Orlando massacre: A violation of a safe place for the LGBT community
William Blake Weston’s phone began going off at 5 a.m. Sunday, and frantic messages from old friends rolled in. When he turned on the TV in his apartment in Kansas City, he saw a place he had called home for six years and heard of devastating violence.
From 2008 to 2014, Weston says, he worked at the Pulse nightclub in downtown Orlando, Fla., walking to it from his nearby apartment and serving a variety of roles there: bartender, performer, impromptu janitor.
As the 31-year-old listened to the news that dozens of people had been killed and others injured by a gunman, he could visualize the violence that moved through the place.
“I still don’t think it’s real,” Weston said. “I still think it’s a nightmare.”
Pulse was supposed to be a safe place, Weston said, the kind of spot where patting down patrons seemed unnecessary and the staff felt like family.
“I would consider it my home,” he said. “It was a place I could be myself.”
For many Kansas Citians who work at or frequent the city’s gay and LGBT-friendly bars and clubs, the Orlando massacre was not just a targeted attack against the LGBT community but a desecration of gay bars and clubs, places that have historically and culturally served as safe gathering spots.
For Weston, it all felt personal. He remembered the dressing room where he heard two performers had escaped through an air duct. He knew where the dance floor and the bars were. He wondered what he would have been doing and where he would have been standing had he still been working at Pulse.
And he feared he would see his former co-workers or his ex-lover on the list of those killed. As of Monday morning he knew six of the dead. His close friends, to his relief, were injured or unscathed.
On Monday, sitting at Missie B’s drag and dance bar in Westport, he wore an old work uniform, a black T-shirt with a white “P.” On the back it said: “Peace. Love. Pulse.”
In an email to The Star, Joey Saunders, a Johns Hopkins University graduate student who has written about LGBT issues for The Phoenix, a Kansas City LGBT newsletter, said, “The general feeling of sanctuary that many LGBT people find in gay bars comes from being unified by similar experiences.
“Queer people find acceptance in these places because it is a physical space where people are encouraged to not just be themselves, but to explore identities, to seek their truest pinnacle of vulnerability and truth without having to worry about their safety.”
Preserving the gay bar as a place of sanctuary and safety is an issue rooted in the modern gay-rights movement. The 1969 Stonewall riots, in which LGBT people fought police who raided a New York club where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people congregated to dance and socialize, were inspired by a fierce desire to protect such a space, Saunders points out.
It’s an atmosphere that local bar owners at Missie B’s said Monday they work hard to maintain.
“We don’t allow people to discriminate,” said Missie B’s owner Michael Burnes, who said he makes a habit of sending people who disrupt his welcoming atmosphere home with refunds. “We don’t allow people to be hateful and mean. I don’t have any preferences about clientele. Everybody is welcome.”
Older people in the LGBT community in Kansas City remember gay bars as not just a place for entertainment but a spot to find knowledge and support at a time when LGBT people had few other options.
“I grew up in gays bars,” said Robert “Buddy” Taylor, the owner of Sidekicks Saloon. “ I learned history from the older gays and lesbians. It was just a part of it. The younger gays talked to older gays.”
On Monday, Taylor and other local owners of gay bars gathered to plan a joint fundraiser to support the victims and their families in Orlando. Few said they have immediate plans to change security at their establishments. Missie B’s has parking lot security, cameras, radios and wands, and employs five security officers, Burnes said, but it will never keep handguns in the establishment because “alcohol and guns don’t mix.”
Others expressed a sense of helplessness when it comes to creating security that could prevent such an organized and grand-scale attack.
“It’s the kind of situation where you are just kind of baffled, what would you do and where would you go,” said Melinda Hudgens, a manager at Side Street Bar and Grill on East 33rd Street. “ You don’t know how to think of what to do, so you ponder it, what would happen here if that happened here.”
For many who enjoy spending time at Kansas City’s LGBT establishments, gay bars have formerly been a place to feel safe and accepted, not an environment where patrons have to worry about danger.
“Am I being too gay is a question that all of us are thinking about all the time,” said Jacob McMillian, the diversity inclusion coordinator for the Littler Mendelson law firm. “And is my gayness going to make me unsafe or put me in danger. In gay bars, I don’t have to feel that way.”
Last Saturday night, right before the shooter entered the Orlando nightclub, a group of lawyers who had gathered in Kansas City for an LGBT conference spent the night dancing at Missie B’s.
For three hours the day before, lawyers of all ages and identifications had shared their coming-out stories and talked about the challenges of openly identifying under the LGBTQ umbrella in their workplaces.
On Saturday they socialized, and at the club something “magical” happened, McMillian said. The “shy old married lesbians” danced alongside the young, gay San Francisco associates. The California lawyers allowed themselves to be impressed by the performances. The diverse group was united, filled with joy and having fun.
Gay bars tend to do that, McMillian said.
“It’s our sanctuary, where people from divergent lifestyles come together because they are gay under the cover of darkness and do and live in ways that we can’t anywhere else,” McMillian said.
A brunch the next morning, time that would have been spent recapping the weekend’s events, was somber and melancholy, a reminder that to be gay in 2016 is to still live with the constant paranoia that you are not safe, that the act of just being could put you in danger, whether you are on a sidewalk in Kansas City or a crowded dark nightclub in Orlando.
“The refrain that my friends have repeated over and over and over is ‘I will not be scared,’ ” McMillian said. “Part of being queer is learning to deal with fear and rejection. It’s a reality they live with every day. I’m not going to be scared, and I’m not going to let it change how I do anything.”
For now, Weston feels a tug to return to Orlando to help his friends and his old community. But he also has a desire to help from Kansas City. A similar attack could happen anywhere, he points out.
“Your home is broken,” he said. “But Pulse will rise again. And it will be bigger and better.”
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Reporter Katy Bergen received several emails Monday about how gay bars serve as safe places:
▪ “Dancing is an intimate and emotional outlet for anyone, but specifically the gay community. In a world that has historically rejected our existence, we have found peace in these havens, whether that spot is an established gay bar in a big city or a small tavern in the middle of nowhere that becomes the ‘gay bar’ where closeted individuals can attend.” — Eric Thomas
▪ “My position is that you have to create your own safe environment. Honestly, no one is going to save you but you. I remember fights in the Tootsies parking lot when I was in my early 20s. That’s when I learned to fight. It is nearly impossible to create a safe space unless you advocate for you, because no one else can.” — Sally Ketchell
▪ “My first trip to a gay club, when I was 21, was a terrifying experience! The fear that raced through my head and the uneasy feeling in my gut; ‘What if someone sees me going in?’ But once inside, that fear went away quickly. For the first time in years I was introduced to people as “This is my friend Josh.” not “This is my gay friend, Josh.” In this haven, known to many in the LGBTQI community in Kansas City as Missie B’s, I was a part of the group.” — Joshua Volland
This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 7:33 PM with the headline "Orlando massacre: A violation of a safe place for the LGBT community."