an impetus to move away from small cities and rural areas because of the lack of support for their relationships.64

From the 1970s through about 2000, the great gay migration expanded. More gay urban enclaves developed in big cities, including San Francisco’s Tenderloin, which emerged in the 1960s, and the Castro, which developed in the mid-1970s.65 The 2000 US census provides information about unmarried partners of the same sex, which Gary J.

Gates and Jason Ost used in developing an atlas about gays and lesbians.66 They found that the largest concentration of same-sex couples lived in large Metropolitan Statistical

Areas, which are the largest urban agglomerations. The biggest concentrations in 2000 resided in in San Francisco, CA, New York, NY and Miami, FL.

What is not as well documented is the movement of gay men from big cities back to small cities and rural areas. The movement from a big city to a small one is part of my own story and this informs my search to understand this trajectory of movement for

American gay men more broadly. Although there is little scholarly work specifically on this topic, there is some evidence that this is far from unusual. In addition to considering

63 Duberman, Stonewall, 207-263 64 Michael J. Rosenfeld. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 95-101. 65 Susan Stryker and Jim Van Buskirk, Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996). William Lipsky, Images of America: Gay and Lesbian San Francisco (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2006). 66 Gary J. Gates and Jason Ost, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas (Washington DC: Urban Institute Press, 2004). 23 broader trajectories, I describe some of my own history during the 1990s and 2000s to provide details and insights about gay urban enclaves and movement within and between them as well as the movement later in life to small cities and rural areas.

Young Men, Movement, and Gay Urban Enclaves

As I grew up in Chicago, I became familiar with the gay urban enclave of Boystown that had formed during the great gay migration. During the 1990s, Chicago city planners were trying to designate the gay urban enclave of Boystown as the first official LGBT neighborhood in Chicago, according to Curt Winkle.67 It was here that, as a young adult, I met gay men from across the region – from small cities and rural areas in Wisconsin,

Michigan, and Indiana – and these experiences set in motion my own future movement.

Moving within the gay places that made up Boystown, I realized that other cities would have gay urban enclaves as well and perhaps even bigger cities, such as New York and

Los Angeles, would have even larger ones to explore. In addition to being the largest urban areas in the US, these two cities were attractive because they were centers of television production, my career choice at the time. But importantly, both had fully developed gay urban enclaves and on an intuitive level I sought a sense of community and security in a place where many other gay men lived, played, and worked. I was also beginning to think about a stable partner and knew that other gay urban enclaves would increase my access to potential long-term partners.

67 Curt Winkle, “Gay Commercial Districts in Chicago and the Role of Planning”, Planning and LGBTQ Communities: The Need for Inclusive Space, ed., Petra L. Doan (New York: Routledge 2015), 21-39. 24

My desire to move to a gay urban enclave was common among other young gay men in the early 1990s, especially because of rampant homophobia. Chris Wienke writes about safe places created in big cities for gay men and lesbians where they have high levels of residential density.68 High population density of gays living close to one another can create resilience against discrimination and harassment from others; in essence, protection is gained through numbers. In describing gay urban enclaves, Donald F.

Reuter uses the term, gayborhood, to describe not only the proximity of gays, but also the culture that developed within gay urban enclaves: “Gay + neighborhood = gayborhood: that urban area where we gay people are – or appear to be – the majority of visitors and residents. But that’s hardly the whole story. These enclaves represent social factors – economic, political, moral, and geographical – that came together in a unique way a few generations ago.”69

In 1992, I moved to New York City when Chelsea was emerging as a prominent gay urban enclave.70 At the time, the older enclave was Greenwich Village, which had become the destination for the great gay migration in the 1970s and 1980s. This earlier period of gay New York City has been extensively documented by scholars, particularly because of the enormous role in gay history and culture of the Stonewall Riots, which happened in Greenwich Village. Twenty years after the riots, however, Greenwich

Village was no longer very affordable because gentrification drove up property values, rents, and the cost of living. Chelsea, the neighborhood between Times Square and the

68 Chris Wienke, “Does Place of Residence Matter? Urban-Rural Differences and the Well-Being of Gay Men and Lesbians”, Journal of Homosexuality, 60, no 9 (2013): 1256-1279. 69 Reuter. Greetings from the Gayborhood. 70 http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/new_york_city_S.pdf accessed May 25, 2019. 25

West Village, represented a different type of gay urban enclave. The emergence of

Chelsea as a gay urban enclave started slowly in the 1970s and by the early 1980s it had gained many new residents as evidenced by New York’s first AIDS service organization locating there.71 Among the reasons that Chelsea became popular was affordable housing prices, perceptions of being a safe neighborhood, and offering more spacious housing.72

Neighboring West Village had its original street grid from the Colonial Era, and housing was accordingly very small in square footage. Chelsea was developed later on in the early

19th century and as a result had wider streets and more and larger housing stock.73

In 1993, I moved to Los Angeles to finish my undergraduate degree and live in

West Hollywood. That was the same year the city of West Hollywood celebrated the 10th anniversary of its incorporation, identifying itself as the first gay American city.74 The media estimated that roughly 20 to 40% of residents were gay and lesbian, an unusually high percentage for any city, but this city simultaneously served as a gay urban enclave for the greater Los Angeles area.75 West Hollywood also had gay men in politically powerful positions as many of the city leaders had been elected in openly gay campaigns.

A growing sense of gay power lent itself to a greater sense of security and contributed to

71 Mel Cheren and Gabriel Rotello, My Life in the Paradise Garage: Keep on Dancing (New York: 24 Hours For Life Press, 2000), http://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/mel-cheren-residence-gay-mens-health-crisis- gmhc-office/ accessed July 4, 2019. 72 Marvine Howe, “Neighborhood Report: Chelsea, Gay Businesses Follow Influx of Gay People,” New York Times (New York, NY), Apr. 10, 1994. 73 The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, Lisa Keller, and Nancy Flood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 74 The nation’s first gay city was how the incorporation of West Hollywood was sold in the 1983-1984 period to the press as documented in Benjamin Forest, “West Hollywood as Symbol: The Significance of Place in the Construction of a Gay Identity,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, no. 2 (1995):133 -157. 75 Stephen Braun, “West Hollywood, Vote May Make it First Gay-Run City,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Oct. 14, 1984. 26 more young gay men moving into, working in, and visiting the city. Keep in mind that at this time, nationwide, many locales criminalized same-sex sexual acts and there were relatively few police in cities who worked well with gay men, which resulted in a general fear of the police in many cities throughout the country.76 By contrast, the city of West

Hollywood’s relationship to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department made it seem safer for gay residents as well as for gay tourists. As an example, the Sheriff’s

Department had already begun to recruit openly gay men as candidates to serve on the police force to help build trust in the community.77

In 1996, I moved to San Francisco because of the lack of job opportunities in Los

Angeles and I heard that there were plenty of jobs in San Francisco because of what came to be known as the first Dot.Com era that grew out of the 1996 Telecommunications

Act.78 San Francisco had several gay urban enclaves, with the Castro, the Tenderloin, and

South of Market being some of them.79 Gay men, including me, would regularly go to one enclave or another to socialize while living in a different part of the city. Earlier the

AIDS crisis had taken a toll on San Francisco’s gay urban enclaves. Many gay men died during the 1980s, some gay-oriented businesses closed, and other gay men moved elsewhere.80 By the 1990s, however, the movement of gay men, both those moving in and out of the gay urban enclaves, seem to have rebounded somewhat. This is not to suggest

76 This fear was well founded as it was a routine police harassment of patrons of the Stonewall Inn that led to the Stonewall Riots. This level of police harassment was common in cities of all sizes throughout the country well into late 20th century. 77 Ryan Gierach, West Hollywood (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 113. 78 John Cassidy, Dot.Con: How America Lost its Mind and Money in the Internet Era (New York Perennial Publishing, 2002). 79 Donald F. Reuter. Ibid. 80 Robert Lindsey, “Where Homosexuals Found a Haven, There’s No Haven from AIDS,” New York Times (New York, NY), July 15, 1987. 27 that the movement into San Francisco’s gay urban enclaves was as high as before the

AIDS crisis. Some neighborhoods, such as Haight Asbury, had lost enough gay residents that they were no longer the gay urban enclaves they had been during the late 1970s.81

In 2000, to pursue my master’s degree, I made my last big city move from San

Francisco to Long Beach, an outlying gay urban enclave in the greater Los Angeles area.

During the late 1990s West Hollywood gentrified rapidly. In the process, West

Hollywood tried to become more accommodating for the gay tourists coming to bars and dance clubs, which led to the widening of the sidewalks in 2000. Congested traffic and prohibitively expensive real estate in West Hollywood led me to look for another gay urban enclave in the Los Angeles area and I found it in Long Beach. The City of Long

Beach emerged in the 1960s as small gay urban enclave and by the late 1980s it was a major gay enclave.82 By 1985 the gays and lesbians living in the gay urban enclave were estimated at 30% of the city’s population.83 Growth continued into the 1990s, when, for example, the first Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Film Festival was held in 1993.84 By the time I arrived gay men were moving to Long Beach for a more laid back, beach-inspired lifestyle, as opposed to West Hollywood’s high energy bar scene.85 In 2004 Long Beach claimed to be one of Southern California’s largest gay urban enclaves.86

81 Scott James, “A Near Forgotten Casualty of AIDS: The Haight’s Gay Identity,” ,” New York Times (New York, NY), July 15, 1987. 82 David Haldane, “Business is Booming for Long Beach ‘Gay Mecca,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Aug. 4, 1985. 83 Ibid. 84 “Movies: The 4th Annual Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Film Festival,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jun. 9, 1996. 85 Ibid. 86 Nikkie Usher, “Finding a Sense of Community in the ‘Ghetto’,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Aug. 26, 2004. 28

As a young man in the 1990s trying to find myself through moving, I did not understand that I was following a common path for gay men. In analyzing the geographic mobility of young heterosexual and same-sex couples during the 1990s, Michael J.

Rosenfeld finds that 46.6 out of 100 young heterosexual couples (including both married and co-habitating) moved in a given year as compared to 51.7 out of 100 same-sex couples.87 In addition to finding that gay and lesbian couples move more frequently,

Rosenfeld observes that most same-sex couples moved to the biggest cities: New York,

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington D.C. and that their move was most likely a response to intolerance in their home communities.88 My movement throughout the 1990s was shaped by my desire to further my career, a common motivation for many young adults. However, I was also motivated throughout the decade to live in and around gay urban enclaves in the biggest US metropolitan statistical areas.

As Rosenfeld notes, gay US geography was an urban geography, often dominated by life in the biggest US cities.89 By the 2000s, however, more gay couples, and presumably single gay men as well, were leaving cities for small towns and rural areas.90 This was my trajectory as well. I was part of a movement spurred on by a growing acceptance of gay men in places that had not been tolerant of them in previous decades.

87 Rosenfeld, The Age of Independence, 89. 88 Rosenfeld, Ibid. 89 Rosenfeld, 97-98. 90 Ibid, 100-101. 29

Gay Men Aging and Moving to Small Cities and Rural Areas

By 2005 I was in my mid-thirties and decided to move to Reno, Nevada to start a teaching position and be closer to my parents who had moved there a few years before.

Although some gay men feel excluded from their families, I was not, so as my parents got older I moved closer to spend time with them. As excited as I was to start my teaching career, moving to a small city made me nervous as a gay man. I wondered what I would find in terms of gay community, dating, and a social life. My first year in Reno I went to a gay pride event in the parking lot of a casino and later that night to a party at a different casino. Few people attended these events, although in retrospect I realize I was making unrealistic comparisons based on my recent experiences in Los Angeles and other big cities. I was left to wonder if I was an unusual case. My move to a small city was distinctly different than what scholars observed about circuits of mobility for American gay men within and between big cities. Yet without realizing it, once again, I was part of trend that included a growing number of middle-aged and older-aged gay men moving from big cities to small cities and rural areas.

Although it was not the prime focus of their study, Compton and Baumle found that middle-aged and older gay men who lived in the small cities and rural areas of Sonoma

County in 2000 had moved there from San Francisco, where they had lived during their twenties and thirties.91 This pattern of movement as one ages seems evident within western US states which only have small cities and rural areas as well. Gary Gates and

Jason Ost analyzed gay and lesbian households in states based on age ranges, of which I

91 D’Lane R. Compton and Amanda K. Baumle, “Beyond the Castro: The Role of Demographics in the Selection of Gay and Lesbian Enclaves,” Journal of Homosexuality, 59, no 10 (2012): 1327-1355. 30 consider less than 35 years old to be young adult, 35 to 54 years old to be middle-aged and 55 years and older to be older-aged. They found that states with small cities and rural areas were dominated by both middle-aged and older-aged gay and lesbian households.92

Examples in the Western US include: Alaska, with 54% of the gay and lesbian households being middle-aged and 16% older-aged; Montana, with 47% middle-aged and

25% older-aged; Idaho, with 44% middle-aged and 24% older-aged; and Wyoming with

42% middle-aged and 28% older-aged.93

Movement of gay men has been especially high into small cities and rural areas that have historically had an outsized significance to the gay community because they supported gay tourism. These were typically areas that became recognized and visited due to their aesthetic appeal and natural beauty. In parallel to the great gay migration and extending beyond it, these tourist-oriented cities grew in prominence as they catered to gay tourists. After vacationing there, a growing number of middle-aged and older-aged gay men chose to move. For example, Provincetown, MA on the tip of Cape Cod, had a gay residency rate 12.5 times the overall national average in 2000.94 On the other side of the country, Guerneville, CA also had a much higher than average gay population in

2000. In both cities, the largest population groups were over 45 years.95 Palm Springs,

CA and Key West, FA are other small, tourist-oriented cities with many middle-aged and older-aged gay residents.

92 Gates and Ost, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas, 67. 93 Gates and Ost, Ibid. 94 Gates and Ost, 27. 95 http://censusviewer.com/city/MA/Provincetown accessed June 29, 2019. http://censusviewer.com/city/CA/Guerneville accessed June 29, 2019. 31

In examining the sea change of gay couples moving amongst cities, Kevin

Rosenfeld notes that, “same-sex couples, are rapidly reintegrating themselves into smaller cities, small towns, suburbs, and rural areas.”96 Rosenfeld feels this movement resulted from a growing acceptance of LGBTQ people throughout much of the country in the

2000s. In my personal history, it is also notable that gay men were motivated to move to a wide variety of small cities for more prosaic reasons, such as employment opportunities, re-connecting with family or friends, living affordability, and to actively contribute to community building. This latter reason is especially relevant. In 2006, I took it upon myself to work on the library of Reno’s first gay and lesbian center, A Rainbow

Place, as a way to contribute to gay community building. Two middle-aged gay men I met and befriended in Reno had also just moved from New York City, so they could be more a part of a community. They also sought out a slower pace that was more to their liking. Other gay men I met in Reno, who had arrived from big cities like Miami, San

Francisco, and Los Angeles, expressed similar reasons for moving to Reno.

2006 marked the year I met my future husband, which was not long after he moved from Indianapolis as a middle-aged gay male. My husband notes that it was not until he got to a small city like Reno that he felt like he could make a marked difference in contributing to gay community building. This was because the social places for gay men were smaller and seemed more approachable.97 As I got to know him and lived longer in Reno, I started to question whether big cities with gay urban enclaves were the

96 Rosenfeld, 101. 97 Anonymous interview with author, June 29, 2019. 32 only significant gay communities, and began to wonder about other opportunities to build gay community.

People moving from big cities can contribute to gay community building in small cities and rural areas in a number of ways. A case in point is Provincetown, MA, which started as a colonial village in the 17th century, but extended into the 20th century as a whaling and fishing center.98 By the 1970s Provincetown had a major gay tourist industry that had evolved as a result of yearlong residents. These residents were frequently gay men who had moved from nearby big cities, such as Boston and New York.99 Many of these men opened businesses catering to gay tourists, ranging from restaurants to bars to bed and breakfasts, which became important in building gay cultural community.100 If these gay men had not moved in, with their business acumen, their money, and their connections, Provincetown would probably never have become one of the most prominent gay cities, with experiences for tourists as well as residents. Similar situations can be found in Key West, FA, Palm Springs, CA and Fire Island Pines, NY, where gay places have been shaped by men who came of age and learned what gay culture was in gay urban enclaves101

The story of Jay Boltcher, a gay rights activist, provides insights into the losses and gains associated with gay men moving from big cities to small cities and rural areas in the past couple decades. Boltcher moved to the West Village in New York City in

98 Krahulik. Provincetown, ) 23-68. 99 Karen Christel Krahulik. Provincetown, 132-186. 100 Ibid. 101 “Why Key West?,” Advocate (Los Angeles, CA), May 3, 1994. “www.gaytraveling.com: Key West,” Advocate (Los Angeles, CA), Jan. 19, 1999. Newton, Cherry Grove. David Wallace, A City Comes Out: The Gay and Lesbian History of Palm Springs (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2008). 33

1982 and became a prominent AIDS activist with ACT-UP.102 By 1998 he and his husband found their quality of life diminished because the city had become unaffordable.

