Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging

By Gary Atkins

Book Overview

Winner of a 2004 Washington State Book Award

Winner of a 2004 Alpha Sigma Nu (ASN) Jesuit Book Award

In 1893, the Washington State legislature quietly began passing a set of laws that essentially made homosexuality, and eventually even the discussion of homosexuality, a crime. A century later Mike Lowry became the first governor of the state to address the annual lesbian and gay pride rally in Seattle. Gay Seattle traces the evolution of Seattle's gay community in those 100 turbulent years, telling through a century of stories how gays and lesbians have sought to achieve a sense of belonging in Seattle.

Gary Atkins recounts the demonization of gays by social crusaders around the turn of the century, the earliest prosecutions for sodomy, the official harassment and discrimination through most of the twentieth century, and the medical discrimination and commitment to mental hospitals that continued into the 1970s as homosexuality was diagnosed as a disease that could be "cured."

Places of refuge from this imposed social exile were created in underground theater and dance clubs: the Gold Rush-era burlesque shows, modern drag theater, and in mid-century the emergence of openly gay bars, from the Casino to Shelley's Leg. Many of these were subjected to steady exploitation by corrupt police - until bar owner MacIver Wells and two Seattle Times reporters exposed the racket.

The increasingly public presence of gays in Seattle was accompanied by the gradual coalescence of social services and self-help organizations such as the Dorian Society, gay businesses and advocacy groups including the Greater Seattle Business Association, and the stormy relationship between the Vatican, Seattle's Catholic hierarchy, and gay worshippers.

Atkins' narrative reveals the complex and often frustrating process of claiming a civic life, showing how gays and lesbians have engaged in a multilayered struggle for social acceptance against the forces of state and city politics, the police, the media, and public opinion. The emergence of mainstream political activism in the 1970s, and ultimately the election of Cal Anderson and other openly gay officials to the state legislature and city council, were momentous events, yet shadowed by the devastating rise of AIDS and its effect on the homosexual community as a whole.

These stories of exile and belonging draw on numerous original interviews as well as case studies of individuals and organizations that played important roles in the history of Seattle's gay and lesbian community. Collectively, they are a powerful testament to the endurance and fortitude of this minority community, revealing the ways a previously hidden sexual minority "comes out" as a people and establishes a public presence in the face of challenges from within and without.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295992824
• ISBN13: 9780295992822
• Release Date: October 2011
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 493 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Look at Seattle

Atkins, Gary. "Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging", University of Washington Press, 2003. A Fascinating Look at Seattle Amos Lassen I really enjoy reading about gay communities in places where I don't live because I get ideas on how to deal with where I do live. Of course. it is hard to compare Little Rock, Arkansas to anywhere else because we have no gay community. We have gays and lesbians but there is no sense of community and I suppose that has something to do with the fundamentalism of the state. Seattle, on the other hand, has quite a history and I learned a great deal from the book. Sure the history is local but it is interesting and is, in a sense. a look at gay life anywhere. We get a look at the anti-sodomy laws and how they weighed heavily on the community. We get to see something of the political organizations that have sprung up and we meet some fascinating people. Sometimes it is difficult to make history interesting but Atkins does a great job of it. I imagine the book will be painful for some people from Seattle to read but they should also be very proud of the strides their city has made.

Valuable - and a good read

I'm just finishing off Gay Seattle, by Gary Atkins, and can't recommend it too highly. The history is local, but the "general" history is good, gripping and valuable, and serves as a microcosm for gay history across the country. I'd forgotten how dreadful the '70's were, and how close we came to losing a lot of very solid gains. The religionists and the conservatives took over, and for a while there it was pretty bleak - quite like now: defeats all over, then slow progress. The politcal end of the book is good to read too, and reads like a good discussion of the various "how's" of political/social progress. Well-written, immediate, and hard to put down. Highly recommended. NRB

A walk from the mud flat

The journey that I have been led is a difficult one - from the mud flat, a detour to Steilacoom, a small climb up to Denny's knoll, and the courage ascend to the Hills.The tearing, triumphs, grindings of teeth, and the celebrations -as words capture the emotions of the past, they captivate my consciousness and draw out parallel emotions from within myself.The author has told his own story, keeping little distance between himself and his words, creating a close intimacy between story of the past and myself:As Francis Framer was straitjacketed and carried off, it was my own scream for help that I hear. When her eyelid was pulled open and her eyeball stared right into a spearing ice pick, it was my eyes that are forcibly shut.The vaudevillian movements underground come through my ingertips as I touch these words on the pages. And I gyrate my hips on Shelly's Leg.Triumph comes to my face when it was down on 13. Shadow clouds my emotion when it was down on Cal'sbill.Reading the book was a difficult journey for me, because, well, it had been a difficult journey indeed for those who had walked the path. But it is a journey well deserving of its travelers. As I look about Seattle, I find the reflections of my past: I hear my own language speaking through the many entrances that I have not entered. I see pictures of myself hung on the walls of places that I have never been. My heart echoes the steps taken by people whose names I have scarcely known. Today, I have, I own a sense a dwelling.