Florida school gay bar
In January 1977, an ordinance passed banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. Most were located in Miami, but there were plenty of Miami Beach spots such as Club Benni on Alton Road and Club Echo and Circus Bar on Ocean Drive, as well as the Mayflower Lounge and Basin Street. In August of that year, hundreds of gays and lesbians joined thousands of protestors at the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.”Įstablishments where queers could congregate reached an all-time high, becoming even more prevalent than they are today. Two weeks later, the law was struck down by a federal court. According to The Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures, “The first organized gay pride week was celebrated in Miami Beach in early 1972 with a march on Lincoln Road protesting a city law banning cross-dressing. Activism prevailed, and things began looking up in the 1970s. The backlash against the Johns committee was swift, with Dade County officials threatening legal action and the Florida Attorney General demanding that distribution of the Purple Pamphlet cease immediately.ĭespite the persecution, Miami’s LGBT community remained tenacious in their fight for equal rights. Filled with pornographic pictures, it attempted to portray queer people as degenerate disease carriers worse than child molesters. In 1964, a Florida legislative committee led by Senator Charley Johns published Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida, also known as the Purple Pamphlet, as part of a witch hunt to seek out gays and bisexuals working in schools, universities, and government jobs, who they believed were determined to “subvert the American way of life by controlling academic institutions and by corrupting the nation’s moral fiber,” according to Carryin’ on in the Lesbian and Gay South. This mistreatment continued until the end of the 1960s, escalating to targeted murders, harassment, and public shaming via stories in local newspapers. This silent film shows a police raid on a Miami gay bar in 1957. Raids would shut down queer establishments on an almost nightly basis, but they kept popping right back up again. Of course, it didn’t happen right away, and the early gay nightlife scene of the 1930s was not long-lived.
A place with its own chamber of commerce dedicated to the queer community since 1997, and where Art Smith hosted and officiated a mass gay wedding for more than two dozen couples this past February. From then on, it would be a rollercoaster of ups and downs, filled with progress, failure, celebrations, and heartbreak in Miami LGBT history, leading to our current status as a gay mecca that attracts more than 1 million LGBT visitors a year. Miami has had a gay nightlife scene as early as the 1930s.