Although Boltcher achieved much as an activist in New York City, he also found it hard to get anything done because of the red tape and big egos in the city. As a result, he and his husband decided to move to rural upstate New York in 2001.103 In leaving the city,

Boltcher took his knowledge of gay activism and community building as well as his motivation to make a difference. In his new community, Boltcher managed to make an outsized impact, in no small part because of his experience in community activism honed over the decades in New York City. He and his partner were one of the first same sex couples to be married in his rural county, he co-founded the first LGBT pride march in the area, and in 2007 he co-founded the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center. He found life in his rural area empowering.

It stands to reason that the gay urban enclaves left behind lose out when middle- aged and older-aged gay men move, men who draw on years of experience contributing to their communities, negotiating working environments, and supporting social networks.

These middle-aged and older-aged men are not quickly or easily replaced, because they take with them working knowledge and lived experience that informs their understanding about what is possible for gay communities to achieve as well as their motivation to take action. Jay Boltcher, with his powerful experiences fighting at city, state and national government levels and his drive to take action, redirected his energies outside New York

City after he left. While the gap left behind in gay urban enclaves may be fill-able if one

102 https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gayborhood-rural-life/#gs.m9avsm accessed July 1, 2019. 103 Ibid. 34 or a few such leaders leave, when many middle-aged and older-aged gay men leave, not only do the people change, but potentially so do the processes that shape and re-shape gay urban enclaves in ways that are not yet fully understood.

Conclusion

Research done on the impacts of out-migration on urban gay enclaves underscores a few of the drivers of change, along with the resulting cultural and material transformation of places associated with gay sexuality within big cities. For example, less social and employment stigmatization means that moving to big cities has become less of a forced choice for gay men than in the past.104 As well, technological shifts, with the rise of the internet in the 1990s and the introduction of smart phone apps in the 2000s, have changed the possibilities for socialization and may be changing the characteristics of gay urban places as well. Amanin Ghazani, for example, describes activists pushing back by posting flyers, “More Grindr=Fewer Gay Bars.”105 Jason Orne laments what he calls the loss of “sexy communities,” the radical sexuality of the 1960s and 1970s which defined gay urban enclaves and that drew gay men together initially.106 Writing about the loss of gay men in gay urban enclaves in San Francisco during the 2000s, Ghazani notes that while the entire city of San Francisco now feels more open due to diminished social stigma of being gay, gay urban enclaves are suffering an erasure of material and sensory

104 Ghazani, 38-63; Tilcsik, András. "Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States." American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 2 (2011): 586-626. 105 Ghazani,, 58 106 Jason Orne, Boystown: Sex and Community in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 11. 35 location of sexuality.107 Juan Miguel Kanai observes that with fewer original residents, there has been a loss of people invested in the processes that led to the growth of the gay urban enclave. Miami Beach, for example, has become a more sanitized version of its previous self, one that is more palatable to non-gay people and more susceptible to corporatization and gentrification.108 Yet there may be more going on as well. The idea proposed here, that the processes by which gay urban enclaves have been shaped and re- shaped may be altered when many middle-aged and older-aged gay men move to small cities and rural areas, needs further exploration.

I’ve written about how my experiences of movement in and through cities were informed by my identity as a gay man and how these experiences have shaped and been shaped by my identity. This was not only my journey as I unintentionally followed a similar pattern to many other gay men. My personal history during the 1990s aligns not only with the great gay migration to the biggest US cities, but also with the subsequent trajectory of gay men moving to small cities and rural areas. Reduced social stigmatization by the 2000s made it easier for gay men to make their homes in small cities and rural areas, whether they were returning to where they originated or finding a new home, such as I did. The move to small cities and rural areas allowed gay men, such as me, to make a difference in those communities in ways that were impossible in the bigger cities. At the same time, there may be a cascade effect as older gay men leave gay urban enclaves leads to a loss of local gay business owners, a loss of gay political power,

107 Ibid. 108 Juan Miguel Kanai, “Remaking South Beach: metropolitan gay trajectories under homonormative entrepreneurialism,” 385-402. 36 a loss of gay activist leaders with proven histories of leadership, and a loss of people invested in local gay community building. As such, gay urban places lose the foundation that created them in the first place. At the same time, the idea that as older men leave as a part of their own life transitions, that they will be replaced by a younger demographic is not evident.109 There seems to be a turning away of Millennials and Generation Z from the gay urban enclaves.110 All of these factors are leading to a hollowing out of the gay urban enclave and the erasure of gay urban places.

109 Ghazani 52-55. 110 Ghazani 52-55.. 37

Chapter 3: The National Reno Gay Rodeo: 1976-1984

Introduction In 1976 Reno hosted the first National Reno Gay Rodeo, which a few years later went on to become one of the most prominent gay tourist events in the world.111 By the early 1980s, the rodeo had become a powerhouse attraction that drew participants and audiences from all over the globe. With its success, the rodeo increased the visibility of gays and led to an awareness of Reno's gay population, which, in turn, raised homophobic fears in some public officials and local conservatives. In a 1981 lawsuit, the

Washoe Board of County Commissioners attempted to stop the rodeo by arguing that gay people were inherently immoral due to their sexuality, but the suit was unsuccessful. Two years later, a group of conservatives deployed ideas about gays being associated with disease in a prolonged and more forceful attempt to shut the rodeo down. These two attacks contributed to weakening the rodeo’s management and organization to that point that the 1984 event would prove to be the last one.

While a long history of gay bashing (homophobic verbal attacks and violence against people in the LGBTQ communities) has been chronicled, in gay tourism tacit acceptance alternates with gay bashing.112 Gay tourism extends at least as far back as the

111 For this paper is will use the term “gay” in its historic sense. In the late 1970s through the 1980s “gay” was an umbrella term used for what today would be characterized by “LGBTQ.” Extensive viewing of photos and videos from the time reveals that the majority of the rodeo was populated by mostly male attendees, although there were women visible in both photos and videos from 1978 and 1983. The 1982 high year mark for the rodeo saw 20,000 attendees. The initial Gay Games in San Francisco that same summer saw only 10,000 attendees in comparison. United Press International, “Gay Games Underway in San Francisco,” The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL), Aug. 30, 1982. 112 Martin Kantor, Homophobia: Description, Development, and Dynamics of Gay Bashing (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 74-80. Theo Van Der Meer. "Gay Bashing: A Rite of Passage?" Culture, Health & Sexuality 5, no. 2 (2003): 153-65. John D’Emilio, Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University (New York: Routledge, 2016), 74-80. Doug Myer, Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2015). 38

Victorian era. Elite gay men from northern Europe traveled on holiday to places along the

Mediterranean. These locales appealed to gay men who wanted to make connections with ancient Greek and Roman cultures with their greater acceptance and expressions of gay activity.113 Nonetheless, even during the days of sexual liberation in the 1960s and early

1970s, gay tourism was primarily restricted to those few places considered to be safe for gay tourists.114 More recently, gay tourism has grown immensely, even becoming big business, and extends across many places that appeal to people who, just as in the

Victorian era, feel more comfortable expressing alternative sexualities when far away from the pressures and norms where they reside.115 Still, gay bashing, and even the potential for backlash against gays, remain significant issues for gay tourism. Phillip

Want described conflicts and resistance to gay tourism between 1998 and 2001 in a wide variety of countries, including the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Vanuatu,

New Zealand, Jamaica, Turkey, Peru, Greece, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the

US.116 Moreover, in many places around the world laws and regulations still penalize activities of both gay residents and tourists.

Even in places that have generally been tolerant towards gay people, there seems to be a constraint on how accepting they can be and a limit to how long they will accommodate gay tourism. As Matthew Link noted in 2002, “Hawai`i remains an enigma: tolerant yet closeted; progressive yet traditional; liberal but wary; gay-friendly

113 Clift, Luongo, and Callister, Gay Tourism. 114 Ibid. 115 Want, “Trouble in Paradise,” 191. 116 Ibid. 39 but not gay-positive."117 In this way, Nevada was similarly enigmatic to Hawai`i. Each state was oriented towards tourism, had a reputation for being gay-friendly, and both tended to welcome visitors with money to spend, but only up to a point. While the

National Reno Gay Rodeo thrived for a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a city that, despite having a reputation for being gay-friendly, which is a small step above tolerance for gay people, was not gay-positive, which is broadly accepting, supportive, and inclusive for gay people.118

Reno and Las Vegas had reputations for being gay-friendly in relation to the rest of the country, as noted by Wilbur Zelinsky.119 As discussed in Chapter One, Zelinsky underscores the unique cultural geography of Reno in regards to sexuality, identifying

Reno in the early 1970s as part of the “forbidden fruitlands.”120 Forbidden fruitlands encompass the spaces in which activities considered to be immoral and/or illegal in other places are tolerated or even encouraged. In Reno these activities not only included gambling and prostitution, but also included homosexuality, according to Zelinsky.121

Being temporary made a difference. If the rodeo happened every day throughout the year, even during the early years when attendance was low, although Reno was gay- friendly there likely would not have had been tacit or active support of as many straight

117 Matthew Link, “A Case Study in Contradictions: Hawaii and Gay Tourism,” in, Gay Tourism: Culture, Identity, and Sex, ed. Stephen Clift, Michael Luongo and Carry Callister (New York: Continuum Press 2002), 85. 118 Arguably, there were no gay-positive places in the US during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the period covered by this chapter. 119 Wilbur Zelinsky brings up the theory of the “Forbidden Fruitlands” in regard to Reno and Las Vegas in his 1973 book A Cultural Geography of the United States. Zelinsky argues both cities are places where homosexuality was tolerated due to the “anything goes” atmosphere those cities had historically cultivated. 120 Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States. 121 Ibid. 40 residents. Permanency would have also resulted in the rodeo being associated with more permanent gay places that existed throughout the year. Permanent gay places in the 1970s existed in some urban areas (see chapter 4 for more detailed discussion), but these were often contested because there mere presence could remind heterosexual residents that gay people were around. As the rodeo created temporary gay places it may have been more palatable because of the assumption that the gay people attending them would eventually leave and this may have reduced the chance of gay bashing during the rodeo’s early years. Yet, during the short time the rodeo existed each summer, it created and re-created gay places at the fairgrounds, the hosting hotel, and around the city in ways that overrode normal rules of that area.

This chapter details the rise and fall of the National Reno Gay Rodeo, with a focus on the linkages between the growth of the rodeo and the subsequent conservative backlash. What I show is that the National Reno Gay Rodeo is an example of how there is a vacillation between acceptance of gay tourism and gay bashing that follows, providing insights into the willingness of society to accept gay tourism, as well as the changes that ensue when gay tourism is left unsupported.

Origins of the National Reno Gay Rodeo

Philip Lane Ragsdale was born in August 1940 in Alameda County, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. Ragsdale’s family moved from one small California town to another during his childhood. One of the constants in his formative years was attending small rodeos in Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo. By 1970 he had moved his family to 41

Reno. By 1973, he had divorced his wife and started the process of coming out. By late

1975, Ragsdale had immersed himself in the local gay scene to the point where he was crowned the first emperor of the local gay social group, the Silver Dollar Court.122

In late 1975, while working with a local charity to provide Thanksgiving dinners to senior citizens, Ragsdale came up with the idea of holding a gay rodeo to raise money for the charity.123 He thought it “would be fun, raise money, and even erase a lot of gay stereotyping.” 124 Thus, Ragsdale had the germ of the idea that culminated in Reno becoming home to one of the most highly visible gay events in the United States. Reno had played up its Wild West reputation throughout its past, making it a suitable locale to host a gay rodeo. Larger cities of the time that were home to gay urban enclaves, such as

San Francisco and Los Angeles, could not compete with the culture of the rugged frontier when it came to Reno’s association with the Wild West. For example, starting in the

1940s Harold’s Club casino in Reno promoted a western image with a giant mural on the outside of the building showing pioneers on a wagon train. The mural also was steeped in other stereotypes, depicting Native Americans as savages surrounding helpless white pioneers. The mural promoted an image of the West that was, at the time, traditional and conservative. In addition to the popularity of Wild West imagery on and in businesses,

Reno also had a long-established rodeo that had begun in 1919.125

122 Keith Libby, interview with author, May 22, 2016. 123 Ragsdale had a history of working with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and homes for the elderly, that predated his idea for the rodeo. When the rodeo happened, linking its proceeds to a charity were noble and not necessarily a public relations ploy to make the event more “acceptable” to the heterosexual community. 124 http://gayrodeohistory.org/HallOfFame/RagsdalePhil.htm accessed August 24, 2018. 125 Guy Clifton, Reno Rodeo: A History – The First 80 Years (Reno: Reno Rodeo Foundation, 2000). 42

Ragsdale worked with other members of the Silver Dollar court in 1975 to make money for the inaugural gay rodeo in 1976. The Empress at the time, Keith Ann, recalled that they had "bake sales, and stuff like that" to raise money for the first rodeo.126 In 1976

Ragsdale persuaded the Washoe County Fairgrounds to allow the first Reno Gay Rodeo to be held there on Saturday, October 2nd. Speaking of the rodeo in a 1976 local radio show, Ragsdale and several members of the court spoke about the harassment they faced, but they were hopeful noting that Reno was more tolerant than it had been just a few years before. They attributed this to the Sexual Revolution, which was making all forms of sexuality more tolerated in their view. In the same interview, there was much talk by the straight interviewer of how impressed she was that members of the gay community were subdued in behavior and appearance and were not acting overtly gay.127 The interviewer’s question showed that she tolerated gays in Reno up to a point; however, gays would not be acceptable to her if they were seen as violating the community’s acceptable views of their shared space by stepping outside of behavioral norms set by the dominant heterosexual community.128 By 1976 politicians’ acceptable views of public space were already influenced by precedents that banned events which pushed the boundaries of overt sexual expression, both heterosexual and homosexual.129

126 Keith Libby, interview with author, May 22, 2016. 127" Patrice Bingham, Phil Ragsdale, and others, "Community Focus," KOMO News Radio, Reno, NV: KOLO, Sept 1976. 128 Ibid. 129 For example, in the summer of 1975, a rock concert was held at Idlewild Park that drew 3,500 attendees that ended in near riot conditions. Many of the complaints around the concert focused not only on violence, but public nudity, and sex acts that were engaged in. In response the City Council toyed with removing rock concerts from public places in Reno. Doug McMillan, “Reno Rock Concert Ends in Near Riot,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Aug. 18, 1975. 43

The 1976 rodeo was small, and the specter of homophobic attacks directed at gay men was a consideration by Ragsdale in his decision not to promote it. A small crowd of about 150 people turned out and the lack of publicity was most likely a factor.130

Ragsdale admitted that as the 1976 rodeo began, things were wobbly, in that he had a hard time getting livestock rented for the show.131 He managed to convince a man to reluctantly loan him animals and to placate him Ragsdale suggested the man come to the rodeo. “…The day of the first event the guy came in with some of his men to watch the show. They stopped, looked around, and just about fell over. But they stayed and had a good time. In fact, they probably had a better time than we did!”132 This inauspicious start belied the dramatic growth to come in future years, when the rodeo attracted national and international visitors and media. The fact that the rodeo went well initially shows that the rodeo increased the spaces of inclusion for gay men with respect to Zelinsky’s idea about forbidden fruitlands.

In 1977 the rodeo was moved to August and expanded to include an additional day from Saturday, August 20 to Sunday, August 21. The 1977 rodeo had some unusual events in comparison to a straight rodeo. Events included traditional rodeo competitions such as, “calf roping on foot and on horseback, calf riding, greased pig contests, and barrel races with horses and cows” 133 but there were also more unique competitions such as, “donkey drag races (on a steer), cow milking, goat ribbon tying and barrel races with

130 Ibid. 131 Bill Steinauer, “Rodeo at Washoe County fairgrounds this weekend is not for everyone,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Aug. 19, 1977. Norm Nielson, “A Different Kind of Cowboy: For Charity, the Reno Gay Rodeo,” Reno Magazine, August 1979, 32. 132 Bill Steinauer, “Rodeo in Reno But It’s Private,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Aug. 19, 1977. 133 Bill Steinauer, “Rodeo at Washoe County fairgrounds this weekend is not for everyone,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Aug. 19, 1977. 44 horses and cows”. In addition to these events there was a Mr. and Mrs. Reno Gay Rodeo contest, with the contestants for the Mrs. Reno Gay Rodeo being men in drag.134 The jump from 150 attendees in the first year to 700 in its second year showed the surprising popularity of the event, which no one had foreseen.135

Conservative segments of Reno and the gay rodeo were not overtly at odds with one another at this time. In 1977 media coverage – local press articles in the Nevada State

Journal along with an Associated Press article and an article in glossy national gay magazine, Alternate – increased the rodeo’s visibility and may have drawn more people to the rodeo as people from all over the Western US attended. 136 The 1977 rodeo raised

$3,400 for a senior citizen Thanksgiving dinner and needy families at Christmas, according to Ragsdale.137 The massive jump in a single year demonstrates that the rodeo was a temporary place of inclusion for gay men. Yet, its inclusivity was temporary as it was a weekend event that happened once a year, differentiating it from a permanent gay- inclusive place, such as a gay bar. In 1977 there still was enough hostility towards homosexuality in large parts of America that the only way that a large gay event happened was only if it was for a short period of time, in this case, just a weekend.

