Rural Life Can Be Lonely, and Risky, for Gays

A survey of the license plates in the gravel parking lot of the Tornado Club tells the tale: Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska. For gay men and women seeking company in the sparsely populated Rocky Mountain West, this frisky dance club squeezed into a triple-wide trailer is pretty much it.

It is where University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard often came, making the drive 90 miles south from Laramie in a rented limousine. His road trips, two or three times a month in his case, are a ritual common to gays and lesbians in rural America. If they live in a small town and hope to find a gathering place where they can be themselves without fear, it generally means driving as much as four hours to a large city and the safe haven of a gay bar.

Social interaction is but one attraction of the bars and cafes. Increasingly, safety is another. With the killings of Shepard in Laramie last October and Billy Jack Gaither in Sylacauga, Ala., on Feb. 19--gay men who authorities said were targeted because of their sexuality--gay bashing is in the national consciousness as never before.

“Safety is in your head,” said Robert Foley, an upbeat 21-year-old student at Colorado State, one recent chilly evening at the Tornado Club. “You learn. You don’t go by yourself. You are careful in the parking lot. As far as in Fort Collins, I’m straight when I have to be, gay when I can be.”

Years ago, life for openly gay people in rural America was practically insupportable. In recent years, it has improved in a number of ways: There are more social outlets in coffeehouses, bookstores and online; more kindred refugees from metropolitan areas; less ferocious hostility. Far from being ostracized, some gay men and lesbians are so plugged-in that, as is the case in a mountain town in rural Georgia, townspeople recently approached an openly gay businessman to enlist him to run for mayor.

The gay rights movement, centered in big cities, often failed to address the needs of those in small towns. Some activists, seeking to broaden this focus, plan to launch an Equality Begins at Home campaign next Sunday in hopes of strengthening anti-discrimination efforts at the local level and in all 50 states.

Hinterland Can Be Scary

Still, even with the social changes of recent years, being out day to day in the hinterland can be scary and, more often, lonely.

“Isolation is a big thing, but that’s true for everyone in rural America,” said Sue Anderson, executive director of Equality Colorado, which organizes grass-roots projects for the gay and lesbian community. The group has a program to place relevant books into rural areas where local libraries either don’t stock such material or people are too intimidated to ask for them.

Debra Dunkle, who lives in Cleveland, is doing doctoral research about lesbians and found it difficult to reach rural lesbians. Then she found the Web site ruralgay.com.

“Gay farmers are talking about crops, gay cowboys are talking about rodeos, truckers are chatting,” she said. “I spoke with a lesbian who was raised by a lesbian in a small town. Her mother died of alcoholism and she felt like the isolation contributed to her death. This was a woman who was so isolated that she was elated to receive a four-sentence e-mail.”

William Turner, a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and the co-chairman of the Lesbian and Gay Coalition for Justice in Tennessee, said rural gays frequently struggle to reconcile the tenets of their conservative upbringing with the truth of their sexuality. Some seek to resolve the conflict by marrying.

“They typically end up living dual lives,” he said. “These are people, who in an important sense, value a certain kind of conformity.”

Gays in small towns often don’t see the option to “be themselves.” For teenagers struggling with social acceptance and minorities who may already feel marginalized, the problem is especially acute.

Yet these days, concerns about basic safety are overtaking fundamental issues of fitting in, making friends and getting and keeping a job. Even as crime continues to decline nationally, hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose 8% in 1997, according to FBI statistics. Even so, gay bashing is believed to be an underreported crime.

Dunkle grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, where she was once crowned Farm Show Princess. She was careful not to tell anyone about her personal life. She now shares a 40-acre retreat in western Pennsylvania with a group of lesbians and generally feels safe in the country. But, she added, her neighbors watched recently as her farmhouse burned to the ground. No one called the fire department.

Gay Men Learn to ‘Butch Up’

The West, despite its “live and let live” ethos, can be a daunting place for gays. A mid-size university town, Fort Collins is known to some in the gay community as Fort Closet. For many, remaining secretive is a requirement, even for holding a job. Only in safe places can they be themselves.

“It’s a talent that gay men must have in rural America,” Foley said. “We say, ‘butch up.’ ” When he and his friends are in unfamiliar territory, they dress, act and generally behave differently.

A chameleon-like existence becomes second nature. David, who grew up in rural Minnesota, proudly remembered his high school experience of dating the most popular girls. Unbidden, he reached into his back pocket and extracted a prom picture. “I dated Miss Minnesota for four years,” he said, gazing at the faded photo. “I wore a thousand masks.”

David laughed when asked about driving for hours to get to a bar. “I lived in Duluth, so it was nothing to drive four hours to Minneapolis. You get a group together, collect gas money, designate a driver and go. Or you can spend the night in a motel in town. It’s the way it is out here.”

He and his partner, who is in the military, live on base, where, he said, turning serious, “we watch our P’s and Q’s. If I don’t ‘cowboy up,’ I know I could jeopardize his career.”

