Tag: Colorado gay history

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Maps, by Pat Gourley

It has now been nearly 37 years since the second national Radical Fairie Gathering here in Colorado in the late summer of 1980. That event was the brainchild of Don Kilhefner, Harry Hay, John Burnside, and Mitch Walker with logistical help from an energetic collective of gay fairies here in Denver.

There are many parts of that event that have stuck with me for these several decades but one in particular comes to mind from time to time. This recollection involves a workshop led by Harry Hay that I did not attend but that I got a first hand report on from James Broughton, the eclectic poet and film maker. I may have been too caught up in dealing with the endless stream of issues that arose before and throughout the gathering to get to this particular workshop. Pressing issues like why was only vegetarian food available and the decision to not have heated water for the showers, something of a logistical challenge but dismissed finally as too bourgeois.

Harry was always all about trying to get us to answer the question “who are we”. According to the workshop report I received from James, Harry had declared that afternoon that we were all Shamans. This seemed fitting I supposed at the time since the confab was called A Spiritual Gathering for Radical Fairies. There are many complex layers to being a Shaman but the one I relate to most is that of “healer”. I do think it is a very worthwhile endeavor on our part to explore the many traditional and contemporary roles we queers are so often disproportionally drawn to.

These often-queer related roles were explored in some detail in Christian de la Huerta’s wonderful 1999 book, Coming Out Spiritually. He delineated the following roles we are often drawn to:

· Catalytic Transformers: A taste for revolution

· Outsiders mirroring society

· Consciousness scouts: Going first and taking Risks

· Scared Clowns and eternal youth: A Gay Young Spirit

· Keepers of beauty: Reaching for the Sacred

· Caregivers: Taking for Each Other

· Mediators: The In-between people

· Shamans and Priests: Sacred functionaries

· The Divine Androgyne: An evolutionary role?

· Gatekeepers; Guardians of the Gates

So in the spirit of this week’s topic of “maps” I would like to add one more role that if I contort my logic enough could be one that underpins all of those listed above and that would be cartographer.

A cartographer of course is a mapmaker. Maps are used to find one’s way from here to there. The larger society certainly has not historically, and is only now just beginning, to provide us with any positive space to get in touch with “whom we are”. I would dare to say that of the roles identified by de la Huerta all are initially engaged in as attempts to map our way. Forms of self-expression that often blossom into roles of great benefit to ourselves and society as a whole.

How do we find our way out from under the suffocating heterosexual cocoon we are born into? I would say it is by being the very creative cartographers we have learned to be. The maps are many and varied some written down but many come in the rich forms of oral history we have developed. What is this SAGE story telling group really but a form of mapmaking and sharing?

All of our maps provide guidance in answering those initial Mattachine questions of “who are we, where did we come from and what are we for”. In whatever forms our maps really are, at their most base level, they are the means for ‘pointing the way’. They are not forms of recruitment but rather loving crumbs left along the path to queer enlightenment by those who have come before, back to our earliest human ancestors. Our job as queer cartographers of course leads to these roles that have great altruistic benefit to the whole dance that is sentient life on earth.

© March 2017

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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True Colors, by Nicholas

Take a Walk in the Grove

I want to tell a story today that involves one of our own, a member of this group. It’s about a group of people who showed their true colors in their loyalty to one friend and created a unique space for our entire community. Along the South Platte River on the edge of downtown Denver, is an area of Commons Park designated as a spot to remember those who have died of HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. It’s called The Grove and it is one of only two AIDS memorial gardens in this country—the other is in San Francisco. Our own Randy Wren was part of that group that labored for seven years to make it happen.

The Grove started with one man’s vision. Doug McNeil knew of the memorial grove in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and asked, literally as his dying wish, why can’t Denver create such a spot. Doug died of AIDS in 1993, a time when the LGBT community was focused more on the battle to undo the infamous Amendment 2 than on the AIDS epidemic. Amendment 2, passed by Colorado voters in 1992, prohibited any government or government agency in this state from enacting any provisions to ban discrimination against lesbian and gay people. (There’s an excellent exhibition on that history outside this door in The Center’s lobby.) And it was a time of still rampant AIDS phobia.