134 Ibid. 135 Gary Pedersen, “Frivolity Reigns at Gay Rodeo,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Aug. 21, 1977. 136 Steinauer, “Rodeo at Washoe County fairgrounds this weekend is not for everyone,”. Associated Press, “Gay Rodeo planned quietly so rednecks don’t get riled,” Press Telegram (Long Beach, CA), Aug. 17, 1977. 137 “Gay Rodeo Raises $3,400 for Charity,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Aug. 26, 1977. 45

Spaces for a Growing, Gay, Sex-Free Rodeo

With gay tourism coming into its own in the late 1970s, marketing campaigns in newspapers and magazines promoted the Reno Gay Rodeo as a premier event. By August

1978, attendance at the Washoe County Fairgrounds for the gay rodeo topped the 1,000 mark. The celebratory Saturday event was marred, however, when a stock handler was kicked in the head, forcing the rodeo to be cut short. That night saw the addition of a barn dance for the first time, confirming that the social aspect of a full weekend event that went beyond specific rodeo competitive events.138

By 1979 the rodeo had become popular enough that organizers included a third day of events, running from August 3-5, and the rodeo also provided hayrides from the airport to the fairgrounds. Attendees, both gay and straight, were estimated to total about

2,500 people.139 A program of events, with advertising from gay businesses and organizations in California and Nevada, for the 1979 attendees included a welcome to the heterosexual public: “The Rodeo is for Gay People first, charity second, and to anyone who wants to come and have a good time alongside us” (Figure 2).140 A local young woman interviewed decades who had attended as a spectator remembered it mostly as a bizarre flamboyant celebration of gay male culture; yet she did not feel there was a gender-based division because women attended and participated too.141

138 “Ride ‘em Cowboy!: Reno’s gay rodeo,” Honcho Magazine, November 1978, 74. 139 The actual numbers from sources differ here from primary sources for the first time. The Vegas Gay Times pegs the number of attendees at 3,000 and the Nevada State Journal at 2,000. 140 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, Reno Gay Rodeo Program (Reno: Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1979), 1. 141 Tracey Lake, interview with the author, March 18, 2016. 46

Figure 2- Reno Gay Rodeo Program 1979

Rather than keep the event only for gay men, as it had originally been, Ragsdale chose to encourage a broad and open audience.142 His motives may have been monetary gain or this could have been a way to make the event more popular by including a variety of people who would come but would not cause trouble. Increasing media attention in combination with the program declaration that invited all to attend makes it reasonable to assume that many straight Reno residents had started to accept the event or at least that the rodeo’s organizers felt this was where things were headed. As the rodeo grew bigger and attracted more attention, more straight people began to attend out of curiosity. A

142 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, Reno Gay Rodeo Program. 47 straight journalist named John Tido in Skin magazine reported to his girlfriend, published after the rodeo to explain how he persuaded her to attend the rodeo, “You’ll be at the center of a sociological experience…a unique chance to share in contemporary

Americana. Think of it as living theater with both us as the actors and the critics. Trust me; you'll love it.”143 This shows the ‘forbidden fruitlands’ experience that could play out for straight visitors that were gay-friendly but fascinated by the idea of the rodeo as something completely different in American culture that seemed at least a bit transgressive. Homosexual sex acts were still illegal in many US states at the time, including Nevada, which for some straight people lent a transgressive appeal to the rodeo.

By 1979, Ragsdale was concerned about public displays of same-sex sexual activity, at least in part because of homophobic actions that targeted the rodeo or him.

The rodeo program that year (Figure 1) stated, “We do ask that dress and actions not be obscene or lewd (sic).”144 Pre-dating the AIDS crisis, gay men's outward signs of overt sexuality were generally seen as a form of moral degeneracy in many places around the world. According to Sibley, the association was frequently made between gay tourists and unleashed sexual degeneracy.145 In Reno, the first rodeo in 1976 seems to have been free of religious or conservative protestors, but by the second rodeo things changed and

Ragsdale ended up throwing a minister off the rodeo grounds in 1977. “He was distributing literature saying we are sick, and needed to be cured,” he explained to a

143 John Tido, “A Straight Guy at the Gay Rodeo,” Skin Magazine, January 1984, 26. 144 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, Reno Gay Rodeo Program. 145 David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion.. 48 reporter in the Reno Magazine.146 Outside the event, Ragsdale himself had faced the wrath of homophobes in 1979, receiving death threats and being harassed by a shotgun- wielding man who threatened to kill him.147

The degree to which sexual activity actually happened at the rodeo is hard to determine based on available sources, but the verbiage used in the 1979 rodeo program suggests that organizers wanted to shape the spaces of the rodeo so as to be overtly gay, but simultaneously exclude on-site sexual activity. The rodeo program language became even more direct in the 1980 and 1981 programs for the rodeo, "No sexual misconduct will be tolerated during this weekend here at the Rodeo grounds.”148 If perceptions of gay tourists came to be seen by many straight people as synonymous with overt and deviant sexuality, the rodeo would be at risk. In 1982 different language was used in the program,

“The National Reno Gay Rodeo is an event where you may bring your sexual preference,

Gay or Straight, but we ask that you leave your sex back at your hotels/motels in your privacy. A rodeo is a gay event primarily, whether they be male/female.”149 While reiterating that sex itself, in all its forms, was not welcomed within the rodeo, the 1982 program also reinforced that it was an event by and for gay people, although straight people were welcome to the event if they recognized this.

146 Norm Nielson, "A Different Kind of Cowboy,". 147 Ibid. 148 By 1980 the Reno Gay Rodeo had changed its name to the National Reno Gay Rodeo. Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, National Reno Gay Rodeo Program (Reno: Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1980), 1. 149 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, National Reno Gay Rodeo Program (Reno: Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1982),2. 49

In these programs, Ragsdale did not renounce gay sexuality but applauded it, still he worked to shape the space of the rodeo through restricting actual sexual activities.

Ragsdale’s experiences with homophobic residents who wanted to stop the rodeo may have led him to recognize that the gay-friendliness of many other straight people would be strained if gay men were seen publicly participating in overt sexual activity and that this could lead to further gay bashing. To circumvent this, through official pronouncements that unequivocally supported gay participation but prohibited on-site sexual activity, Ragsdale worked to shape the spaces of the rodeo so to facilitate gay tourism.150

Navigating a Way Through Despite Attempts to Undermining Gay-Friendly

Spaces

In general the National Reno Gay Rodeo avoided directly confronting its political opponents, except for one opponent, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant.151 As a professed

Christian and minor celebrity who appeared on televisions commercials in the 1970s as the spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, Bryant leveraged her media visibility and actively organized against gay activists in her home state who were trying

150 Letters to the editor from the Reno Evening Gazette seem to make this apparent. Mary McHale, “Rodeo perverted” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno: NV) Mar. 23, 1981 Albert E. Cartlidge, “Treat as illness” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno: NV) Mar. 23, 1981. Mike Triggs, “Stand Tall” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Apr. 13, 1981 151 Anita Bryant’s campaign lasted during the 1977-1978 period and got an incredible amount of attention in the straight and gay press at the time. See Williams, H. Howell. “From Family Values to Religious Freedom: Conservative Discourse and the Politics of Gay Rights,” New Political Science 40, no. 2 (March 2018): 246-263. 50 to prevent Florida from passing anti-discrimination laws.152 She and her organization,

Save Our Children, went on to become a symbol of the emerging New Right as she took her victory in Florida and went on the road for speaking engagements to encourage other cities to follow Miami’s approach. Bryant loomed as a threat to gay people across the US in 1977 and she was on Ragsdale’s mind when he said, “We don’t want protesters spurred on by the Anita Bryant thing.”153 Still, the only evidence of the rodeo making a political statement was in 1977, with a game that gave players three chances to toss a tennis ball through a giant picture of Anita Bryant’s mouth.154

Although there had been some opposition that targeted gays and gay rights at the rodeo, by 1981 the event was still able to become the most significant and visible gay event in the country.155 This in turn prompted an attempt by the Washoe Board of County

Commissioners to stop the rodeo based on the argument that gay people were immoral due to their sexuality. With 6,500 people attending the rodeo during previous year,156 the

1981 controversy should be considered in the light of the rodeo’s growing visibility and popularity as a gay tourist event and the issues the rodeo’s success raised about whether and to what degree gay-friendly spaces could be cultivated in Reno. Concerned about the overwhelming popularity of the rodeo, the lawsuit brought by local politicians called into question how gay-friendly Nevada’s forbidden fruitlands were. Despite the rodeo being a

152 Howell, 246-263. David Holmberg “Winners to extend efforts; the losers plan fight in court,” Miami News (Miami, FL), Jun. 8, 1977. 153 Bill Steinauer, "Rodeo in Reno But It's Private,". 154 Gary Pedersen, "Frivolity Reigns at Gay Rodeo,". 155 Gay pride events were as large, however they were not primarily tourist events up through the early 1980s, as they still were events for members of the community. Other tourist events of the time that were large, were themed parties held on Fire Island, but they never had anywhere more than a few thousand attending. http://www.pineshistory.org/parties/parties-pines/ accessed July 22, 2019. 156 Lenita Powers, “Gay rodeo still scheduled – this year,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Mar. 12, 1981. 51 temporary, once-a-year event, the sheer number of attendees prompted this litigation that attempted to stop the rodeo thereby shrinking gay-friendly spaces and generally re- branding the city and state as something other than forbidden fruitlands that supported gays.

Local opposition became a media event on March 16, 1981, when newly-elected

Washoe County Commissioner Belie Williams stated during a meeting that “he did not want the annual Gay Rodeo to be held in Reno and would review its contract with

Nevada State Fair officials,”157 setting off a firestorm over the rodeo. While officials at the county fairgrounds were not so quick to jump on the bandwagon behind Williams, with fairgrounds general manager David Drew saying he would confer with his attorneys,158 this turned into a statewide controversy soon after. Lieutenant Governor

Myron Leavitt spoke out against the rodeo, stating he was opposed to “queers” using public property and that he wanted gay people to go about their lives, but not have access to public property.159 The next few days the newspapers statewide were filled with back and forth arguments over the merits of having the rodeo at the Washoe County

Fairgrounds. The increase in gay-friendly places associated with the rodeo upset many people. Yet, not all politicians or members of the public believed the rodeo should or could be shut down. Some commissioners recognized that, as tax paying citizens, there was no legal ground to bar residents and tourists from using public facilities simply because they were gay. Many letters in the newspapers observed that gay people were

157 Rodney Foo, “Commissioner Objects to Gay Rodeo in Reno,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Mar. 9, 1981. 158 Ibid. 159 “Leavitt Urges ‘Queers’ Off Public Property,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Mar. 25, 1981. 52 taxpayers with as much right as anyone else to hold a rodeo at a county fairground. Soon after this, influential Las Vegas Sun editor Hank Greenspun threw his hat into the ring on the side of supporting the gay rodeo.160

Governor Robert List, a Republican who had gained his office in 1978,161 held a press conference on the issue in late March, at which time he said that “the idea of a gay rodeo in Reno [was]‘personally offensive,’ but he did not think state officials ought to influence a local decision.”162 List went on to say, “The thing about the rodeo that I find personally offensive is (that) I don't like the flaunting aspect of it, and I don't like the PR aspects of it…I just don’t like the notion that the nation looks toward Nevada as the gay rodeo capital.”163 While it was unusual for a Governor to publicly say such things,164 he clearly found homosexuality distasteful or morally reprehensible and did not want Reno associated with it in such a public way. List’s statements make it clear that he worried about the possible repercussions of promoting gay tourism in the state and the city, in other words, he was concerned about the implications of continued expansion of gay- friendly spaces. List, as well as other state and local politicians, were aware of how gaming had become a more respectable form of entertainment and they recognized the

160 Greenspun stated, “If homosexuals have ‘a screw loose', as our esteemed lieutenant governor suggests, there must be some members of our social order who believe that two men engaged in a physical activity such as prizefighting where each attempts to knock the other senseless may also be charged with having ‘two screws loose'…If the lieutenant governor would desire that the people of the state bear with his obvious political ploys, then he must forbear with others who do not show the same proclivities that appear to be a preoccupation with him”. Hank Greenspun, “Where I Stand,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Mar. 26, 1981. 161 Daryl Kelley, “Robert List: The man and the politician,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Dec. 29, 1978. 162 Ed Vogel, “List Says Gay Rodeo Should Be Local Decision,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (Las Vegas, NV), Mar. 28, 1981. 163 Ibid. 164 Daryl Kelley, “Robert List: The man and the politician”. 53 state’s increasingly dependence on tourism and gaming, making it important to them that non-gay tourists continued to feel comfortable coming to Nevada.165 Similarly, the argument made for racial segregation in casinos was that Nevada relied heavily on out- of-state tourism, many of whom were from the South and expected segregated spaces.

List’s views about the expansion of gay-friendly spaces in the state were aligned with a dominant view towards gay people in the US at the time.166 Despite a few gains towards tolerance in the 1970s, it would not be until the 1990s when public views towards gay people became less harsh and gay-friendly spaces could expand significantly.167 With a few exceptions, spaces for tourism in Reno centered around efforts to make the city and the state into a conventional entertainment destination that was based on heterosexual norms for tourism. Promotional advertisements for Reno from

1981 generally aimed at the tourist perspectives of male heterosexuals, heterosexual couples, or heterosexual families.168 Casino promotions, for example, often featured scantily clad showgirls and dancers, buffets to appeal to families with children, and images of flirtatious men and women having fun (Figure 3).

165 Daryl Kelley, “Gaming: A resilient $2 billion a year business,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Mar. 10, 1980. Also, the recent legalization of gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey was seen as a potential economic threat. Eugene P. Moehring, Reno, Las Vegas, and the Strip, 37-40. 166 Knud S. Larsen, Michael Reed and Susan Hoffman, ”Attitudes of heterosexuals toward homosexuality: A Likert‐type scale and construct validity,” The Journal of Sex Research, 16, no.3 (1980): 245-257. 167 Jeni Loftus, “America’s Liberalization in Attitudes Towards Homosexuality, 1973 – 1988,” American Sociological Review, 66 no. 5 (2001): 762-782. 168 One example in a March 9, 1981 ad for the MGM Reno the quarter page advertisement features pictures of a female dancer in a skimpy outfit and high heels, a couple at a restaurant, and a man, wife, and two children at a buffet. “MGM Grand Reno Advertisement,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Mar. 9, 1981. In another advertisement, this time a full page one for the Peppermill 10th Anniversary, it is geared for a heterosexual male with one woman opening her shirt in a playful manner, and another one holding up money. “Peppermill Advertisement,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Jul. 2, 1981. 54

Figure 3 - March 9, 1981 Advertisement for MGM Grand Reno in Reno Evening Gazette 55

With the rodeo in stark contrast to such heteronormative approaches, Williams lawsuit sought to undercut the gay-friendly spaces that it created. The question of whether the rodeo could continue to use the fairgrounds was turned over to the state attorney general on April 1 at the urging of Commissioner Belie Williams and he rejected it.169 Williams’ attack on the rodeo was definitively thwarted by a ruling in June that

“homosexuals cannot be barred from using the Washoe County-owned Nevada State

Fairgrounds without violating their constitutional rights.”170 Officially, the event scheduled for July 30 through August 2 could continue.

Despite all the controversy surrounding the rodeo, or perhaps because of it, the

1981 rodeo was an even more significant success than 1980. For the 1981 rodeo, tickets were sold to 11,000 people.171 The organizers of the event were not discouraged by all the controversy and announced the change in name to the National Reno Gay Rodeo to emphasize a national focus for the rodeo, instead of a local focus, and it expanded.

Organizers added a country fair with game booths, arts and crafts, and other activities.172

The rodeo also made a generous move by allowing all senior citizens to attend free of charge since much of their proceeds went to senior citizens charities.173 Many advertisers were not scared off from the rodeo as straight businesses, such as the prestigious Parker’s

Western Wear, as well as gay businesses from as far away as Dallas, Texas took out advertisements in the 1981 rodeo program.174 There were, however, some concessions to

169 “Opinion Sought on Gay Rodeo,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (Las Vegas, NV), Apr. 1, 1981. 170 Rodney Foo, “Commissioner’s Fight against Gay Rodeo ‘Dead,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jun. 9, 1981. 171 Joe McEarthy, “Reno Rodeo,” Mandate, July 1982, 41. 172 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, National Reno Gay Rodeo Program (Reno: Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1981). 173 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1981. 174 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1981. 56 the controversy, including a sign at the entrance to the rodeo that stated, "This is a gay- oriented event” and warned, “the fainter of heart to stay away if they are offended by men dancing and hugging men, and women showing emotion toward women.”175 Through its existence and success, the 1981 National Reno Gay Rodeo created and perpetuated gay- friendly spaces in and beyond Reno.

Beaten in the fight in 1981, it appears that Belie Williams and Myron Leavitt left the 1982 Reno Gay Rodeo alone. On the national front, the rodeo was featured on the national NBC ratings powerhouse “Real People” on March 31, 1982, giving the rodeo a massive amount of free press.176 The 1982 event reached the pinnacle of size and success during the weekend of August 2, when over 20,000 people from all over the world descended on Reno to attend the rodeo.177 Comedian Joan Rivers was the grand marshal of the rodeo.178 The rodeo also received political backing as Reno Mayor Barbara Bennett sent a letter of welcome that was published in the 1982 program.179 Much as for the 1981 rodeo, advertisers were abundant, including Budweiser Light, the official beer of the

1982 rodeo.180 Big celebrities, political support, and backing from advertisers made the

1982 rodeo a considerable success, even as the first Gay Games were held that same summer in San Francisco.181 At the end of the 1982 rodeo, it is hard to imagine that anyone could think the rodeo would be seriously threatened the following year.

