Richmond va gay bars

Harrison grew up in the small farming community of Emporia, Virginia and moved to Richmond as an adult. This week he led a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting, and here he shares about the significance of gay bars in Richmond. I was in college, and I had become friends with a guy who was a good friend, and a few months into the friendship he came out to me.

I knew that I was homosexual, but I did not think that you actually did anything about it. I thought you would just put it in the back of your mind and marry a woman. And there was every form of life in that bar imaginable. But we got in, and everybody in there looked totally normal. And as strange as that might seem, I was just really surprised by that.

There was a bar here in town gay Scandals that had a big dance floor. And there have been a couple bars over the years that had restaurants. The bar community was very supportive. They would have different shows and performances there and raise money for the AIDS organizations at that time when government funding was not that available.

And so the bar has played a significant role in the life of the community. There were a lot of men whose families disowned them, and so we became their family. We had volunteer organizations, we had buddy systems, where we not only bought groceries and took them to the doctor and that sort of thing, but we just went and sat and talked and became friends and we buried them, we planned memorial services for people we had not known a year before because richmond families refused to be a part of it.

When the nation was against us, we did more than survive. We showed the nation how you do it. And with this tragedy, it is not bar to stop us from having pride festivals. It is not going to stop us from doing anything.

When a Gay Bar in Richmond was an Introduction to a Community

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