On a sweltering night in mid-Could, the Texas Home of Representatives is in session. Among the many dozens of payments on the docket, debating every thing from public info legislation to renaming a freeway, is Home Invoice 1106, which might specify that denying a toddler’s gender or sexual orientation shouldn’t be abuse or neglect within the eyes of Texas household courtroom.
As Home Invoice 1106 is into consideration, seven blocks away from the Capitol constructing in Austin, one other type of assembly is in session. Brigitte Bandit, an area activist and drag queen in a humongous blonde wig and extra-short denim costume, is attending to a standing room-only crowd at Oilcan Harry’s, a longtime downtown homosexual bar.
With a pointer in a single hand and a mic within the different, Bandit has introduced in a component not often seen in drag reveals — a PowerPoint presentation. To teach the group in a extra accessible means, Bandit is breaking down the nationwide and native LGBTQ+ information of the week in her weekly present at Oilcan Harry’s, LegiSLAYtion and Liberation.
In latest a long time, homosexual bars have been before everything a hangout or get together spot, however renewed animosity in direction of the queer group has introduced them again to their roots.
Among the many dialogue matters this week: the federal transgender navy ban, a historical past of drag and trans folks within the navy, a recap of Texas Democratic U.S. Consultant Jasmine Crockett’s viral “Trump or trans” speech, the information of a lesbian who was kicked out of a ladies’s restroom in Boston, the defunding the LGBTQ+ suicide and disaster line, sources on how you can change your title and intercourse marker in your passport, and updates on the most recent anti-LGBTQ+ payments within the Texas legislature — together with HB 1106.
As Bandit says grimly at first of the present, it’s lots.
Whereas Oilcan Harry’s could be slightly extra direct in its method, it’s removed from the one bar responding to the present political second. At a time when assaults towards the LGBTQ+ group have skyrocketed — from the Trump administration, from native governments, from conservative media, and extra — many homosexual bars within the South, particularly, are making an effort to teach their native communities and convey folks collectively proper now. In latest a long time, homosexual bars have been before everything a hangout or get together spot, however renewed animosity in direction of the queer group has introduced them again to their roots, when LGBTQ+ folks turned to one another as a result of the remainder of the world didn’t perceive them.
“I believe persons are turning into extra educated on their lawmakers and in regards to the laws,” says Mark Cummings, the proprietor of Al’s on seventh in Birmingham, Alabama. “As a result of when it impacts you, the shit will get actual.”
Cummings, a 55-year-old native Alabamian, is agency that the Pleasure flag on high of a 25-foot pole on high of his bar isn’t going wherever. The Birmingham queer group has grown tremendously over the past 20 years — Cummings says he remembers his first Pleasure parade in Birmingham in 2000, which lasted about 12 minutes. Final yr, it was two and a half hours lengthy.
On the similar time, Alabama, like Texas, is present process its personal barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, together with its personal model of “Don’t Say Homosexual,” banning drag in some public areas and banning the Pleasure flag from public faculties. (These had been all handed on the similar day earlier this yr.)
“Our Legislative calendar could be very small, so we breathe each week when one thing didn’t occur,” Cummings says.
Whereas Cummings hasn’t had legislative-themed drag reveals, he’s resisted in his personal methods. He pulled all Molson Coors merchandise from his bar final summer season — together with Miller Lite, Coors Lite, and Blue Moon — after studying that Joseph Coors was a notable main investor in alt-right assume tank the Heritage Basis. He additionally pulled Brown-Forman merchandise, which embrace Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve, as a result of the corporate ended its DEI initiatives.
“That was my first check: Are folks going to see why I’m doing that? And for essentially the most half, there’s been little or no pushback,” he says.
Jenna Hill-Higgs, the proprietor of Liberty Lounge, a homosexual bar in Fort Value, Texas, feels fiercely protecting of the native queer group. Hill-Higgs is 50 years previous and nonetheless remembers when native police used to offer the media with the license plate numbers of vehicles parked at homosexual bars within the Nineteen Seventies. The atmosphere right this moment reminds her of when she was an adolescent, she says, volunteering for folks contaminated with HIV/AIDS at a time when the Reagan administration overtly joked in regards to the ongoing AIDS disaster.
Whereas the bar and the group has been protected for the reason that election, a latest incident left her deeply shaken.
In late April, a person walked into Liberty Lounge and stood silently on the entrance door. He was carrying a full face masking and was dressed, unseasonably, from head to toe. Hill-Higgs says she obtained between him and her clients and requested for an ID. He mentioned one thing unintelligible, however left with out incident after Hill-Higgs shooed him out the door. The person might need been unhoused or confused — Hill-Higgs says unhoused folks wander into the bar typically — however she isn’t sure what his intentions had been.