175 Associated Press, ‘Record Crowds Gathering for Reno’s Gay Rodeo,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (Las Vegas, NV), Aug. 1, 1981. 176 Dennis Myers, “AIDS at 25: When AIDS Came to Nevada, the Battle Was against Both the Disease and the Ignorance About It,” Reno News and Review (Reno, NV), Jun. 1, 2006. 177 Wayne Melton, “Gay Rodeo Crowd Packs Casinos,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Aug. 2, 1982. 178 Charles Faber, “National Reno Gay Rodeo: And in the Saddle,” The Advocate (San Francisco: CA), Sept. 16, 1982. 179 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, National Reno Gay Rodeo Program 1982. 180 Comstock Gay Rodeo Association, 1982.. 181 Caroline Symons, The Gay Games: A History (New York: Routledge, 2010), 40. 57

Nevertheless, even as the 1982 rodeo broke attendance records, made national news, and extended Reno’s gay-friendly spaces, its visibility made it a target for the religious right at a time when the AIDs crisis deepened nationally.

AIDS Hysteria and the Demise of the Rodeo

The AIDS crisis contributed to renewed efforts by opponents of the National

Reno Gay Rodeo to eliminate the event and its gay-friendly spaces in 1983.182 After the success of the previous year’s rodeo, the stage was set for the event to continue in an expanded format of four days, scheduled to take place from August 4-7, 1983. The additional day was to accommodate “another day of rodeo competition, and [the addition of] a horse show, a livestock show, and country fair exhibit.”183 Things looked good as the organizers prepared for the 1983 rodeo. The rodeo had even considered the devastation that AIDS was wreaking and planned on donating part of the proceeds to help fight the disease.184

Yet, the rodeo got caught up in the hysteria at a time when there was fear and paranoia surrounding the spread of AIDS. By the beginning of 1983 the Human

Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the syndrome it causes, Acquired Immune

Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), had become a nationwide crisis.185 Despite perceptions

182 AIDS had been hitting large cities such as San Francisco and New York as early as 1981. It was not until 1983 that the first AIDS victim was identified in the state in Las Vegas. 183 Wayne Melton, “Gay Rodeo Funds for Aids Studies,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Jun. 28, 1983. 184 Melton, "Gay Rodeo Funds”Ibid. 185 Within the gay community the New York Times was noting the growing panic over AIDS. See Robin Herman, “A Disease’s Spread Provokes Anxiety,” New York Times (New York, NY), Aug. 8, 1982. In December 27, 1982, AIDS was first featured in Newsweek magazine. I remember very vividly my mother showing me the first Newsweek cover story on April 11, 1983 and talking to me about it as a scary unknown new disease while living in Chicago. 58 that the disease had come out of nowhere in the early 1980s, it had in fact been around decades before and could be traced back to Africa at least to the 1950s.186 In the late

1960s the first patient died in the United States by what would later be forensically diagnosed as AIDS.187 By the 1970s doctors treated people who displayed symptoms of what would be later diagnosed as the HIV virus.188 On June 5, 1981 the Centers for

Disease Control (CDC) released its first report on what eventually became known as

AIDS patients.189 Toward the end of that year the CDC reported 270 infected gay men nationwide, with 121 dead.190 The following year, on September 24, the CDC used the word AIDS for the first time.191 Although people in large urban centers with large gay male populations, such as San Francisco and New York City, began to panic during the

1981 through 1982 period, people in Reno and Las Vegas did not seem imminently concerned as there were no patients identified with it or people who died from it in the state during those two years. Despite the connections between San Francisco with Reno and Los Angeles with Las Vegas there was perhaps a naïve belief that the disease was not headed to Nevada. That lack of concern changed with Nevada’s first officially documented AIDS patient in Las Vegas during the spring of 1983, which was followed

186 G. E. Pence, “Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS,” in Medical Ethics Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 330. 187 See Gina Kolata, “Boy’s 1969 Death Suggests AIDS Invaded U.S. Several Times,” New York Times (New York, NY), Oct. 28, 1987, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/28/us/boy-s-1969-death-suggests-aids- invaded-us-several-times.html, accessed July 15, 2019. 188 1979 was a watershed year for this. I had a boyfriend who, in 1996, told me of several friends of his getting sick and dying of mysterious diseases in 1979, that later turned out to be AIDS-related deaths. Randy Shilits also identifies 1979 as a turning point in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1987), 37. 189 https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids- accessed July 15, 2019. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 59 by the first reported AIDS case in Reno a few months later.192 By that time, it was clear that a culture of fear was pervasive around the state.193

In July 1983 in the Nevada State Journal reported that a newly formed group, the

Pro-Family Christian Coalition, was circulating a petition to try to eliminate the rodeo on the premise that so many gay people gathered at the fairgrounds would threaten the wider heterosexual community by spreading AIDS.194 The Pro-Family Coalition was either genuinely concerned or was using AIDS as a weapon to shut down the rodeo that they morally opposed or both. The petition made it clear that, not only was the group trying to shut down the rodeo due to their public health fears related to the spread of AIDS, but that they were also trying to reverse the progress that gays had made in previous decades.

Beyond their criticisms of the rodeo, they argued that homosexuality was still against the state law and called on the state to start punishing gay people by enforcing the sodomy laws.195 The coalition sought to destroy the forbidden fruitlands, most particularly to extinguish gay-friendly spaces, and they leveraged the AIDS crisis in their initiative.

Soon after the petition was circulated, the Nevada ACLU branch announced its intention to stop the Pro-Family Coalition from driving the gay rodeo from the county fairgrounds.196 At this point, the leader of the coalition emerged as Daniel Hansen, a conservative leader who became the grassroots organizational leader of a conservative

192 “Five Possible Cases of the Disease Being Investigated in Reno,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 18, 1983. 193 Dennis Myers, “AIDS at 25”. 194 Wayne Melton, “Reno Petition Seeks to Ban Gay Rodeo,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 18, 1983. 195 Ibid. 196 Wayne Melton, “Gay Rodeo Ruckus: ACLU Opposes Effort to Bar Event from Reno,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 19, 1983. 60 movement in Reno and led the Independent American Party in Reno in the 1970s. The

Independent American Party was an offshoot of the conservative American Independent

Party of the United States, founded in 1968 by Alabaman segregationist George

Wallace.197 Hansen was a “life member of the Eagle Scout Association, the John Birch

Society, The First Christian Fellowship of Eternal Sovereignty, and Gun Owners of

America. He was Western States Chairman of the National Constitution Party, former candidate for Governor and Senator, and was a nominee for Vice President of the United

States during America's bicentennial year, 1976.”198 He spent the later part of the 1970s actively fighting the Equal Rights Amendment in Nevada.199 Hansen zeroed in on Reno’s economic mainstay, tourism, and in a paid political newspaper advertisement said, “The economic well-being of our tourist industry is threatened. With all the national publicity on AIDS, many people may be leery of sleeping in a motel room or using a public restroom. Our concern is that the tourist may consider this the AIDS rodeo.”200

In response, Washoe County District Health Director Michael Ford stated that the rodeo “would not pose a threat to the community’s public health.”201 Ford countered the concerns raised by the petition and Hansen's fear of public transmission of AIDS via restrooms with scientific knowledge. However, he did end up reinforcing the idea that

AIDS was a gay disease, even though it was becoming more apparent that segments of

197 http://aipca.org/history.html, accessed July 15, 2019. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=1951 accessed July 15, 2019. 198 Ibid. 199 “Dan Hansen – A Solid Family Man,” paid political ad, Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Nov. 6, 1978. 200 Melton, “Gay Rodeo Ruckus” 201 Melton, “Gay Rodeo Ruckus” 61 the broader community were contracting the disease.202Although scientists knew by 1983 that the disease was not spread in the ways described by the coalition,203 the media did not have a coherent message in regard to the disease during the early years of the crisis and the public was confused.204

Thus, the battle became framed as a crisis of public health. On July 21, 1983, the

Washoe County Manager expressed his view that “There was probably nothing county commissioners can do to prohibit the National Reno Gay Rodeo this year.”205 The

Washoe County commissioners who had been against the rodeo in 1981 had not won a legal battle with the rodeo. Still, Commissioner Dick Ritter stated that he was “strongly opposed to the event and will do everything he can legally to stop it.”206 Ritter promoted the argument that Hansen had made two days before, claiming that the National Reno

Gay Rodeo, despite the massive numbers of tourists it brought to the Reno area, would be bad for Reno's tourism business as it would be linked to AIDS in the public's minds. "I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty reluctant to get between those [hotel] sheets," he stated. "And if I was a tourist, I sure as hell would go clear on through Reno to

202 Ford made an excellent statement to counter Hansen’s. “Ford, however, noted that medical experts nationwide have concluded that the disease is spread by sexual contact among homosexual men. It is also found among narcotics users injecting themselves with contaminated needles…The public are not threatened by this.” Ibid. 203 Trudy Larson, interview with author, June 15, 2016. 204 Randy Shilits, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the Epidemic, Ibid. Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT-UP’s Fight Against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Walter Issacson, “Hunting for the Hidden Killers: AIDS,” Time Magazine, Jul. 4, 1983. 205 Wayne Melton, “County Probably Can’t Prohibit Reno Gay Rodeo,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 21, 1983. 206Melton, “Reno Gay Rodeo”. 62

Lovelock."207 These arguments resonate with Sibley’s point that gay tourists were seen as a scourge because they perceived to bring AIDS to their destinations.208

Opponents of the rodeo convinced the County Commission to hold a hearing on the issue, which was scheduled for July 26, 1983, on the UNR campus.209 Hansen brought in Dr. Paul Cameron, a psychologist from Lincoln, Nebraska, who made a name for himself as a leader in the anti-gay movement of the early 1980s.210 The rebuttal to

Cameron was from physician Trudy Larson, who had worked extensively with AIDS patients as she had been in Southern California from 1980-1982 when the AIDS crisis hit

Los Angeles. Larson believed that Hanson and Cameron wanted to get rid of gays in

Reno and were using the supposed fear of AIDS as a cover for that.211 Four hundred and fifty people show up to hear arguments about the rodeo. One reporter’s assessment of the audience was, “The atmosphere was definitely tense, the audience diverse. The audience included a block of about 100 mostly male gays, matronly women aligned with the Pro-

Family Christian Coalition, and many people whose sentiments were not clear. [Kent]

Robison estimated 90 percent of the audience was supporting the ACLU.212

The next day the County Commission held an hour-long hearing before an overflow crowd of 100 people.213 Speaking at the event, the general manager of the

207 Melton, “Reno Gay Rodeo”. 208 Sibley, 25. 209 Lenita Powers, “Gay Rodeo Foe Steps Up Push to Stop Event,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), July 22, 1983. 210 Already at this point, Cameron was in trouble with the American Psychological Association, as they were getting extensive complaints about him and he was under investigation for ethics violations, and by December he was expelled from the organization. 211 Trudy Larson, interview with author, June 15, 2016. 212 Wayne Melton, “Arguments Focus on AIDS Issue,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 26, 1983. 213 Helen Manning, "Gay Rodeo Foes Shot Down: Pro-Family Christian Coalition Running Out of Alternatives," Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jul. 27, 1983. 63

Fairgrounds stated that denying the rodeo would be a violation of gay people’s civil rights.214 The commission also heard from the ACLU, whose representatives stated that if commissioners ruled against the rodeo, the ACLU would take them to court. Hansen and coalition supporters had what they claimed to be a petition of 7,499 names, yet they refused to present it to the county commission.215 Ultimately the Washoe County commission decided to allow the rodeo to continue as planned216 because there was no public danger of AIDS from the rodeo. The governor, Robert List, made his position clear on this issue in the Las Vegas Sun reporting, “The governor said Wednesday he does not plan to meet with opponents of the gay rodeo and added the issue was a local one – not a state problem.”217

In the wake of the decision to allow the rodeo to continue, local newspapers, the

Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal, published letters to the editor, just as they had in 1981. The August 2nd version of The Evening Gazette made it known that

“During the debate over the Gay rodeo, the Gazette-Journal received 96 letters. The response is appreciated, but not all these letters could be printed in the space available; so, a representative selection was published. Of these letters, 60 people (63 percent) favored the rodeo, 31 (32 percent) opposed it and five (6 percent) were neutral.”218

Despite all the trepidation, the gay press continued to promote the rodeo as it had done in the previous years. On the day the rodeo opened, the gay newspaper the Advocate had ads

214 Manning, “Gay Rodeo Foes”. 215 Manning, “Gay Rodeo Foes”. 216 Manning, “Gay Rodeo Foes”. 217 “Governor Will Get Anti-Gay Rodeo Petition,” LV Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Jul. 29, 1983. 218 “Rodeo Letters Poured In,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Aug. 10, 1983. 64 offering three-day, two-night land or air packages from San Francisco or Sacramento, with lodgings at the Reno Hilton or Holiday Inn.219 Las Vegas had ads for complete rodeo travel packages to Reno as well.220

The rodeo proceeded to open on August 4 despite the setbacks. However, from the beginning, there were issues, especially given it was the rodeo’s second major battle in two years. The Nevada State Journal reported:

All was quiet as the Gay Rodeo opened at the fairgrounds. There was no sign of picketing from members of the Pro-Family Christian Coalition, which sought to stop the rodeo from being held, or visible protests from anyone. However, the controversy stirred up in recent weeks by the Christian Coalition has prompted rodeo organizers to double security. Activities at the fairgrounds Thursday were typical of the opening day of any four-day rodeo and fair. A ragged Phil Ragsdale, the founder, and coordinator of the rodeo was battling last-minute confusion over tickets, press passes, and other problems. Although Ragsdale estimates attendance will total up to 55,000 during the event, it was sparse shortly after the gates opened at noon. Vendors were setting up booths for food, beer, and soft drinks. Crafts and novelty items ranged from tapestries to jewelry, the likes of which pop up at any fair. ‘Most of the vendors aren’t gay,’ said one, who declined to give his name. ‘We came here because the money’s good. I don’t care who the customers are.’221 While the Pro-Family Coalition was nowhere to be seen, there was increased security at the rodeo due to a terror threat made when “an anonymous phone call to

Reno’s three major TV network affiliates, claim[ed] that snipers would shoot rodeo goers.”222 As the Associated Press summed up on the last day of the rodeo, “Although the discussion was muted, the AIDS epidemic was clearly on the minds of many attending the National Reno Gay Rode which concluded Sunday.”223 Media reports suggest that

219 “Reno Gay Rodeo,” Advocate (San Francisco, CA), Aug. 4, 1983. 220 Nevada Gay Times, August 1983, 12. 221 Lenita Powers, “Annual Reno Gay Rodeo Has Quiet Opening Day,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Aug. 5, 1983. 222 Powers, “Annual Reno Gay Rodeo.” Although the threat seems to have been significant, video tapes of these newscasts do not exist, and the above referenced Nevada State Journal article is the only mention in print media. 223 Powers, “Annual Reno Gay Rodeo”. 65 fewer people attended the National Reno Gay Rodeo in 1983 than in 1982. However, the

Sands Casino, the official headquarters of the rodeo, “broke a single-night attendance record when an estimated gay crowd of over 2,000 attended a country music dance in the casino parking lot.”224

Things changed so much by 1984 that there was surprisingly little about that year’s rodeo in either the gay or straight press. Unlike the 1981 controversy which was followed by the best attended rodeo ever, the 1983 fight was followed by the final year for the rodeo. Without notice, the 1984 rodeo broke with tradition and changed its timing, so it was scheduled in mid-July.225 The timing proved bad as it conflicted with the

Democratic National Convention in San Francisco and was just after the rodeo the 1984

Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles. Ragsdale noted the decline in attendance because of these events.226

In 1984 the rodeo found itself in financial troubles with the organizers unable to pay their bills.227 Moreover, the Washoe County Fairgrounds had a policy of not granting exceptions for those who did not pay their bills, especially since the fairgrounds operated at a loss that year.228 On November 7, 1984, Washoe County and the Nevada State Fair brought suit against the Comstock Rodeo Association for $7,350 (about $17,000 in today’s dollars).229 The rodeo was given three months to put up some money in good

224 “Gay Rodeo Rides on Despite Protests of Fundamentalist Leader,” Advocate (San Francisco, CA), Sept. 15, 1983 225 1984 Reno Gay Rodeo Program, 19. 226 Associated Press, “Unpaid bill May End Gay Rodeo,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (Las Vegas, NV), Nov. 6, 1984. 227 Ibid. 228Wayne Melton, "State Fair Back in September," Reno Gazette-Journal (Reno, NV), Dec. 12, 1984. 229 “Public Notices,” Reno Gazette-Journal (Reno, NV), Dec. 6, 1984. 66 faith, but they did not follow through. As well, oral histories from the time suggest that

Ragsdale had a younger boyfriend who embezzled thousands of dollars and left the state right after the 1984 rodeo.230 The fight ended up with the Washoe County Fairgrounds voting to ban the rodeo from being held there again unless it paid what it owed them.231

The end resulted from a fight over money, but it is significant that in 1984 local politicians were not willing to be generous with the rodeo. Although the bigotry of the

1981 and 1983 attacks as well as the worsening AIDS crisis severely weakened the rodeo, the collapse was a result of financial problems, which turned out to be largely of its own making.

