And Elvira’s had a red-and-blue light inside that was used as a warning signal. The now-shuttered Lasso Bar and The Zoo were in close proximity to Neiman Marcus. One of Dallas’ earliest gay bars - and for a while the oldest and longest-running gay bar in the country - was Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (translation: Beef on the Roof), which was later renamed Villa Fontana. To show that one was looking for a sexual encounter, men would pose in a specific posture: leaning against a building with one leg raised, a foot planted against the wall, both thumbs hooked into his trousers.īars from the Mad Men era were scattered throughout downtown. Theater Row in downtown Dallas was the well-known cruising spot - a place for gay men to meet other gay men. The speakeasy-style establishments of the 1950s and ’60s were a far cry from the gayborhood we now have on Cedar Springs Road. The ramifications of being outed as gay often ranged from job loss to being ostracized or disowned by one’s family. But up until the 1970s frequenting such establishments came with the threat of regular police raids - and patrons of these bars and lounges were sometimes arrested and brought to jail, where most pled guilty for the crime of public lewdness to avoid attention.Īs with other criminal reports, newspapers including The Dallas Morning News and the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald would publish the names of those arrested as part of the publications’ crime sections. Here, they found bars and lounges that catered to a largely closeted gay community. Former soldiers, particularly those who were questioning their sexuality, traded small towns for big cities, where there was a better chance of meeting other like-minded people. It’s not far from the world portrayed in the 1972 Bob Fosse-directed film Cabaret, which was a rather accurate snapshot of Berlin’s sophisticated gay subculture that existed from 1918 to 1933.Ĭut to a post-war America. “Many European communities existed at the time in large cities - London, Paris, and Berlin, for example - where gays were able to be themselves in certain establishments without fear of persecution, even if official recognition was still lacking.” “When troops were sent to Europe to fight, American soldiers witnessed an air of sexual freedom in the larger cities than what existed in the US,” he says. The true seismic shift began during the World War II, Doyle notes. “Same-sex relationships were often framed as friendships so are sometimes hard for us to understand from our present time.” “Most records are vague, and few exist that explicitly describe so-called sex crimes, harassment, or homophobia,” says Doyle. Doyle Jr., a history professor at Southern Methodist University, who teaches a class on the backstory of the local LGBTQ community and is writing a book on the subject. Scarce details are known about the city’s gay history prior to World War II, says David D. From the Shadowsĭuring the early 1900s, Dallas’ LGBTQ community existed in the shadows.
But the history runs deeper - from pre-Stonewall-era gay bars that existed off the radar to today’s megawatt gay-pride parade. Some might know that Cedar Springs is the epicenter of the gay community, while others may recall Dallas appointing its first openly lesbian sheriff, Lupe Valdez, in 2005. Yet few know the history of its LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community and culture. Our city has been credited as one of the most gay-friendly in the country, alongside New York, San Francisco, and others on both coasts.
In Dallas, a city smack in the center of what many would call the conservative South, gay culture thrives. In the five decades following the riot that sparked the gay community to stand up for equal rights, much has shifted.