A small group of Doug’s friends vowed to carry out his dream for The Grove. They weren’t the usual gaggle of community activists and politicos. They included socialites, arts community supporters, an attorney, and an Episcopal priest. Most were not gay. They organized a non-profit group called The Grove Project, got 501c3 IRS status so they could collect funds, and began the long process of taking on the bureaucracy of the city’s Parks Department.

The Parks Department never openly rejected the idea but negotiations dragged on for years. At first, the area in front of the performing arts complex on Speer Blvd was proposed. The city objected that theatre and concert goers wouldn’t want to be reminded of the awfulness of AIDS on their nights out on the town. Another location in a park in southeast Denver was suggested but that would have left the memorial far from the Capitol Hill neighborhood that was most affected by AIDS.

At some point, the riverfront came into the discussion. At that time, the area was just beginning to be developed. There was a quiet, somewhat out of the way spot in a new park—Commons Park—that the city was planning. That fit the criteria of being visible, centrally located and quiet enough to promote the atmosphere desired.

The Grove was envisioned to be a natural area for contemplation. It was landscaped very simply with trees, natural grasses and shrubs, and some rocks. A simple inscription reads: “Dedicated to the remembrance of those who have lost their lives to AIDS and to their loving caregivers who helped them live out those lives with dignity.”

The Grove was dedicated in a simple ceremony in August 2000. Doug McNeil’s loyal and persistent friends accomplished his dream after seven years of work.

Now, The Grove sits largely ignored and sort of neglected in a recessed corner of Commons Park, near 15th Street and Little Raven Street. It is surrounded by high priced condos and apartments but it is still a quiet and attractive area.

Recently, a movement got underway to renew the spot, clean it up, refresh the landscaping and, most importantly, make the community aware that this historical and spiritual resource exists. In recalling all the individuals who battled, and continue to battle AIDS, we remember how our community grew from that experience. We remember those we’ve lost. We remember when being gay changed from just giving the most fabulous parties to a truly mature community of caregivers and advocates. We remember our past and that we have a history. A history that is the root of our present and future.

I encourage everyone to seek out The Grove and spend a few quiet moments there remembering. And maybe you can help in its renewal. You too can show your true colors.

© 2016

About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Denver, by Cecil Bethea

February 23rd. 2009

Dear Sirs,

You all should know that Mary’s Bar actually did exist here in Denver, but years ago it was urban renewed into a parking lot. About five years past the parking lot became the site of the building housing the offices of the two news papers. An actual take-over of the bar took place during World War II, but I know none of the details. The result is that my account is fiction in all details except for the name of the establishment.

Having had nothing published, I have been told to include something about my life. A biography would be slight. I’m from Alabama but have lived in Denver for over fifty years. My life was certainly not exciting and no doubt of little interest to almost any one.

Then on August 25th of last year during the Democratic Convention [2008], everything changed. While coming home after doing some research on the Battle of Lepanto at the public library, I became enmeshed in a demonstration by the anarchists that bloomed into a full-fledged conflict with the police. Because the eldest of the protestors could not have been thirty, my white hair made me stand out like the Statue of Liberty. The police in their contorted wisdom decided to take me into custody. During their manhandling of me, a photographer for the Rocky Mountain NEWS took a splendid photograph of me being wrestled by two 225 pound policemen.

After the publication of the photograph and an explanatory article in the NEWS, fame came suddenly and fleetingly. However I do understand that my name is embedded somewhere on the Internet.

Since then I have testified in seven trials of the protestors. Also the A.C.L.U. is working toward a lawsuit for me. Not the sort of suit that stirs up visions of orgies in Las Vegas with the payoff. The lawyer has warned me not to splurge at MacDonald’s.

The best!

[Editor’s note. This letter was written as a cover letter when Mr. Bethea was asked for local gay history. As always, Cecil’s humor makes it memorable. For more of his stories, go to Pages in the right-hand column of this blog and click. Then click on Cecil Bethea to find more of his stories.]
© Denver 2009

About the Author

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.