Conclusion

The first four years of the rodeo involved slowly building attendance and increasing media attention. The National Reno Gay Rodeo flourished at a time when gay rights advanced to a point where bigotry and even the opposition of politicians in Nevada did not prevent use of the fairgrounds by the gay community. The growth of gay pride in the northern Nevada and northern California both bolstered the rodeo and benefited from the rodeo. The story of the rodeo shows how far the gay community in Reno was able to come in establishing claims to new gay-friendly spaces and doing this through playing with one of the most sacred tropes of the American West, the highly masculine world of

230 Paco Poli, interview with author, May 22, 2016. Ray Martin interview with author, May 22, 2016. 231 Paco Poli, “Rodeo Struggles to Find Its Place,” Sierra Voice (Reno, NV), Jul. 17, 2003. 67 rodeo. Even with its collapse in 1984 over financial problems, the fact that the rodeo managed to achieve what it did is worth celebrating.

In bringing many gay people to the city, some straight politicians and anti-gay activists felt threatened, even if the National Reno Gay Rodeo only happened for a short time each year. The rodeo disrupted their sense of normalcy, conflicting with their heteronormative notions by cultivating gay-friendly spaces.232 Over the years, massive increases in attendance heightened fears about how abnormal the rodeo was and its effect on the city and this provoked these individuals to take action to stop the event. With the rise of the AIDS crisis, exaggerated threats about public health were used as an excuse to try to ban the event, but even that did not work as their arguments that the rodeo could incite a public health crisis and thwart tourism proved to be unsuccessful. Phillip Want and David Sibley have written about similar situations in which homophobic fears were sparked and attempts made to stop gay tourism because gay tourists were viewed as bringing unleashed sexuality based on degeneracy in addition to AIDS.233 Sibley goes on to argue that identifying AIDS as a “gay disease” served to reinforce existing homophobic attitudes and exclude gay men.234 In the case of the rodeo in Reno, processes of linking AIDS with gay exclusion included trying to destroy gay-friendly spaces along with the rodeo that cultivated them.

232Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996),4-6. 233 Want, 191.

234 Sibley, 41-42. 68

AIDS did take its toll, not only on the rodeo in 1983 and 1984, but on many other gay events across the country. For example, participation in gay pride parades in San

Francisco and Los Angeles dropped significantly.235 The timing of the rodeo’s demise in

1984 was consistent with a national trend in gay communities around the country, many of which regrouped to grapple with a new environment that was less celebratory and carefree.

Still, these attempts to shut down the rodeo failed, in part, because other people in

Reno appreciated the economic boost from gay tourism. As a form of gay tourism, many in Reno viewed the rodeo as a novelty rather than a threat.236 The rodeo fit with the quirky, anything-goes spaces of Nevada’s forbidden fruitlands, especially since it proved to be so popular and successful. Given their investment in tourism that supported

Nevada’s forbidden fruitlands, some straight people in Reno either were not bothered about the rodeo or were attracted to what they saw as the transgressive nature of the rodeo.

235 United Press International, “Thousands March in SF gay Parade,” Petaluma Argus-Courier (Petaluma, CA), Jun. 27, 1983. Associated Press, “Gay-pride parade draws thousands,” Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, CA), Jul. 4, 1984. Robert W. Stewart, “Gay Pride Parade a Lively Spectacle Mostly for Fun,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jun. 27, 1983 “Thousands Turn Out for Gay Pride Parade,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jul. 2, 1984. 236 Rodeo Letters Poured In,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Aug. 10, 1983. 69

Chapter Four: Geographies of Gay Bathhouses in the 1970s

Introduction

In 1963 the city of New York prepared to host the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. With a major tourist event coming to the city, Mayor Robert Wagner went on a crusade to make the city look presentable to tourists by removing signs of “immoral sexuality,” which he took to mean gays and prostitutes.237 This pattern of “cleaning up” a city before a significant tourist event was a common tactic in the US during leading into the20th century.238 In 1975 a similar scenario played out on the other side of the country in another city that catered to tourists – Las Vegas, Nevada – to the effect that the city’s sole gay bathhouse was eliminated. Periodically gay bathhouses in the US had been closed through city regulatory actions before 1975; what was different about the Las Vegas bathhouse closure is that it happened during the pinnacle of expansion of gay bathhouses across the country.

The Sexual Revolution was in full swing in the US during the early 1970s. The

Sexual Revolution’s novel, sex-positive loosening of American mores had been gradually increasing since the 1960s and continued into the early 1970s. In gay male culture, the loosening of cultural mores and sexual freedom gave rise to the expansion of gay bathhouses across the country.239 The number of gay bathhouses in US cities grew

237 Carter, 36-42. Steven A. Rosen, “Police Harassment of Homosexual Women and Men in New York City 1960-1980,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 12, no. 2 (1980): 167-168. 238 Another earlier example is from the Columbian Exposition in Chicago covered in Jim Elledge, The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century, (Chicago: Chicago Review Press 2019). 239 Steven Seidman, Nancy Fisher, Chet Meeks ed, Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (New York: Routledge 2011): 334-340 70 rapidly in the early 1970s capitalizing on the Gay Liberation movement of the time.240

Many bathhouses offered gay men generous spaces to swim, sauna, steam, and socialize, while they were kept inconspicuous as private membership-only clubs. The spatial dimensions of gay bathhouses varied from city to city, with some of the largest and most elaborate ones in the big cities, such as New York and San Francisco. Smaller bathhouses tended to be in small cities. What they all had in common was providing spaces that encouraged gay men to be more open with their sexuality than previous decades.

Las Vegas opened its first gay bathhouse in 1971, around the same time many other small cities were opening their first gay bathhouses, but ended up closing this at the same time as other US cities were still opening them.241 The closure was part of a city- wide crusade in 1975 against sex-based businesses that four city commissioners and the mayor had as part of their campaign platforms.242 The city’s administration took steps to eliminate sex-based businesses in and around the major tourist area and central city as a part of a bigger effort to “clean up" Las Vegas by making it more “family-friendly.” As early as 1967 some business leaders and politicians in Nevada concluded that the future

240 For this chapter, I will be using the term gay as that was what was used at the time to refer to what would today be men who fall under the LGBTQ term. For a historical look at LGBTQ changing terminology see Chapter One. Arguments linking younger gay men that were a part of the Gay Liberation movement to going to bathhouses is seen in gay and straight press at the time. Tom Burke, “The New Homosexuality,” Esquire, December 1969, 304. John Francis Hunter. The Gay Insider (New York: Olympia Press, 1971) 150-151. 241 The first nationwide gay bath chain, The Club Baths, opened in Cleveland in 1965 and by 1971 had expanded to include 13 other facilities across the US. Dudley Clenindin and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 293-294. 242 The gay bathhouse was not a sex-based business per se and served a multitude of functions of which sex was a component for many customers. I use sex-based business here because this was targeted as part of a city-wide removal of businesses with some relation to sexual activity. The argument that gay bathhouses were not only sex-based is detailed in Allan Bérubé, “The History of Gay Bathhouses,” Journal of Homosexuality 44, no. 3: (2003), 33-53. 71 of the state lay in family-friendly tourism, in addition to gambling.243 The city’s sole gay bathhouse was included in this clean-up along with other sex-based businesses that were considered incompatible with the new direction charted by local politicians.

Wilbur Zelinsky considers Las Vegas and other parts of western Nevada as part of the forbidden fruitlands because he recognized that homosexuality, along with a number of other activities traditionally considered to be immoral, were accepted there more than in many other places. Yet it was not long after Zelinsky’s book was published in 1973 that the city of Las Vegas attempted to eradicate an array of sex-based businesses, including the bathhouse, so as to turn away from it reputation as being overly permissive and promiscuous.244

In this chapter I describe the expansion of gay bathhouses across the US in the

1970s and consider the resulting backlash through a case study of the first gay bathhouse in Las Vegas, which lasted only four years during the height of the Sexual Revolution. In exploring what made the 1975 bathhouse closure at odds with a city that had sold itself as a sexual playground, I argue that closing this gay place by ostensibly regulating based on morality changed gay tourism and gay community building in Las Vegas.

As control by the mafia in Las Vegas was superseded by corporate interests, starting in the late 1960s and running through the 1980s,245 new civic leaders came in

243 “Gambling One of Many Attractions: Millions of Tourists ‘Just Love’ Nevada; A Trend is Developing Towards Family Trade” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jan 29, 1967. By 1968 Governor Paul Laxalt’s Tourism Advisory Committee was predicting family tourism as a growth industry. “$1 Million Campaign Asked for Tourism,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Jun. 4, 1968 By 1969 Laxalt was openly promoting the future of family tourism in the state,” Governor Paul Laxalt, “Laxalt, Fike, View Nevada’s Progress,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Jan. 26, 1969. 244 Zelinsky, 137-138. 245 Bo Jo Bernhard, Michael S. Green, and Anthony F. Lucas, “From Maverick to Mafia to MBA: Gaming Industry Leadership in Las Vegas from 1931-2007,” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 49, no. 2 (2008) 180- 183. 72 with different ideas about what was morally acceptable.246 Attempts to control space and clean up downtown areas were not unusual responses at this time. As Paul J. Maginn and

Christine Steinmetz argue in (Sub)Urban Sexscapes: Geographies and Regulation of the

Sex Industry, "seemingly persistent societal taboos surrounding sex, especially commercialized and supposed deviant sexual practices, appear to be perpetuated by a thin yet powerful stratum of social and political elites."247 In Las Vegas, these elites were corporately-oriented politicians who used their powers to regulate through city ordinances, forcing the gay bathhouse and other sex-based businesses to either move outside the city limits or to close. In the early 1970s city leaders also forced a statewide vote to legalize brothels outside Las Vegas, moving legal prostitution outside the city.248

The elites wanted these enterprises gone or at least far away from the major tourist area, which was the city’s economic engine.

The Sexual Revolution and Gay Liberation in the US

It has been said that the Sexual Revolution in the US began as a result of the introduction and mass marketing of an oral contraceptive birth control pill in 1960.249 The introduction of the pill, for the first time in history, put women in control of having sex without worry of conceiving. This seemingly simple change sparked a radically restructuring of heterosexual relationships in society, in particular it led many to rethink

246 Moehring and Green, Las Vegas. 247 Maginn and Steinmetz, 8. 248 Barbara G. Brents, Crystal A. Jackson, Kathryn Hausbreck ed, The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin the New American Heartland (New York: Taylor and Francis 2010), 75. 249 Jonathan Eig. The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014) 290-312. 73 traditional norms about sex out of wedlock.250 By the late 1960s, the hippie movement emerged, espousing sexual liberation in the form of free love as one of its tenants.251

At the time, some gay men saw their fate as wrapped up in outdated notions of sex which revolved around heterosexual procreation.252 The Stonewall Riots arose in this climate and were part of a series of riots that had wracked American society in the late

1960s. The Stonewall Riots happened during the summer of 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-controlled gay bar known for exploiting patrons with rude service and overpriced, watered-down drinks.253 It also was normal at the time for the police to make an appearance on occasion to harass the customers and during one encounter with the police, patrons decided to fight back. What started out as a confrontation in the Stonewall Inn turned into a four-day riot for gay rights in surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.254

Out of the Stonewall Riots, two activist groups formed in New York to fight for gay rights, the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front.255 These groups were at the forefront of the Gay Liberation Movement, differing from earlier gay groups

(such as the Homophile Movement) in that they were generally younger adults who saw the need to fight for their rights and engage in radical activism.256 The popularity of the

Gay Liberation Movement expanded into the 1970s with chapters opening across the

250 John D’Emilio, and Estelle Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012) 301-318. 251 David Allyn. Make Love Not War The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. (New York: Routledge, 2000). 252 John D’Emilio, and Estelle Freedman. Intimate Matters, 318-324. 253 Duberman, 207-263. 254 Ibid. 255 Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 179-201. 256 Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 53-73. 74 country. Many in the radical Gay Liberation Movement believed that, after decades of oppression, unrestrained sex was a radical act in and of itself. It was this freewheeling, liberatory milieu for both heterosexuals and gays that led to open sexuality and made sex visible in a way that it had not been before.

On the national stage, print media became another bellwether of the new sexual morality with a pivotal moment happening when The Joy of Sex was published in

1972.257 With the enormous popularity of book – it spent eleven weeks being number one on The New York Times book list258 – it was clear that the Sexual Revolution was not limited to activists and students. Many ideas about swinging, bisexuality, and casual sex were becoming mainstream.259

Adding to this wave of culture change was the release of the movie, Deep Throat, which ushered in the era of porno chic. Porno chic made pornographic acceptable for mainstream consumption, which, in turn, led to a proliferation of X-rated movie theaters appearing in cities across the US.260 X-rated adult bookstores selling pornography were also increasingly commonplace in many cities around the US.261 Further opening the door to pornography were the findings of the 1970 report of the President's Commission on

Obscenity and Pornography, which concluded “there was insufficient evidence that

257 Alex Comfort. The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking (New York: Crown Books, 1972). 258 John Bear. The Number One New York Times Best Seller (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1992). 259 Comfort, The Joy of Sex , 225.Eir-Anne Edgar, “Suburban Subversions: Swingers and the Sexual Revolution,” Sexuality and Culture 21, no. 2 (2017): 404-422. Elena Levine, Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). Elizabeth L. Wollman, Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 260 Nancy Semin Lingo, “Making Sense of Linda Lovelace,” in Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s, ed. Carolyn Bronstein and Whitney Straub (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 104-124. 261 Timothy M. Hagle, “But Do They Have to See It To Know It?: The Supreme Court’s Obscenity and Pornography Decisions,” Western Political Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 1039-1054. 75 exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior” for adults”262 and the Commission chose not to restrict adult access to pornography.

Despite the Sexual Revolution initiating fundamental changes to sexual norms, indications of a backlash on the national front were evident as early as 1973 with the religious right switching its major priority from the fight against communism to the fight against pornography and indecency.263

The Evolution of Gay Bathhouses in the US

As I discuss in Chapter Two, bathhouses were very common in ancient European civilizations, with the Roman Baths perhaps being the most famous.264 By the time that baths appeared in the US in large numbers in the 19th century, they had long been associated with sex, a common perception that had started in the Medieval Era. Over time, some bathhouses designed for straight male customers became popular with gay men in cities during the 1890s to 1910s.265 Owners/managers of these bathhouses either looked the other way or tried to temper the popularity of bathhouses with gay customers, usually unsuccessfully.266 Bérubé notes the emergence of “the early gay bathhouse” in

262 Richard Funston, “Pornography and Politics: The Court, The Constitution, and The Commission,” The Western Political Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1971): 635-652. United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The Report on the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (New York: Bantam Books, 1970). 263 Whitney Straub, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010): 179-181. 264 For Ancient Rome see Thomas McGinn’s The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel (University of Michigan 2004), for prostitutes during the Middle Ages taking over baths see Ruth Mazo Karras Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 1998), for a comprehensive history of gays and bathhouses see Bérubé, 33-53.

265 Bérubé, 35-36. 266 Chauncey. 76 the 1920s and 1930s, which allowed sex on the premises in closed or locked rooms.267

This was tempered by the fact that the police would routinely raid these places to arrest patrons for same-sex acts, which were illegal in the US at the time.268

Over time, newer bathhouses emerged, and by the 1950s and 1960s a new type of bathhouse appeared that catered exclusively to gay men.269 The type of bathhouse that appeared at this time is what Bérubé calls, “the modern gay bathhouse.”270 These facilities did not hide the fact that they were used for sexual encounters; however, they still were very private in terms of not taking advertisements in the gay press and usually kept a low profile. A study of the exteriors of gay bathhouses during the 1970s described them as, “The exterior façade of the gay bath mirrors conventional surroundings. It complements the containing neighborhood. A curtain of inconspicuousness diminishes interest in the establishment and unobtrusively integrates it into the urban landscape.”271

Modern gay bathhouses would usually be located in economically depressed parts of city centers; many times, being located near light manufacturing.272 They also would have small signs (or none at all) and would rely on word of mouth to help bring in gay customers.

What made the modern gay bathhouses so popular with gay men was that the patrons were protected, to a degree, from society at the time when inside. Men who had

267 Bérubé, 35-36. 268 All same-sex acts between men were illegal in all US states until the 1960s, with Illinois being the first to decriminalize same-sex acts in 1962. However, it wasn't until 1971 that the next state of Connecticut decriminalized same-sex acts between men http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/usa/usa.htm accessed March 3, 2019. 269 Bérubé, 35-36. 270 Bérubé, 35-36. . 271 Edward William Delph, The Silent Community: Public Homosexual Encounters (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978), 137. 272 Delph, 137. 77 sex with each other at the time in a private residence risked neighbors discovering them and being reported to the police. In the state of Nevada, for example, a same-sex anti- sodomy law, originally passed in the 19th century, was expanded over time to include most acts of sodomy, making it illegal for men to have sex with each other,273 and these laws were not overturned until 1993.274 On that national stage, it was not until 2003 that the US Supreme Court invalidated all state-level sodomy laws.