Bars are often focal points for gay lives simply because there are no other social options. “When you come to a club like this, it’s your only chance to be yourself. You don’t have to hold back,” said Brandon, a 20-year old from Longmont, Colo. He looked fondly around the smoky club. “I have a friend who comes here from Nebraska--he’s out on the dance floor now. This place is so important to him. There is nothing where he lives.”

James Farris, who works the door at the Tornado Club, remembers growing up in rural Iowa. “I had to drive 60-70 miles to get to a gay bar. To go to a club, you’re talking 4-5 hours to Kansas City. Here, the Laramie kids will drive here in 2 feet of snow, and if I-25 is closed, they take the back route.”

Shepard was one of the most enthusiastic of the Laramie crew. He organized car pools and rented limos to get to the club, where he is remembered as always smiling, always laughing.

Farris said he sees a change in customers, who appear to blossom as they come up the wooden ramp and through the door. “You get cooped up and tired of hiding,” he said, pulling on a cigarette. “You have to hold back. You have to shake the gayness out of you. Here, everyone is welcome to be what they are. Men, women, gay and straight.”

The rambling club is host to a rainbow of people. Most are college age, some younger. On any night there is a contingent of straight couples, drawn to the DJ’s eclectic mix. Casual dress is the norm, and there is a pool table, if it can be seen through the smoke.

Although this is the only gay bar in the region, there are scattered part-time gay bars, like the one in Grand Junction, Colo. which is a cowboy bar by day and gay bar after 9 p.m. Other bars accommodate a gay and lesbian clientele by setting aside a particular night and using code words such as “disco night.”

Still, the bars are seldom welcome in remote towns.

“I heard they tried to open a gay bar in Cheyenne, but the rednecks closed it down,” Farris said. “It ended up being a straight bar where gay kids hang out.”

Small Towns Can Be Preferable

On the other side of the country, at the Tool Box, the gay bar in Birmingham, Ala., that was frequented by Billy Jack Gaither, general manager Ray Rice said business is booming.

“We get people from everywhere here because in the smaller towns they don’t have a place to gather. Of course, with the attitudes of people in a small town, you would be foolish to open one.”

But for many gays, small-town life is a preferred option, not a bleak outpost.

Jeannette Johnson Licon, program coordinator for the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life at Duke University in North Carolina, recalled the reactions of her friends in her small Texas hometown when she came out at age 18.

“People asked me when I was moving to San Francisco, and I told them I don’t want to move to San Francisco,” she said. “I’m a small-town girl at heart. I want to continue to enjoy small-town living and Southern hospitality and all of the things about rural life that have such meaning to me.”

Ellijay, Ga., is a small town in the mountains 65 miles north of Atlanta that is the sort of charming destination which draws city folk for a quiet weekend. It is where David Corley, 37, and James Crocker, 33, of Atlanta chose to open their bed and breakfast, the Elderberry Inn, and its companion restaurant, the Good News Cafe.

The men have been living in Ellijay for five years. They say most people know they are gay and there have been few problems. Three members of the Ku Klux Klan recently marched on the picturesque town square against migrant workers, paying no mind to the nearby gay businesses.

“We go about our life in our own manner, and we don’t try to force it on anyone else or bring it into their faces,” Corley said. His business co-sponsored a float in Atlanta’s Gay and Lesbian parade last summer that sought to prove there was gay life outside the Atlanta bar scene. “Come roll in the hay in Ellijay!” was the theme.

“There are people in this town who probably don’t want us here, but they are not the type to be forceful and vindictive about it,” Corley said.

Yet, the men told the story of a local high school student who worked at their restaurant. She arrived at work one evening and told them that a teacher at her Christian school had told her not to work for gay men. The teacher had also admonished the 15-year-old for wearing Calvin Klein perfume because “she was supporting gays.”

The next evening, the girl’s father came to the restaurant, hugged the men and apologized. He said he was taking his daughter out of the school.

Corley is so ensconced in local life that he was asked to run for mayor. He declined but is mulling a run for city council.

Across the square is Otto’s Stained Glass and Gallery, owned by another openly gay man, Morris Griffin. Griffin, dressed in jeans and a plaid cowboy shirt with a bolo tie, described his gallery as the gay center of the small town. Mostly, he says, townspeople leave him alone, but there have been some disturbing experiences.

“I was standing out on the sidewalk talking to a customer and this kid kept riding by in a car screaming [an epithet],” he said. “He was about 14 or 15 years old. I called the police and they caught him. His mother was driving the car. I didn’t press any charges.”

He and his partner visited a local church when they first moved to town and were told after their first visit that they were not welcome to come back. Not long after that he arrived at the gallery to find a bullet hole in the window.

But Griffin, 46, who drives to Atlanta every few weeks to visit family and sample the lively gay scene, is adamant about staying put.

“I wouldn’t want to live in San Francisco. Too gay. I love children. I love the variety you get in a small community like this.”

Cart reported from Colorado. Stanley reported from Georgia.