Ghent Gayland: a Case Study of the Gay and Lesbian Community and Media of Norfolk, Virginia
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2011 Ghent Gayland: A Case Study of the Gay and Lesbian Community and Media of Norfolk, Virginia Michael Anthony Lusby College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Lusby, Michael Anthony, "Ghent Gayland: A Case Study of the Gay and Lesbian Community and Media of Norfolk, Virginia" (2011). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626666. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-a8dd-tm31 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. 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Ghent Gayland: A Case Study of the Gay and Lesbian Community and Media of Norfolk, Virginia Michael Anthony Lusby Oceanside, California Bachelor of Arts, College of William and Mary, 2009 Associate of Arts, Palomar Community College, 2005 A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History The College of William and Mary January 2011 APPROVAL PAGE This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Michael AnthonyTusI Approved by the Committee, December, 2010 y ^ Committee QTiair Associate Professor, Dr. Leisa Meyer{ History and American Studies The College of William and Mary Associate Professor,'Dr. Cindy Hahamovitch, History The College of William and Mary Associate Professor, Dr. Thomas Linneman, Sociology The College of William and Mary COMPLIANCE PAGE Research approved by Protection of Human Subjects Committee Protocol number(s): 2010-01-26-6399 Date(s) of approval: 02.08.2010 ABSTRACT PAGE This thesis offers a corrective to the history of Norfolk, Virginia by documenting the city’s gay and lesbian history between the 1970s and 1990s which is absent from current historiography. It illustrates the various ways in which Norfolk’s gays and lesbians engaged in local politics in an effort to increase their visibility in the city, despite a conservative city government. This thesis also shows how a local newspaper,Our Own, was at the forefront of this political activity. Articles and images in Our Own revealed a great deal of racial and gender exclusion within the gay and lesbian community of Norfolk as well as the conflicts that shaped the political arguments regarding visibility. In the process of establishing their visibility, readers and editorsOur used Own to argue for an ideal image of Norfolk’s gays and lesbians which exposed divisions within the community. Contents: Acknowledgements ii Introduction 1 Section 1- Gay Norfolk: Life in the City 9 Section 2 - Gay and Lesbian Times: Content, Politics and Visibility ........22 Section 3 - Human Geography: Each in their Own 38 Conclusion 53 Appendix 56 Bibliography 62 i Acknowledgements: I gratefully thank Leisa Meyer, Cindy Hahamovitch, William Jahnel, Thomas Linneman, Patrick Bradley and Jerry Logan for their comments and suggestions on multiple drafts. I would also like to thank John C. Cassada for the use of his mapping software. Finally, I would like to thank the staff at the Old Dominion University Archives for their assistance and putting up with my frequent visits. Introduction: In an episode of the Simpsons, Homer confronts the fact that his new friend is a gay man. His response is blustering and homophobic. When Marge tries to reason with Homer and tells him he is overreacting, he claims he had been deceived because he was not aware of his friend's orientation until Marge told him just moments before his rant. Finally he exclaimed “Marge, I like my beers cold, my T.V. loud and my homosexuals fla m in g ”1 Not only does this scene provide a glimpse at Homer's oafishness, it broaches the complications involved in the creation of a “gay” or “lesbian” identity, the visual aspects of presenting the self and the idea that ambiguity is unnerving. Debates on these issues in gay and lesbian communities have existed for a long time and they remain unresolved today. Competing strands of thought struggle to define what an appropriate gay or lesbian identity is. Who represents a more positive image of gay identity?: the impeccably dressed Will Truman from Will & Grace or Lafayette, the confrontational gay cook from True Blood? One emphasizes his similarity to the heterosexual population that surrounds him while the other confronts the heterosexual population that surrounds him with his difference. Although these are starkly contrasting images, they are representative components of the historic discourse on gay and lesbian identity. Discussion of these issues was prevalent even in Norfolk, Virginia, between the late 1970s and to the late 1990s. Ghent, a district of Norfolk adjacent to the downtown area, was home to a large population of gay men and lesbians as well as the center of 1 The Simpsons. Episode no. 168, first broadcast 17 February 1997 by Fox. Directed by Mike B. Anderson and written by Ron Hauge. 1 operations for Our Own, the newspaper that served this population. Started under the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Gay Caucus in 1976, Our Own was dedicated to gay and lesbian issues until it ceased production in 1998. What began as a paper focused on local gay issues in Norfolk and adjacent cities eventually came to encompass a large portion of southern Virginia. In the pages of this publication, contributors - staff writers as well as readers - debated various issues that surrounded gay and lesbian identity and questioned what an appropriate visual presentation of sexuality was, what a gay/lesbian identity included, who was included in their community, and what community meant in Norfolk. Like Homer, many writers felt uneasy about an ambiguous identity that did not outwardly appear to be gay, whether it was how a particular individual acted or how the local gay and lesbian community appeared. It was Ghent’s ambiguous identity that eventually led to my interest in these issues. After living in Ghent for almost two years I discovered that Ghent had once been a gay ghetto, home to a significant concentration of gay men and lesbian women. Although there is a substantial number of gays and lesbians still living in Ghent, the current concentration is smaller than that of the 1970s and 1980s. How, I wondered, did Ghent come to be the site of a gay ghetto and what sparked this change over time? These initial questions led me to larger questions about how people conceive ideas of community and identity and act upon them. Ambiguity has been a central component of “queer theory,” which explores ideas of sexuality and gender instead of accepting simple normal/deviant binaries. By using queer theory, scholars examine gay and lesbian issues as well as other non- 2 heteronormative sexualities that are viewed by many as abnormal. In the words of Joshua Gamson, queer theory protests “not just the normal behavior of the social but the idea of normal behavior.” In his work Freaks Talk Back, Gamson describes the conflicts involved in presenting queer identities in day time television talk-shows and argues that organizations like GLAAD (Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) tried to control gay visibility in this medium by training potential talk-show guests. GLAAD bristled at the sight of flamboyant queens arguing with audience members. What GLAAD endeavored to do on talk-shows was to highlight an image of gay men and lesbian women that would not cause controversy but instead emphasize their similarity to heterosexuals. Gamson's work inspired my own in many ways, but my project also engages the historiography surrounding gay and lesbian issues in America. The issue of “visibility” has been a frequent topic of study in this field. George Chauncey found in his work Gay New York that, as early as the 1890s, a community of gay men had been a visible part of the population in New York City, contrary to the assumption that, before the end of World War II, gay populations were invisible or hidden from plain sight. Although gays and lesbians were quite visible in some places in earlier periods, gays and lesbians across the country sought to increase their visibility in the public sphere after the Stonewall Riots. This issue is currently more prevalent in scholarship regarding urban areas however. In other times and places, gay and lesbian visibility was not their goal. John Howard and E. Johnson's work on gay men in the South, both of which focus on rural locations and small 2Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 222. 3 towns, suggests that the performance of “Southerness” (politeness, religiosity and coded speech) allowed men to solidify their positions with heterosexual Southern and African American society. Instead of projecting a visible difference in rural locations of the South, these gay men blended into their communities. Although Norfolk is a southern town, smaller than most major urban areas, I have found very little similarity between the experiences of gays and lesbians living in Norfolk and those of the individuals from smaller towns and rural communities in the South who Howard and Johnson discuss. Instead, the Norfolk experience seems to resonate more with the scholarship examining major urban areas. Marc Stein's work on Philadelphia, which identifies similar issues to those that I have found in Norfolk, argues that gay men and lesbian women often diverged along gender lines and that physical spaces of the city such as bars and dance clubs often focused exclusively on either males or females.