By the late 1960s, many gay bathhouses owners started to have better relations with the local police than in previous decades, and bathhouse raids began to elicit activist protests.275 Around 1967 and 1968, a new type of bathhouse, which I call, “the contemporary gay bathhouse,” began to appear in the US. These bathhouses differed from the modern gay bathhouses in terms of their use of physical spaces and use of advertising. The bathhouse that epitomizes the emergence of the contemporary gay bathhouse was the Continental Baths in New York City that opened in 1968. The

Continental Baths were groundbreaking in offering lavish facilities in a renovated turn of the century health club within the basement of an Upper West Side residential hotel that had fallen on hard times. The Continental Baths offered a full gymnasium, sauna, steam room, massages, an Olympic sized pool, color tv, a library, 24-hour restaurant, and rooms for overnight accommodations.276 The Continental Baths was also at the forefront of

273 Laws of Nevada Territory 1861, page 56, Ch. XXVIII, enacted Nov. 26, 1861. Revised Laws of Nevada Containing State Statutes of a General Nature from 1861 Revised to 1912, and Pertinent Acts of Congress with Annotations from Volumes 1 to 34, Nevada Reports, and From Federal and State Decisions, Vol. 2, (Carson City: Superintendent of State Printing, 1912), page 1812, §6293, enacted Mar. 17, 1911.

274 Courtney Brenn, “Senate Votes to Legalize Gay Sex,” Reno Gazette Journal (Reno, NV), May 29,1993. 275 Martin S. Weingberg and Colin J. Williams, “Gay Baths and the Social Organization of Impersonal Sex,” Social Problems 235, no. 2 (1975): 126. 276 “Continental Baths advertisement,” New York Magazine, November 4, 1968. 78 advertising in the late 1960s, taking out ads, not only in the gay press of the time, but also in the mainstream heterosexual press such as New York Magazine (Figure 4). 277 The

Continental Baths then went on to experience an unusually high amount of national publicity in the summer of 1970. That year an unknown artist named Bette Midler began weekend cabaret performances there. At the same time, she started appearing on the nationally popular “Johnny Carson Show”278 and talked about her performances at the

Continental Baths. This helped lead the way for more gay bathhouses to emerge in cities across the US in 1971.

Figure 4 - New York Magazine November 4, 1968

The lavish amenities provided by the Continental Baths set a new standard both for bathhouses just being built and old ones that needed remodeling (Figure 5). Whereas

277 “Continental Baths advertisement” New York Mattachine Newsletter, June 1969. “Continental Baths advertisement” QQ, July 1970. 278 Jeffery Auer, “Bette at the Baths,” Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide 15, no. 3 (2008): 29. 79 gay bathhouses going back to the turn of the century had followed a typical design, with sparse settings and tiled floors, contemporary gay bathhouses had amenities such as wall- to-wall carpeting in common areas, hot tubs, and carousel showers.279 In addition to the use of interior space, contemporary gay bathhouses made use of advertising. In almost every city with a contemporary gay bathhouse, advertisements were taken out in the gay press to show where they were. For example, Vector magazine started displaying advertisements for bathhouses in San Francisco, as well as across the country, in 1967.

This use of advertising and courting of publicity is something that would have been unthinkable just a few years before.280 Censorship laws in the US prior to the late 1960s meant that advertising that promoted sex, as opposed to sexuality, was considered a crime. With the Supreme Court ruling in 1967 in the case of Redrup v. New York, there was a rush by the gay community to advertise sex-based businesses, such as bathhouses.

Although the fight over what constituted pornography continued into the 1990s, many gay sex-based businesses felt that the 1967 ruling provided an opportune moment to promote their businesses.281

279 “The Wellington Baths advertisement,” California Scene, January 1970. 280 Other examples include Los Angeles-based magazine HIM running an ad for the Regency Club Baths in North Hollywood in its November 1969 issue. “Club South Baths Atlanta advertisement” David, March 1971. 281 A survey of gay magazines and newspapers bear this out. In the 1960 -1966 period of the gay press it is highly unusual to see any ads for a gay bathhouse. For example, Vector magazine did not begin to have advertisements for bathhouses until 1967. 80

Figure 5 - New York City Bathhouses in 1930s and 1970s

The city of Las Vegas had bathhouses at least as early as 1947, although it is unclear if gay men patronized them at the time.282 General bathhouses in urban areas reached their pinnacle by the mid-twentieth century in American urban areas, however, as the century wore on, they fell out of fashion as more city dwellers had indoor plumbing in which to bathe themselves. As Las Vegas was a relatively young city, incorporated in

1905, its housing stock tended to have indoor plumbing with a bathtub and shower. As such, commercial bathhouses were never needed on a large scale for the city, and by the

1960s general bathhouses had faded from widespread use. It was in 1971 that the first gay bathhouse in the city appeared. Based on advertising at the time, it was a contemporary gay bathhouse, with lavish amenities that included a steam room, a sauna, a complete gym, color television, movie showings, snack bar, and lounge. There are no descriptions

282“Las Vegas Accepts Bid on Bathhouse,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Apr. 28, 1947. 81 or images of the exterior or interior from the period. This gay bathhouse was licensed and regulated by the city of Las Vegas during the 1970s as an M-7 business, which was a category for businesses with some relation to sex, such as massage parlors.283 Such regulation is not unusual: as Phil Hubbard has noted the act of licensing is "an attempt to survey, contain and ‘fix’ particular illiberal subjects.”284 By the very act of being regulated and licensed by the city, the Las Vegas gay bathhouse had part of its sexual edge circumscribed. In return for the tacit approval of the state, licensing required that certain conditions were met which would contain and constrain activities.

Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1973 Election Turning Point

By the late 1960s, the city of Las Vegas was changing directions in leadership.285

Up until the late 1960s, the mafia and Mormons had controlled Las Vegas, but this changed in 1967 with the coming of Howard Hughes. Up until the late 1960s, Las Vegas casinos and gambling businesses had been primarily controlled by criminal organizations

– first mainly Jewish, then Italian (“the mafia”) and they were financed by Mormon bankers and Teamsters Union pension funds.286 This changed in April 1967, when

Howard Hughes purchased the Desert Inn, where he had been living for months.287 To

283. Ken Langbell, “Bathhouses May Be Out in Las Vegas, Mayor Says,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Oct. 8, 1976. 284 Hubbard, 207. 285 Geoff Schumacher, Sun, Sin & Suburbia: The Story of Modern of Las Vegas (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2015), 96-116. 286 Bo Jo Bernhard, Michael S. Green, and Anthony F. Lucas, “From Maverick to Mafia to MBA: Gaming Industry Leadership in Las Vegas from 1931-2007,” Cornell Hospitability Quarterly 49 no.2 (2008): 178- 180. 287 Schumacher, 96-116. 82 facilitate the purchase, the Nevada legislature had obligingly changed the law, passing a bill, “allowing public corporations to own gambling facilities without licensing each stockholder.288 This change in casino regulations over time facilitated changes in ownership of Las Vegas casinos, which in turn influenced city political leadership as well. The immediate effect of the passing of the bill was a shift in Las Vegas from casinos being owned and operated by mafia enterprises to ownership by corporations.289

Hughes purchased properties from the mafia throughout the late 1960s.290 Mormon leadership in southern Nevada continued longer than the mafia control did. They made the transition through the early corporatization period because Howard Hughes had a penchant for hiring Mormon individuals to help his takeover of Las Vegas.291 Although a number of Mormon politicians managed to retain other political offices in the state, they began to lose some of their hold on the local Las Vegas level with the 1973 elections, when several conservative business owners were elected to the city council.292 These politicians were not necessarily Mormon and seemingly were not beholden to the mafia.

These new leaders tapped into initial voter concerns over views of excessive public pornography. For them, instead of party line or religion coming first, cleaning up Las

Vegas was a priority because the city had been allowed to be overrun with sex-based

288“History of Gaming in Nevada” http://www.nevadaresorts.org/about/history/ accessed February 21, 2019. 289 Eugene P. Moehring, 41-68. 290 Ibid. The reasons why the mafia sold to Hughes probably varied, but his ability to pay large amounts of cash to purchase the properties outright was likely an incentive. 291 Howard Hughes surrounded himself with Mormons as apparently he appreciated their conservative lifestyle in contrast to the people in the mafia. Alan Balboni, Beyond the Mafia: Italian Americans and the Development of Las Vegas (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2006), 64-65. 292 United Press International “Vegas Voters Elect Lurie, Christiensen Commissioners.” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), Jun. 6, 1973. 83 businesses.293 This new leadership that swept into power had a vision for a new Las

Vegas in the 1970s that would be free from sex-based businesses.294

This new vision for the city stood in stark contrast to Las Vegas’ long history with sex-based businesses, especially those related to prostitution, which operated as money- making ventures by the mafia.295 The mafia had cultivated a glamorized form of tourism after World War II and spent more money for publicity in Las Vegas in 1945 than any other city in the US.296 Despite the fact that the mafia’s connection to prostitution was well known, fears over organized crime emerged throughout the country, so Las Vegas worked hard to balance the tension between the mafia’s connection to prostitution and the selling of Las Vegas as a glamourous adult getaway.297 The new tourism model “…was not sex itself that was for sale, but sexuality linked to glamour and escape.”298 This new approach to tourism would coalesce around the issue of urban prostitution in Las Vegas, just as the Sexual Revolution hit its stride.

By 1970 Las Vegas was experiencing an increase in visible street-level prostitution that was related to the Sexual Revolution. The city was not alone. At this time more women who were part of the counterculture moved to cities and, having less prejudice about perceived views of sexual morality, engaged more freely in street

293 John Dart, “Two Mormons Lose in Vegas Election,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jun. 5, 1975. 294 Intriguingly a November 24, 1968 article in the Las Vegas Sun called “What Constitutes Obscenity, Pornography in Las Vegas? By John Miller mentions that year that the Guild Theater was notorious for showing “controversial” movies in what he saw as a city that was quickly jaded by mere nudity on the showroom stage and was clamoring for more. 295 Salvatore Lupo, The History of the Mafia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 296 Brents, Jackson, and, Hausbreck, 66. 297 Larry Gragg, “Never Accorded the Recognition He Deserved: Al Freeman, Sands Hotel Publicist, 1952- 1972,” Nevada Historical Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2008): 44 -51. 298 Brents, Jackson, and, Hausbreck, 66. 84 prostitution.299 In reaction to the growing street presence of prostitutes in Las Vegas, the

County Commission and Clark County District Attorney began considering a legalized brothel outside the city to get these women away from the streets.300 By 1971 this resulted in the introduction of a bill in the Nevada Legislature that allowed counties to make decisions about the legalization of prostitution, however, prostitution was prohibited in any county that had a population of 200,000 or more.301 This meant that that

Clark County, which is the home for the city of Las Vegas, would prohibit legalized prostitution. The bill passed in February, 1971. Although this legislation seemingly made

Nevada synonymous with legalized prostitution, in fact, it served to prohibit legalized prostitution in Las Vegas and Clark County. This was a starting point in the initiative by

Las Vegas’ new politicians to rid the city of “immoral” businesses and expand family- friendly tourism. At the same time, it was a backlash, spurred by both the Sexual

Revolution and the city’s particular history with sex-based activities, aimed at removing businesses considered to be “immoral” based on heteronormative, middle-class standards.

The new city politicians won the first part of their battle against sex-based businesses in 1971, yet that turned out to be just the beginning. Oran Gragson, mayor of

Las Vegas, seemed unprepared for the impact of the Sexual Revolution in the city.

Gragson was a Baptist business owner who had moved to Las Vegas during the Great

Depression.302 In 1959 he ran for mayor on the Republican ticket after becoming fed up

299Ernest Lenn,, “Ames Charges Police Vice Arrests Weak,” San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA), Aug. 6, 1968. 300 Brents, Jackson, and, Hausbreck, 74. 301 Brents, Jackson, and, Hausbreck, 75. 302 https://lasvegassun.com/news/2002/oct/07/longtime-las-vegas-mayor-oran-gragson-dies-at-91/ accessed July 18, 2019. 85 with corruption that negatively impacted business owners and he went on to serve the longest as the city’s mayor to that point.303 His final term as mayor began in 1971, about the time the prostitution battle had been fought and won.

By 1973 Las Vegas found itself grappling with a new sex-based business that had proliferated since the legalization of prostitution: bookstores that sold pornography.304 In a ballot initiative Las Vegas voters said no to allowing adult bookstores and theaters in the city.305 The attack on the privately-owned bookstores was part of the broader sweep in the early 1970s against "immorality" in Las Vegas. In that same election, Carl Lovell became the city attorney and Paul Christiansen and Ron Lurie became city council members. Each of the men was part of the new wave of politicians bent on cleaning up

Las Vegas. Lovell had previously been the city attorney for North Las Vegas where he had been involved in an effort to curb X-rated bookstores. Each of these men campaigned vigorously against pornography.

Las Vegas Gay Community and the First Bathhouse

The Las Vegas gay community emerged with the opening of the first gay bar,

Maxine’s, in 1959. Unlike many other American cities at the time, there was no explosion of gay businesses in the 1960s. It was not until 1968 that the second gay bar,

303 https://lasvegassun.com/news/2002/oct/07/longtime-las-vegas-mayor-oran-gragson-dies-at-91/. 304 Nevada was one of many states that were grappling with an explosion of pornography by the early 1970s. Attempts were made to curtail the growth of places that sold and exhibited pornography in the state during the April 1971 state legislature. However, the statutes that passed came down to the problem of creating a strict definition of pornography. This lack of clear direction left loopholes for pornography distributors to use to continue business. NV. Code. Ann. § 201-250 (1971). 305. United Press International, “Vegas Voters Elect Lurie, Christiensen Commissioners,” Nevada State Journal Jun. 6, 1973. 305 Ibid. 86 the Red Barn, opened.306 This was followed in January 1970 with the opening of Le Café, which over time became a disco.307 All these Las Vegas bars were located in different areas outside city limits and subject to loose policing under the Clark County Sherriff.

These bars formed the beginnings of the local gay community in Las Vegas as noted by

Dennis McBride.308 The fact that these bars were seen as the centers of the gay community was summed up in the motto of a newsletter published by the Red Barn,

“Because We’re All in This Together.”309 A national gay tourist newspaper from New

York, Gay, had an article in 1971 about a trip to Las Vegas and these three bars were the focus.310

Bucking the old patterns of gay site locations, the first gay bathhouse in the city called the Sir Gay Health Club, opened in 1971 at 1413 South Main Street, just one mile south of downtown on the same street as the newly opened Union Casino (Figure 6). It was located four blocks west of Las Vegas Boulevard South, the Las Vegas Strip (Figure

7). Gay tourism to the bathhouse was accessible from both parts of town in which tourists stayed. In this way, the bathhouse was the physically closest to downtown and the Strip compared to the gay bars, so it was convenient for gay tourists staying in the city.

306 Gay businesses in the US had seen an explosion in numbers during the 1960s as I discussed in Chapter Two 307 Dennis McBride, Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, 24. 308 McBride, Out of the Neon Closet, 30. 309 Ibid. Bob Damron’s Address Book 1969 - 1971. 310 John Francis Hunter, “A Vagabond in Vegas,” Gay (New York, NY), May 10, 1971. 87

The bathhouse seemed relatively small and this could have been an attempt to keep a low profile.311 However, that notion is challenged by the fact that they took out an advertisement in the Yellow Pages in 1971 (Figure 8).

311 Bob Damron, “Travel Tips: Nevada,” California Scene Magazine, January 1972, 20. 88

Figure 6 - Bathhouse in Relation to Downtown ( Map data, Google Maps)

Figure 7 - Bathhouse in Relation to Las Vegas Strip (Map Data, Google Maps) 90

Figure 8 - Sir Gay Advertisement 1971 Yellow Pages

An issue in 1972 of a gay magazine, QQ, mentioned that the Sir Gay Health Club had trouble with the police because it was within the city limits and that the bathhouse was not doing well financially because it was being watched by the Las Vegas city police.312 The article mentions that the two gay bars in the Las Vegas metro area were outside the city limits and were not having problems.

312 John Roberts, “Sex is Sometimes in Las Vegas,” QQ, February 1972, 41. 91

In late 1972 Sir Gay Health Club changed its name to the Vegas Club Baths.313

The timing of the name change coincides with the period when politicians campaigned against and complained about sex-based businesses ruining Las Vegas. Changing its name from Sir Gay to the more neutral Vegas Club Baths could have been an attempt not to be so visible within Las Vegas, except to gay men.

The Vegas Club Baths did not take out advertisements in the Yellow Pages, but did promote itself in the gay press.314 It is hard to gauge the level of popularity of the baths, although a December issue of the gay travel magazine, Ciao, said it had “spotty action.”315 The fact that there was new advertising in the gay press at the time points to an expansion of gay tourism to Las Vegas that the bathhouse owner tried to capitalize on. In addition to this, advertising in the gay press also would have reached local gay residents and alerted them to the bathhouse, even if they had not known it was there before. The new imagery on the ads in the national gay press featured a graphic of a giant cactus that can be seen as erotic (Figure 9).

313 Bob Damron. Bob Damron’s 1973 Address Book (San Francisco: Bob Damron Enterprises, 1973), 130. 314 “Vegas Club Baths,” David Magazine, September 1973, 9. 315 John Roberts, “Las Vegas,” Ciao Magazine, November-December 1973, 12. 92

Figure 9- Vegas Club Baths Advertisement David September 1973

Closing the Las Vegas Bathhouse in Light of National Trends

In 1975 Las Vegas had another election and this time there was a mayoral race.