“It’s been a very long time since I felt this concern,” Hill-Higgs says. “The folks that don’t need us to exist — it seems like they may give in to a necessity.”
In contrast to different main cities in Texas — together with neighboring Dallas — Fort Value tends to lean conservative. Barely greater than half of Tarrant County voted for President Donald Trump within the 2024 election, in comparison with 38 p.c in Dallas County. Liberty Lounge, a bar so small it has no room for drag reveals or dwell leisure, is throughout the road from the previous Rainbow Lounge, a now-defunct homosexual bar that was the topic of a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Fee and Fort Value Police Division raid on June 28, 2009, the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
Briefly, Fort Value isn’t often known as a homosexual haven. However Hills-Higgs has put loads of effort into making the bar a gathering place for all LGBTQ+ folks, even for people who don’t drink. She shares the bar with THC drinks and mocktails and doesn’t cost for soda. She additionally hosts a run membership, ebook membership, and artwork market, amongst different low-key occasions.
“I’m attempting to pressure folks to fulfill one another, as a result of now greater than ever, we want these relationships. We’re simply attempting to determine methods to care for one another.”
“I suppose I’m attempting to pressure folks to fulfill one another, as a result of now greater than ever, we want these relationships,” Hills-Higgs says. “We’re simply attempting to determine methods to care for one another.”
Whereas, traditionally, LGBTQ+ folks have typically been targets of discrimination by native legislation enforcement, some queer bars have leaned on legislation enforcement for help, and converse extremely of their experiences. Earlier than present FBI Director Kash Patel took cost, Cummings met with Birmingham FBI officers in a speaking session with native LGBTQ leaders. After some threats had been made towards the bar a number of years in the past, Cummings says native FBI officers had been “wonderful.”
Equally, in Houston, Julie Mabry, the proprietor of Pearl Bar, the one lesbian bar within the metropolis and one among two in Texas, says she met with former mayor Sylvester Turner and former chief of police Troy Finner throughout their tenure a number of years in the past, in a coaching session for native homosexual bar house owners on how you can take care of an energetic shooter.
“That’s the opposite facet of this enterprise,” Mabry says. “There’s magnificence inside our doorways. However our job is to be sure that the skin world doesn’t have an effect on the within. I believe that’s the problem loads of our house owners have. If a LGBTQ+ bar proprietor doesn’t have that concern, that may scare me.”
Practically half a dozen homosexual bars all through the South that I talked to explain a way of concern, uncertainty, and disappointment of their areas when Trump gained the 2024 election. However regardless of some typical seasonal lulls, nobody says that fewer persons are popping out to homosexual bars. (There’s one notable exception. Mabry says that some Hispanic and undocumented clients have stopped coming to Pearl Bar — or stopped going out in any respect — out of concern of attainable detainment or deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)
They are saying the Southern homosexual group remains to be discovering moments of queer pleasure, regardless of the relentless information cycle. Sam Star, a performer at Al’s on seventh, tied for third place on the most recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race; Al’s celebrated together with weekly watch events. In Fort Value, the native Pleasure parade misplaced about $55,000 in company sponsors, however native LGBTQ+ leaders, together with Hill-Higgs, began a grassroots marketing campaign to boost the funds, and much exceeded their goal.
Arcana Bar and Lounge, a lesbian cocktail bar in Durham, North Carolina, has a nonstop schedule of occasions main as much as Pleasure in September, together with burlesque reveals, mushroom gathering events, craft nights, a jazz trio, nights for transgender folks of colour, Dungeons & Dragons nights — and way more.
“There’s this one common right here particularly who has essentially the most great snicker,” Arcana proprietor Erin Karcher says. “I got here as much as her desk one time and was like, ‘I want we might simply bottle up this queer laughter.’ While you go searching and also you see that we’re all current right here, and we’re completely satisfied, and there’s laughter and dance and flirtation and play and costume up and themes, it’s all actually cool. I’m very happy with us.”
By the tip of that sizzling night time in Could, Invoice 1106 handed in Austin. However at Oilcan Harry’s, after Bandit’s presentation, there have been three drag dance numbers, and a member of the ACLU of Texas instructed the gang on how you can protest the continued onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ payments. The gang was animated, with many individuals chiming in with extra methods to become involved or with questions on how you can greatest make their voices heard.
“We’re on this collectively,” Bandit says. “There’s individuals who love and help you, regardless of the headlines, or who’s throughout the road.”
