Evans, the Supreme Court overturned Amendment 2.
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Over the next few years, gays would spend millions of dollars and hours forming political organizations, monitoring threats, electing sympathetic candidates, publishing books, newspapers and magazines, begging for acceptance from churches, fighting to be included on prime-time TV shows, educating whoever would listen, trying to win allies and making whatever private gestures might help them recover from the trauma of being told by voters - their neighbors - that they didn't deserve equal protection under the law. Whatever political and social gains they'd made throughout the red-ribbon Eighties were in serious danger after the passage of Amendment 2. The threat of Colorado for Family Values had helped rally hundreds of thousands of gays to Washington. "We came to the Mall and they announced us, and then the roar was 500,000 people all at once," Whitworth remembers. Gay people from across the country screamed encouragement to their counterparts living in Colorado Springs. The AIDS organizations went first then, when the crowd saw Colorado's "Ground Zero" banners, Whitworth heard a roar all the way down the street. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route. The National Park Service estimated a crowd of only 300,000, but marchers knew there were many, many more gays and gay supporters in D.C. Colorado had a place of honor, leading off the states, and Whitworth was right up front. Whitworth became Ground Zero's executive director.įive months later, in April 1993, he was parading down Pennsylvania Avenue at the National March on Washington for gay rights. Gay people across the nation - already physically, emotionally and financially exhausted by AIDS - felt as if they were under siege. He was between jobs, so he volunteered to sit in the office of a new organization called Ground Zero - so named because Colorado Springs was obviously now dead center in a cultural war (especially since Oregon voters had rejected a similar, though more extremely worded, referendum).
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In the weeks after the election, as gays and their supporters tried to figure out how to respond to the disaster, Whitworth's anger at the results turned to more rational thought - toward strategizing. But the promise of the country's first gay-friendly president - soon enough, that would be just another lie - became a footnote to the nauseating news: Colorado for Family Values, a small organization of hardcore Christians in Whitworth's own town, had succeeded in passing Amendment 2, which banned all of Colorado's local governments from passing laws to protect gay people from discrimination.
Bill Clinton slid easily into office, overwhelmingly supported by a bloc of gay voters who were more mobilized than ever before he'd courted them with a pledge to repeal the ban on gays in the military.
"Well," Whitworth finally asked, "who here voted?" Out of a dozen men, only two had gone to the polls. The men in the bar began to argue about what had gone wrong. As the results began to change, the mood went dark.
The early returns were out of Denver, and the margin wasn't big enough to overcome El Paso County, whose votes had yet to be counted. He hadn't worked on this campaign, but he'd been politically active in the past, and he knew how to read the numbers. Everyone was ready to celebrate.Įxcept for Whitworth. On the TV over the cash register, the election returns looked good.
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One guy, his name stitched on the patch of his blue mechanic's jacket, smoked and nursed a beer in the corner. A couple of men, still in suits and ties from their work day, teased the bartender boisterously. It was the usual Hide & Seek drinking crowd, and Whitworth knew everyone. Valadez has always been an advocate for the gay community, she added, saying she looks forward to sponsoring LGBTQ+ events at r bar as well as things for all crowds.Frank Whitworth went down to the local gay bar. OCTOBER: Five fall things to do in Fort Collins Dunn, a civil engineer by training, has the business experience, and Valadez has a background in the restaurant and bar industry, Valadez said. Valadez said she and her business partner Lisa Dunn took over the space Sept. “That implies kind of gender neutral, however you identify, whether you’re gay, whether you’re straight, whether you’re trans, whether you’re queer, it’s for everybody.” “The idea, the tagline is an alternative bar for the alternative crowd,” co-owner Leanna Valadez said Tuesday. Filling a void in Fort Collins nightlife, two local women say they’ll be opening a gay-friendly, alternative bar south of Old Town next month.Ĭalled r bar and lounge - a play on “our bar” - the new spot is slated to open Nov.