Oran Gragson, announced his retirement from politics shortly before the election.316 Bill

Briare was elected mayor, along with several other city council members who were also part of the wave opposing sex-based businesses.317 Briare, a Catholic originally from

316 Associated Press, “Gragson declines Vegas mayor bid,” Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, NV), Apr. 4, 1975. 317 John Dart, “Two Mormons Lose in Vegas Election,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jun. 5, 1975. 93

Long Beach, California, moved to Las Vegas in 1955 as a businessman.318 Briare’s election set in motion a series of actions that targeted sex-based businesses in the city.

The Vegas Club Baths was swept up in a more extensive targeting of places where illicit sex and prostitution were happening.319 The Vegas Club Baths, where men were having sex with men, was not distinguished from heterosexual prostitution as both were denigrated as undesirable sex that city politicians sought to eradicate.320 Only six days after Briare's first city council meeting in June, the city of Las Vegas closed the following sex-based businesses on code violation charges: Vegas Club Baths, Mini View

Theater, Velvet Touch, and Sultan’s Palace massage parlors. Coming so soon after the election, these were actions in response to Briare's promise to clean up the city. In July,

1975, the Vegas Club Baths were still closed by the city and according to Fire Inspector

Tom Huddlestone it, “…was still a long way from being ready to reopen.”321 It was not uncommon at this time to get rid of businesses by closing them for fire and safety code violations and then imposing excessive reparative hurdles for reopening. In the case of the Vegas Club Baths closure, there were 100 code violations issued to the facility at the same time,322 an assurance that the Vegas Club Baths would never reopen due to the high level of violations handed to the owner overnight. In October 1976, although the Vegas

Club Baths had not reopened, the mayor escalated his attacks on all bathhouses

318 https://obits.reviewjournal.com/obituaries/lvrj/obituary.aspx?n=william-briare&pid=142069441 accessed July 19, 2019. 319 Ken Langbell, “Allowed to Re-Open: Rub Parlor Soothes,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Jul. 15, 1975. 320 Sex acts between men were still illegal in the state of Nevada and would fall under the forms of unlawful sex that city leaders would be trying to get rid of. 321Ibid. 322 “4 Sex Parlors Closed Down,” Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas, NV), Jun. 24, 1975. 94

(identified as gay or not) after taking a trip to Atlanta and witnessing public officials there waging a similar campaign against gay bathhouses.323 Briare stated on the record that “Anyone wishing to open a bathhouse in Las Vegas will have to prove it won’t have a bad effect on the environment.” An article in the Las Vegas Sun reported, “In a memo to City Manager Bill Adams [Mayor] Briare has asked an opinion on doing away with the miscellaneous ‘M-7’ licensing category under which a bathhouse would fall.”324 Briare went on to state that “It isn’t the sort of thing he wanted in Las Vegas.”325

At the same time Las Vegas cleaned up and moved out its sex-based businesses operating within the city, other cities in the US were becoming more open to gay bathhouses (Figure 10). Las Vegas was one of the few cities that lost a bathhouse in the period from 1971 to 1975.326 The rapid increase of US gay bathhouses in the 1971 to

1975 as seen in the maps below happened in conjunction with the Sexual Revolution and

Gay Liberation Movement (Figure 11). As the 1970s wore on there were other backlash that specifically targeted gay men, including Anita Bryant’s campaign discussed in

Chapter Three. Despite the conservative attacks against gay men in the later 1970s the number of bathhouses would increase dramatically throughout the United States.

323 Langbell, “Allowed to Re-Open”. 324 Langbell, “Allowed to Re-Open”. 325 Langbell, “Allowed to Re-Open”. 326 The only other cities that lost a bathhouse during this period were Galveston, Norfolk, and Lexington. For a list of the bathhouses in those years by city see Appendix A. 95

Figure 10 – 1971 Gay Bathhouses in Urban Centers- Based on the Damron Guide by County Location327

327 For both maps charting the placement of gay bathhouses I refer to the 1972 and 1976 editions of the Damron guides, with each guide being published the year before the guide front page title date. The Damron Guides were released yearly starting in 1965 as guides for gay tourists. Although they were not perfect, they were the most reliable of the guides produced at that time. Bob Damron. Bob Damron’s 1972 Address Book (San Francisco: Bob Damron Enterprises, 1971). Bob Damron. Bob Damron’s 1976 Address Book (San Francisco: Bob Damron Enterprises, 1975). 96

Figure 11- 1975 Gay Bathhouses in Urban Centers- Based on the Damron Guide by County Location

In Las Vegas during the rest of the 1970s, the massage parlor owners fought back against the city, but there is no indication that the owner of Vegas Club Baths did. The bathhouse disappeared from gay guide books by 1976 and no bathhouse with that same name or in the same location ever opened again in the city.

This closure meant that gay tourism and centers for gay community building had lost one of its few gay places. The city only had three gay bars to begin with at the start of the decade and was finding itself at that same point and was without places in which gay tourism and gay community building could expand. In a broader sense, the closing of 97 the bathhouse bucked national trends of expanding gay bathhouses in the US in the second part of the 1970s.328

Conclusion

The closing of the Vegas Club Baths was an attack on gay sex-based businesses that fell under the umbrella of immorality. As the 1970s began, Las Vegas was following the trend of US cities concerning opening bathhouses, but by the middle of the decade, the city had gone against national trends, closing its only bathhouse at a time when other

US cities were increasing the number of bathhouses. In the aftermath of the Vegas Club

Baths closing, there were no bathhouses in the city again until 1979, when the Manhattan

Baths opened according to the national gay travel magazine Ciao.329 This new bathhouse opening started a wave of other bathhouses opening in the city, with three more openings from 1980 through 1981 according to Dennis McBride.330

Elsewhere in the US during the 1970s, cities saw an unprecedented expansion of gay bathhouses, which was an outgrowth of the Sexual Revolution and the Gay

Liberation Movement.331 The maps I show from 1971, and 1975 show the beginnings of the growth, which continued in most states other than Nevada. This growth continued not only nationally, but US-based bathhouse chains opened facilities in Canada as well at the end of the decade.332 In addition to this, the Club Bath chain (a different national Ohio-

328 A review of Bob Damron’s Address Book from 1972 and 1976 shows this growth of gay spaces across the board. 329 David Parker, “The Wonderful, Wacky World of Gay Las Vegas,” Ciao Magazine, June-July 1979, 16. 330. McBride, Ibid, 38. 331 Emilio and Freedman, 301-325. 332 “Club Baths advertisement,” Alternate, August-September 1979. 98 based bathhouse chain) became so prominent that it started holding an international “Mr.

Club Baths” contest in 1974 as well as issuing an annual calendar starting in 1977.333

This national growth trend among bathhouses was eventually halted by the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, so by the mid-1980s the new bathhouses in Las Vegas were closed as being sites of AIDS contamination.334 1983 saw the first case of AIDS in Las Vegas and authorities began to move quickly from that point on to try and contain the virus.

The new politicians in Las Vegas in the mid-1970s were no longer interested in looking the other way when it came to sex-based businesses, whether straight or gay.

These politicians could only control spaces within city limits, so an uneasy truce had been established in the 1950s and 1960s when gay businesses were ignored in the unincorporated parts of Clark County, outside the city limits. The Vegas Club Baths broke that rule. Ironically, as city’s boundaries changed in the early 1980s, gay businesses located on the peripheries of Las Vegas, which had been located outside the city limits, were incorporated within the city.

As a contemporary gay bathhouse situated within the city limits, on a busy street, and only a few blocks from both the Downtown area as well as the Las Vegas Strip, the

Vegas Club Baths served to add a place for gay tourists to visit in a safe environment as well as a space to build gay community. Closing the Vegas Club Baths in the 1970s eliminated a relatively safe gathering place for gay and bisexual men. At a time when same-sex acts between men were illegal within the state of Nevada, this erosion of a gay place hurt gay community building and gay tourism.

333 “The Mr. Club Baths Contest,” Little David, February 1974. 334 McBride, 39-41 99

Chapter 5: Conclusions: Historical Sources on Gay Community

Building and Gay Tourism

The revival of the National Reno Gay Rodeo in 2006 initially inspired this research.335 People at the time talked about the rodeo as part of the distant past of gay tourism, if they had heard of it at all. As I contemplated starting this project, I was moved by magnitude of lost memories and unrecognized places; I wondered how all this impacted gay community building. As I’ve worked on gay tourism and gay community building in the intervening years, I discovered other places and events in Reno, Las

Vegas, and beyond that were historically significant to gay community building and supported gay tourism. It seems these events and places were vital while in existence, and in many cases, they were successful enough that they prompted backlash against gay people. I also began to see my personal decisions about moving as a gay man in light of broader trajectories nationwide. In researching and writing about these places and events,

I hope to stop them from being entirely lost to history.

In addition to providing succinct summaries of the research in this dissertation, this conclusion provides detailed information and insights into some important historical sources that can be useful for researchers working on gay community building and gay tourism projects. While this may seem an unusual way to conclude, describing these sources furthers my goal to keep alive past places and events associated with gay tourism. I hope that others who are inspired to pursue this type of research will find the

335 High Sierra Rodeo Association IGRA 2006 Finals Program. 100 information and insights useful in their own work on gay tourism of the past.

Summary

Chapter One focuses on pre-modern gay tourism’s evolution over time into modern gay tourism in the 20th century. I discuss how this dissertation project covers the implications of gay men’s movement, the National Reno Gay Rodeo, and the closure of a gay bathhouse in Las Vegas, all of which has been informed by my previous work documenting places in which the gay community developed in Reno. I write how my work deconstructs the dominant geographical history of Reno and Las Vegas by bringing to the forefront gay community building and gay tourism.

Chapter Two focuses on the movement of gay men across the US and how this led first to the emergence of gay urban enclaves and later to their decline. I argue that since about 2000 the movement of middle-aged and older-aged gay men away from gay urban enclaves to small cities and rural areas has contributed to change and loss of gay places and culture in the enclaves. At the same time, small cities and rural areas benefit when middle-aged and older-aged gay men move there and contribute to gay community building based on what they previously experienced in gay urban enclaves.

Chapter Three analyzes the National Reno Gay Rodeo and how the rodeo became the largest gay tourist event in the US in the early 1980s, in spite of two concerted attempts to eliminate it. In examining the rodeo, I consider how both the emergence and denunciation of gay-friendly spaces associated with the rodeo relate to Nevada being part of the “forbidden fruitlands”.

Chapter Four examines the geographic expansion and differentiation of gay 101 bathhouses in the US that occurred with the Sexual Revolution and Gay Liberation. I focus on the backlash against more open sexual mores by examining a case in Las Vegas in which city regulatory actions in 1975 led to close the city’s sole gay bathhouse.

Historical Sources on Gay Tourism

A useful source when researching gay tourism and gay community building in the late 20th century are advertisements taken out in gay magazines by gay travel companies and tour operators. The prospective gay male tourist would not be one that straight travel businesses would consider as clients so travel companies that were oriented towards gay people emerged in the 1960s. The first gay travel agency I found advertisements for were for World Travel System in several 1968 issues of Magpie magazine. Magpie was the first glossy gay magazine published in the Los Angeles area starting in January 1968 with the final issue published in October 1969 (Figure 12). 102

Figure 12 - Cover of Magpie, August 1968

World Travel System opened in 1966 and seems to have done its booking for gay clients in private, likely to protect them.336 The fact that World Travel advertised in Magpie is clear that they had gay travelers as clients and targeted them via the magazine (Figure

13). At this point in time Magpie, and other gay magazines in the 1960s, would be available through subscriptions or by purchase in person adult bookstores.337

336 “Industry Notes,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Jan. 2, 1966. “Times Classified Ads,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Oct. 8, 1967. “Times Classified Ads,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), Dec. 22, 1967. 337 Gay magazines in the 1960s faced a tough subscription market at the time. If someone saw a magazine with gay content delivered to a person’s home they risked exposure. Well into the 1980s an out homosexual could lose their job, housing, and become a social pariah. This is why magazines were usually purchased in stores, or in the biggest of US cities such as New York, on newsstands. 103

Figure 13 - Ad for gay travel agency in Magpie October 11, 1968

In San Francisco Vector magazine emerged in December 1964 as the newsletter for the Society for Individual Rights, an early gay activist organization.338 By 1968 it had emerged as a glossy magazine covering the gay scene in the San Francisco Bay Area

(Figure 14). Jackson Travel of San Francisco advertised in Vector magazine (Figure 15).

Under the same constraints that World Travel was under, Jackson Travel seemed to operate similarly taking out advertisements not geared towards gay travelers in the straight press and advertisements for gay travelers in the gay press.339

338 For the story of The Society for Individual Rights see William N. Eskridge Jr., Dishonorable Passions Sodomy Laws in America 1861-2003 (New York: Viking Press, 2008). 339 “Africa 22 Days Escorted,” San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA), Apr.14 1968. “Liners for the Footloose,” San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA), Jul.27 1969. 104

Figure 14 - Cover of May/June 1968 Issue of Vector Magazine

These agencies were the beginning of modern gay tourism in the US. By the early 1970s the market changed in ways that had not been seen before, this being seen in the publication of the first magazine devoted solely to gay tourism, Ciao (Figure 16). 105

Figure 15- Vector Magazine June 1969

A physique photography company called Colt Studios emerged in New York City during the late 1960s. They quickly became popular selling softcore gay male pornography and nude male sketches through the mail out of their West Village studios.

By 1972 they decided the lucrative new gay market was tourism and started Colt Tours.

They took out an advertisement in the debut issue of Ciao magazine (Figure 16).

These advertisements for travel agencies and tour groups in gay-oriented magazines can provide all manner of insights into early tourism. By analyzing the photographs of actual events, or gay places, a researcher can get a sense of what the place 106 looked like at the time the photograph was taken. Although a photograph cannot tell the entirety of what a place looks like, it does give a scholar researching some jumping off points. Another way advertisements help is by the language they use, specifically if they use the word, gay. If they do this helps give the reader an idea of how comfortable the place it was published was with having themselves associated with gay readers. If it doesn’t use gay at all then you have to work backwards to see if it was a known gay publication at the time such as Magpie or Vector.

Figure 16 - Coltours Advertisement February,1973 Ciao

Gay-oriented newspapers can also be important sources of information on gay tourism and community building. Gay newspapers started in the 1960s, at roughly the same time that gay magazines did in the US.340 By the 1970s gay newspapers had become

340 For example, The Advocate started in Los Angles in 1967, Gay, and Gay Power started in New York City in 1969. For a comprehensive account of the US gay press see Roger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: the rise of the gay and lesbian press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995). 107 popular because most mainstream heterosexual newspapers of the time could not be relied on to give accurate, non-biased reporting on subjects relating to homosexuality, if they even reported on them at all. For example, it wasn’t until January 1971 that the New

York Times wrote a positive first-person account of a gay man’s life.341

From very early on gay newspapers carried articles and advertisements related to gay tourism and community building, recording up-to-date news for the gay community as well as covering temporary gay tourist events. Scholars Kevin Markwell and Gordon

Waitt in their analysis of Sydney Australia’s gay pride note the importance of newspapers, especially gay-oriented ones, in representing gay events.342 As records of events for historical tourism gay newspapers provide special insights and details about gay tourist events.

A prime example is The Advocate newspaper. The Advocate started publication as a small Los Angeles-based gay newspaper in September 1967. By 1974 it had been bought out and moved its headquarters to just outside San Francisco, as well as changed its format to cover politics and gay lifestyles. Featured on the cover of the September 29,

1978 issue of The Advocate were images of the National Reno Gay Rodeo (Figure 17).

341 https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/09/25/when-new-york-times-came-out-closet/ accessed June 17, 2019. 342 Kevin Markwell and Gordon Waitt, “Festivals, Space and Sexuality: Gay Pride in Australia,” Tourism Geographies 11, no. 2 (2009): 148.

108

Figure 17 - Advocate Newspaper September 29, 1978

That it was featured prominently on the cover, along with a picture of a gay cowboy participant on a horse in the center photo shows the level of importance the rodeo had reached within the gay community. The Advocate at this point was the premiere national gay newspaper, so a center picture on the front page was great publicity for the rodeo.

Analyzing the picture also gives the viewer a good idea of the grounds where the rodeo was held. Although the stands do not look crowded in this photo, it gave the viewer an idea of what to expect if they went. The inside of the paper shows a pictorial of the rodeo that had been held that August (Figure 18). This example from the rodeo shows how using a source from a gay newspaper can provide visual imagery, gives a more nuanced 109 view of the National Reno Gay Rodeo, and some insights into the perception of the gay press.

Figure 18 - Advocate Newspaper September 29, 1978 Another source for research on gay tourism in the 1971 through 1984 period are gay guide books. These guide books were of great use to me in understanding more permanent gay sites, such as the gay bathhouses, but I found these to be less helpful for temporary events, such as the National Reno Gay Rodeo. During the 1960s and 1970s gay places, such as a gay bathhouse, could provide a relatively safe central gathering space in which local gay men could meet. Bathhouses also would allow a larger network of gays, in this case tourists, a community place to visit that they would be welcomed in. 110

Warner uses gay guide books as an example of books designed to meet the needs of the “counterpublic,” people who, “are socially marked by their participation in this kind of discourse, ordinary people are presumed not to want to be mistaken for the kind of person who would participate in this kind of talk or be present in this kind of scene” in this sense, meaning a gay scene.343

The first guides began with the publication of the Lavender Baedeker in 1963 and the Guild Guide in 1964. Both publications had small initial runs. Reliability was also an issue for them, despite its importance to readers at the time.344 The guide book that emerged not long after and quickly earned a reputation as being more reliable was the

Bob Damron Address Book or simply, the Damron guides. Damron guides served as the primary form of gay tourist directories from their founding in 1965 through the 2000s. As scholar David Coon states these guides provided an exchange of information among gay peoples and “…the exchange of information took place largely underground reflecting the status of the majority of gay establishments and a large proportion of gay individuals at the time.”345 These guides not only offered gay tourists a written account of where to go, but also helped build gay communities in the sites that were listed.

