{"id":69012,"date":"2016-12-29T11:33:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T16:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69012"},"modified":"2020-08-10T19:11:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T00:11:18","slug":"orlando-and-the-symbolic-importance-of-gay-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/12\/29\/orlando-and-the-symbolic-importance-of-gay-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"#Orlando and the Symbolic Importance of Gay Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"1\"Yesterday, I woke up to the news \u201cthat someone had shot up a gay club in Orlando and there were many injured and killed.\u201d I then went about my morning getting ready to go to a gay family picnic celebration. There would be snowballs, a jumping castle, and lots of games and fun stations set-up for kids to play.\u00a0 The news hadn\u2019t sunk in yet, and I didn\u2019t look for details. There was some talk at the event and a couple\u00a0folks said they were glad this celebration was taking place at a (and this is my description) \u201cgated\u201d park and that reservations were required\u00a0to attend. I like to think the reservations were so those organizing the event would know how many to plan for\u2026 but now I wonder. Here NOLA we still have closed family Facebook groups and operate by rules some of y\u2019all might think are from the days in which social tolerance was much lower.<\/p>\n

My initial thoughts regarding the shooting at Pulse in Orlando were that this was a hate crime\u00a0planned for Pride. The social psychologist in me guessed some perceived threat had likely led to this event and, indeed, the detail about Mateen’s fury over seeing two men kissing was reported early. It was only after I had returned home that I started to learn the details and that the death toll was rising.<\/p>\n

There are so many angles and lessons to learn from this event, but I felt compelled to share my opinions on the symbolic importance of the gay bar to myself and the gay community,\u00a0spurred by these two tweets from Jeramey Kraatz:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"JK1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"JK2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Growing up a sexual minority means you were most likely raised by the majority script. This means you likely weren\u2019t taught the skills or coping mechanisms to deal with your sexuality and most definitely homophobia. You live\u00a0in fear that those you love the most may not understand. Moreover, you go from one day being what you thought of as \u201ctypical\u201d and having unrecognized privileges to coming out. In the next moments, many of those privileges\u00a0are wiped away\u00a0and you\u00a0have to re-frame expectations for yourself and what you can do and what is possible…\u00a0just because of a few words you said out loud.<\/p>\n

For many non-heterosexual people, gay bars help\u00a0us find our way. \u00a0They are often\u00a0the most accessible safe spaces available. So much so that they have academically been compared to churches<\/a> for the LGBT community, complete with rituals, a sense of community, and a routine. \u00a0Religious scholar\u00a0Marie Cartier wrote a history of life at gay bars<\/a> before the Stonewall riots.\u00a0“The only place that you could be a known homosexual —\u00a0even though you could get arrested there and it was not safe,” she wrote, “was a gay bar.\u201d Even today, just knowing that they are there is powerful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I have gone years not really celebrating Pride, but on a day like this you realize why it is there and why we do it and why it is important.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Lane R. Compton, PhD<\/a> is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Orleans, specializing in social psychology, methodology, and demography. Their most recent book, with Amanda Baumle, is <\/em>Legalizing LGBT Families: How the Law Shapes Parenthood<\/a>. You can follow them on twitter at @drcompton<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I woke up to the news \u201cthat someone had shot up a gay club in Orlando and there were many injured and killed.\u201d I then went about my morning getting ready to go to a gay family picnic celebration. There would be snowballs, a jumping castle, and lots of games and fun stations set-up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/12\/3-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69012"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73104,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69012\/revisions\/73104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}