Born in 1928 in Los Angeles, Robert Eugene “Bob” Damron346 moved in the early 1960s to San Francisco to open the first in a string of successful gay bars there.347 In

1965 Damron published his first gay guide called The Address Book.348 Damron guides

343 Michael Warner. Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge: Zone Books, 2002), 120. 344 Both mention they are unverified in their introductions. Guy Strait. Lavender Baedeker (San Francisco: Guy Strait 1963). The International Guild Guide (Washington D.C.: Guild Press, 1964). 345 Coon, 517. 346 “Obituaries: Bay Area Reporter, Jun. 29, 1989. 347 Ibid. 348 Bob Damron. The Address Book (San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1965). 111 took pride in presenting reliable information, stating that “Damron nevertheless personally visited some 200 cities in 37 states and Canada to obtain data presented here.

In addition, many letters and telephone calls were utilized to expand information and attain highest possible accuracy…Similar guides have been found to be as much as 50% inaccurate. But in the ADDRESS BOOK there is no effort to pad out listings or omit any bonafide establishment which should be included.”349 Quickly Damron guides developed a reputation for reliability that outlasted both older and newer competitors (Figure 19).

The business name and addresses along with a symbol with a brief description of the type of business (Figure 20). The guides do not provide any information about the size, amenities, patrons, or the feel of a place (Figure 21). Personally, I remember dutifully purchasing Damron guides every year in the later 1990s. I used the listings in the Damron guides in mapping the locations of gay bathhouses across the US in chapter 4 using

Damron guides from the 1970. In addition to locating the bathhouses, it is possible to get a sense for how the number of bathhouses across the US changes over time.

349 Damron, 1-2. 112

Figure 19 - Cover Damron Guide 1972 Edition

* 113

Figure 20 - Damron Guide Code Explanations, 1972 Edition

114

Figure 21 – Nebraska and Nevada Section in 1972 Damron Guide

To get a better understanding of these bathhouses from a descriptive standpoint, actual tourist books prove especially helpful and for this I used John Francis Hunter’s

1972 guide. The first nationwide gay travel book with descriptions was published by John

Francis Hunter in 1971. John Henry Hudson (pen name, John Francis Hunter) was born in 1929 in Rockport, Missouri. He left Rockport to move to New York City by the 1950s, spending most of his years in the entertainment industry. By 1969 he became involved in the Gay Liberation Movement in the wake of the Stonewall Riots, specifically working with the Gay Activists Alliance. In 1970 he started writing a column for the newly established magazine Gay. In 1971 he published an article describing the gay scene in 115

Las Vegas based on a recent trip there, which was one of his first articles dealing with gay tourism.350 That same year he wrote his first guidebook, which covered the New

York City area in exhaustive detail. He called it The Gay Insider.351 In 1972 he released a follow-up book that described gay enclaves in many US cities and throughout all fifty states, which had not been done before, providing details that gay tourists could not get in other guide books.352 What the Damron guides and Hudson’s book provided were the first works of mapping what gay scholar Bronski notes are, “half-hidden gay space[s]- known to homosexuals, obscure to heterosexuals.”353

When investigating gay bathhouses of the 1970s I have found scholarly work about them to be relatively limited. During the 1970s they would not have been considered mainstream academic subjects, although Martin S. Weingberg and Colin J.

Williams did some useful early work on them.354 Writing a few years later Joseph Styles also discusses gay bathhouses.355 More current scholarship also provide useful insights into gay bathhouse culture, such as that by Dennis Haubrich, Ted Myers, Lisviana

Clazavara, Karen Ryder and Wendy Medwed, who wrote about current gay men as bathhouse patrons. Their work gives insights into the men that went to gay bathhouses, what their feelings were, how it fit into their larger lives, and how it related to their identities.356

350 Hunter, “A Vagabond in Vegas”. 351 Hunter. The Gay Insider. 352 John Francis Hunter. The Gay Insider USA (New York: Stonehill Press, 1972). 353 Bronski, 198. 354 Weinberg and Williams, 124 -136. 355 Styles, 135 -152. 356 Haubrich, Myers, Calzavara, Ryder and Medwed, 19-29. 116

APPENDIX A

Bathhouses in US Metropolitan Areas 1971 15 13 11 10 8

5 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 NewYork City Chicago Los AngelesBy City San Francisco Cleveland Toledo Atlanta Baltimore Boston Buffalo Las Vegas Hammond, IN Newark New Olreans St. Louis Washington DC Sacramento San Diego Denver Reno Boulder Miami Indianapolis Louisville Baltimore Minneapolis Kansas City Camden, NJ Amherst, NY Rochester, NY Akron, OH Toledo, OH Portland, OR Philadelphia Pittsburgh Galveston Norfolk Seattle Spokane Kenosha Milwaukee

117

BATHHOUSES IN US METROPOLITAN AREAS 1975

New York City Chicago Los Angeles San Franciso Miami Washington DC Daytona Beach Jacksonville Pensacola Tampa Atlanta Savannah Indianapolis New Orleans Bangor, ME Baltimore Boston Southboro, MA Detroit Duluth Minneapolis Atlantic City Camden Newark Buffalo

Rochester, NY Syracuse Charlotte Akron Cleveland

4 4

3 3 3 3

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

118

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Maginn, Paul J. and Steinmetz, Christine. (Sub) Urban Sexscapes: Geographies and Regulation of the Sex Industry. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Mills, Amy. Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance and National Identity in Istanbul. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

Moehring, Eugene. Reno, Las Vegas, and the Strip. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014.

Moehring, Eugene, and Green, Michael. Las Vegas: A Centennial History. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005.

Myer, Doug. Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015.

Newton, Esther. Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

Orne, Jason. Boystown: Sex and Community in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Pence, Gregory E. “Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS,” in Medical Ethics Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2008.

Rechy, John. City of Night. New York: Grove Press, 1963.

Reimer, Matthew. We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2019.

123

Reuter, Donald F. Greetings from the Gayborhood: A Nostalgic Look at Gay Neighborhoods. New York: Abram’s Image, 2008.

Rosenfeld, Michael J. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Schumacher, Geoff. Sun, Sin & Suburbia: The Story of Modern of Las Vegas. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2015.

Seidman, Steven, Fisher, Nancy, Meeks, Chet editors. Introducing the New Sexuality Studies. New York: Routledge 2011.

Shilits, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the Epidemic. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

Sibley, David, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. New York: Routledge Press, 1995.

Simon, Bryant. Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Spartacus International Gay Guide. Amsterdam: JDS Publications, 1970.

Straight, Guy. Lavender Baedeker. San Francisco: Guy Straight, 1963.

Stein, Marc. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945- 1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Streitmatter, Roger. Unspeakable: the rise of the gay and lesbian press in America. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Stryker, Susan and Van Buskirk, Jim. Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996.

Symons, Caroline. The Gay Games: A History. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Sweet, Rosemary. Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy c. 1680-1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Thompson, Mark. Advocate Days & Other Stories. Bar Harbor, ME: Queer Mojo, 2009.

United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The Report on the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. New York: Bantam Books, 1970.

124

Wallace, David. A City Comes Out: The Gay and Lesbian History of Palm Springs. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2008.

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Cambridge: Zone Books, 2002.

Winkle, Curt. “Gay Commercial Districts in Chicago and the Role of Planning.” in Planning and LGBTQ Communities: The Need for Inclusive Space, edited, Petra L. Doan, 21-39. New York: Routledge 2015.

Wollman, Elizabeth L. Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Zelinsky, Wilbur. The Cultural Geography of the United States. New York: Pearson, 1973.

Manuscript and Photographic Material

Articles

Auer, Jeffery. “Queerist Little City in the World: Gay Reno in the Sixties.” Journal of Homosexuality 60, no. 1 (2013): 16-30. ______. “Bette at the Baths.” Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide 15, no. 3 (2008): 26-29. Black, Dan and Gates, Gary, and Sanders, Seth and Taylor, Lowell. “Why Do Gay Men Live in San Francisco?” Journal of Urban Economics 51, no 1 (2002): 54-76.

Boyd, Nan Alamilla. “San Francisco’s Castro district: from gay liberation to tourist destination.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 9, no 11: (2011): 237-248. Bernhard, Bo Jo, Green, Michael S. and Lucas Anthony F. “From Maverick to Mafia to MBA: Gaming Industry Leadership in Las Vegas from 1931-2007.” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 49, no. 2 (2008) 177-190.

Bérubé, Allan. “The History of Gay Bathhouses.” Journal of Homosexuality 44, no. 3: (2003): 33-53.

Casey, Edward S. “Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, no. 4 (2001): 683-693. Coon, David R. “Sun, Sand, and Citizenship: The Marketing of Gay Tourism.” Journal of Homosexuality 59 no. 4: (2012): 511-534. 125

D’Lane R. Compton and Amanda K. Baumle. “Beyond the Castro: The Role of Demographics in the Selection of Gay and Lesbian Enclaves.” Journal of Homosexuality, 59, no 10 (2012): 1327-1355.

Doan, Petra and Higgins, Harrison. “The Demise of Queer Space? Resurgent Gentrification and the Assimilation of LGBT Neighborhoods.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 31, no. 1 (2011): 6-25.

Edgar, Eir-Anne. “Suburban Subversions: Swingers and the Sexual Revolution,. Sexuality and Culture 21, no. 2 (2017): 404-422.

Forest, Benjamin. “West Hollywood as Symbol: The Significance of Place in the Construction of a Gay Identity.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, no. 2 (1995): 33 -157.

Funston, Richard. “Pornography and Politics: The Court, The Constitution, and The Commission.” The Western Political Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1971): 635-652.

Gragg, Larry. “Never Accorded the Recognition He Deserved: Al Freeman, Sands Hotel Publicist, 1952-1972.” Nevada Historical Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2008): 44 -51.

Hagle, Timothy M. “But Do They Have to See It To Know It?: The Supreme Court’s Obscenity and Pornography Decisions,” Western Political Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 1039-1054.

Haubrich, Dennis J., Myers, Ted, Calzavara, Liviana, Ryder, Karen, and Medwed, Wendy. “Gay and bisexual men’s experiences of bathhouse culture and sex: ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 6 no. 1 (2004): 19-29.

Howell, Williams, H. “From Family Values to Religious Freedom: Conservative Discourse and the Politics of Gay Rights.” New Political Science 40, no. 2 (2018): 246- 263.

Ivy, Russell L. “Geographical variation in alternative tourism and recreation establishments.” Tourism Geographies 3, no. 3 (2001): 338-355.

Kanai, Juan Miguel. “Remaking South Beach: metropolitan gay trajectories under homonormative entrepreneurialism.” Urban Geography 36, no 3 (2015): 385-402.

Larsen, Knud S, Reed. Michael and Hoffman, Susan. “Attitudes of heterosexuals toward homosexuality: A Likert‐type scale and construct validity.” The Journal of Sex Research, 16, no.3 (1980): 245-257.

Lauria, Mickey and Knopp, Lawrence. “Towards an Analysis of the Role of Gay Community in the Urban Renaissance.” Urban Geography 6, no 2 (1985): 152-169. 126

Lewis, Nathaniel M. “Linked life courses in fieldwork: researcher, participant and field.” Area 49, no. 4 (2017), 394-401.

Licoppe, Christian, Riviere, Carole Anne and Morel, Julien. “Grindr casual hook-ups as interactional achievements.” New Media & Society, 18(11): 2540–2558.

Loftus, Jeni. “America’s Liberalization in Attitudes Towards Homosexuality, 1973 – 1988.” American Sociological Review, 66 no. 5 (2001): 762-782.

Markwell, Kevin and Waitt, Gordon. “Festivals, Space and Sexuality: Gay Pride in Australia.” Tourism Geographies 11, no. 2 (2009): 143-168.

Rosen, Steven A. . “Police Harassment of Homosexual Women and Men in New York City 1960-1980,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 12, no. 2 (1980) 159-168.

Straub, Whitney. Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Stone, Amy L. “The Geography of Research on LGBTQ Life: Why sociologists should study the South, rural queers, and ordinary cities.” Sociology Compass 12, no 11 (2018): 1-15.

Styles, Joseph. “Researching Gay Baths.” Outsider/Insider 8 no. 2 (1979): 135-152.

Tilcsik, András. "Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States." American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 2 (2011): 586-626.

Weingberg, Martin S. and Williams, Colin J. “Gay Baths and the Social Organization of Impersonal Sex.” Social Problems 235, no. 2 (1975): 124-136. Wienke, Chris. “Does Place of Residence Matter? Urban-Rural Differences and the Well- Being of Gay Men and Lesbians.” Journal of Homosexuality 60, no 9 (2013): 1256-1279.

Weston, Kath. “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imagery and the Great Gay Migration. Urban-Rural Differences and the Well-Being of Gay Men and Lesbians.” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 2, no 3 (1995): 253-277.

Williams, H. Howell. “From Family Values to Religious Freedom: Conservative Discourse and the Politics of Gay Rights.” New Political Science 40, no. 2: (2018): 246- 263.

Newspapers and Magazines 127

Magazines

Alternate

California Scene

Ciao

David

Esquire

HIM

Honcho

Little David

Magpie

Newsweek

New York

Reno

Reno Out

Skin

Time

Vector

Newspapers

The Advocate

Bay Area Reporter

Gay

Gay Power 128

Gay Scene

Las Vegas Review-Journal

Las Vegas Sun

Los Angeles Times

Miami News

Nevada Gay Times

Nevada State Journal

New York Times

Petaluma Argus-Courier

Press Telegram

Reno Evening Gazette

Reno Gazette-Journal

Reno News and Review

San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Examiner

Santa Cruz Sentinel

Sierra Voice

Tampa Tribune

Newsletters

Mattachine New York Newsletter, June 1969.

Event Programs

Comstock Gay Rodeo Association. National Reno Gay Rodeo Programs 1979-1984. 129

International Gay Rodeo Association. IGRA Finals Program 2006.

Laws

Laws of Nevada Territory 1861, page 56, Ch. XXVIII, enacted Nov. 26, 1861.

Revised Laws of Nevada Containing State Statutes of a General Nature from 1861

Revised to 1912, and Pertinent Acts of Congress with Annotations from Volumes 1 to 34,

Nevada Reports, and From Federal and State Decisions, Vol. 2, (Carson City:

Superintendent of State Printing, 1912), page 1812, §6293, enacted Mar. 17, 1911.

Websites

“5 Tidbits of Reno Rodeo History” https://www.rgj.com/story/life/2014/06/18/tidbits- reno-rodeo-history/10695919/ accessed July 24, 2018. http://aipca.org/history.html, accessed July 15, 2019. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=1951 accessed July 15, 2019. http://censusviewer.com/city/CA/Guerneville accessed June 29, 2019. http://censusviewer.com/city/MA/Provincetown accessed June 29, 2019. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk accessed July 17, 2019.

“Gay Rodeo History” http://gayrodeohistory.org/GayRodeoHistory.htm. accessed August 24, 2018. https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gayborhood-rural-life/#gs.m9avsm accessed July 1, 2019. http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/usa/usa.htm accessed 3 March 2019.

http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/new_york_city_S.pdf accessed May 25, 2019.

“History of Gaming in Nevada” http://www.nevadaresorts.org/about/history/ accessed February 21, 2019. 130 https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids accessed July 15, 2019. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/las-vegas-gay-travel-campaign-photos_n_2520260 accessed April 21, 2019.

“IGRA Hall of Fame: Phil Ragsdale” http://gayrodeohistory.org/HallOfFame/RagsdalePhil.htm accessed August 24, 2018. http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/usa/usa.htm accessed March 3, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/13/end-of-gaytrification-cities-lgbt- communities-gentrification-gay-villages accessed July 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/23/gay-bathhouses-us-face-uncertain- future accessed July 22, 2019. https://kcts9.org/programs/in-close/there-goes-gayborhood-seattle-s-shifting-queer- geographies accessed July 1, 2019. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2002/oct/07/longtime-las-vegas-mayor-oran-gragson-dies- at-91/ accessed July 18, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories/lgbtqthemestudy.htm accessed July 23, 2019. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/09/25/when-new-york-times-came-out-closet/ accessed June 17, 2019. http://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/mel-cheren-residence-gay-mens-health-crisis-gmhc- office/ accessed July 4, 2019. https://obits.reviewjournal.com/obituaries/lvrj/obituary.aspx?n=william- briare&pid=142069441 accessed July 19, 2019. http://www.pineshistory.org/parties/parties-pines/ accessed July 22, 2019.

Radio

Patrice Bingham, Phil Ragsdale, and others, "Community Focus," KOLO News Radio, Reno, NV: KOLO, Sept 1976.