In the Beginning …

In January 1973, a tour bus with dark windows pulls up beside the Capitol, Denver’s most popular evening cruising site. The bus has no destination, simply a marquee that says “Johnny Cash Special.” The driver climbs out and stands outside, smoking and casting furtive looks to the other men in the park, some of whom are also smoking, having just left the bars. One of them gradually shuffles up to the bus.

“Check this out,” the driver tells him, “I have tickets in here to a Johnny Cash show, and this bus will take you there. You interested?”

The man climbs in, and the conversation takes a turn:

“Hey, so I’m wondering, what’s going down tonight?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Where’s the action? I’m looking for some. Are you interested in anything?”

“Well, yeah, maybe.”

Suddenly, two policemen, handcuffs and guns in tow, charge from the back of the bus. They arrest the man, drag him to the back, and command him to lie quietly until the end of the night, so they can repeat the process.

In the first three months of 1973, 380 gay men were arrested in the Johnny Cash bus operation, led by the Denver Police Department vice squad. Colorado was the third state in the US to repeal its anti-sodomy laws in 1972, but police were still invoking the criminal code to target queer people, prosecuting them most commonly under the charge of “making a lewd offer.” Here, simply agreeing to a proposition from one of the members of vice squad was grounds for arrest, fines, and a criminal record. Though private acts of sex were officially decriminalized, as activist Lynn Tamlin argued to the Denver City Council in 1973, “private conversations are illegal in the city and county of Denver. Private conversations that have sexual connotations are illegal.”

Tamlin’s partner Jerry Gerash, a 39-year-old lawyer who had come to Denver in 1968 for law school, was furious. In addition to lewdness, the laws allowed police to arrest men for crossdressing, cruising, or renting a hotel room for gay sex. Some men had been arrested just for slow dancing or kissing. As a Jew, Gerash had grown up hearing about anti-Semitism from his parents. He also understood the power of grassroots organizing, participating in direct actions with the feminist, Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam, and American Indian movements. Though the Stonewall Riots were four years earlier, no one in Denver was organizing around gay liberation. “When people are beaten down,” he tells me, “it makes police work very easy.” Gerash began to search for allies, and when Tamlin came home from Metro State saying he had met an amazing politically conscious lesbian named Jane Dundee, the Denver Gay Coalition began to take shape.

Initially only five members, the Denver Gay Coalition began a campaign to repeal the criminal code. In an age without cell phones, internet, or even answering machines, they organized through publishing leaflets, calling councilmen, hosting lectures, organizing press conferences, and sending a speaker’s bureau to various schools and universities around the metro. They hosted a weekend coffeehouse called Approaching Lavender as an alternative to the bar scene. (Some say most Denver bars actually did not support gay liberation because it was diverting energy away from drinking.)  Membership grew so that average meeting attendance was between 30–40, and the mailing list had over 100 names. “We came out of hiding,” Gerash tells me. “We were underground. What a hell of a feeling that is. It was a thrilling time to be alive, not only ourselves individually; we felt we were changing — we did change the community. We actually created a movement in the gay community that had not existed before.”

Their work culminated in late 1973 with a discrimination lawsuit against the city as well as an organized protest. On Oct. 23, 1973, over 300 gays, lesbians, and allies gathered and demanded City Council repeal the criminal code. Gerash remembers that “the owner of The Door closed his bar down the night of the hearing saying, ‘Get your asses down to the City Council. There’s going to be a big gay hearing.’ The Council chambers were standing room only — 36 people had prepared speeches, and the Council President gave the Gay Coalition 30 minutes to make its case. When wild applause broke out after the first speaker, the President threatened anyone who disrupted the proceedings with arrest and immediate dismissal.

Though 30 minutes had passed, the speeches kept coming, sometimes accusatory and angry, but always impassioned and logical. The group began to clap for speakers, then to cheer, and no one was arrested. The council seemed to becoming more receptive, especially once Gerash showed them definitively the truly “obscene” statistic — 100 percent of those arrested on grounds of lewdness were gay men and over 99 percent of these were not initiated by the public, but from the police. The meeting continued from 10pm to 1am, extended at the suggestion of Councilmen William Roberts and Irving Hook. Gerash hypothesizes that Roberts, a black man, and Hook, a Jewish man, were more urgent to address discrimination since they had experienced it themselves.

After the hearing, Gerash and a small band of friends celebrated at a diner called Old Grist Mill. Dale Bentley, the owner of a San Francisco bath house, handed him a wad of cash to further the work of the Gay Coalition. This donation would help them open their first resource center. The momentum was strong: Three weeks after the protest, on Nov. 12, the council repealed two of the four laws, and on Nov. 19, they repealed the final two. Gerash also won his suit against the city in 1974, halting police oppression and discrimination of gays. In 1975, Gerash convinced gay and lesbian groups to form a new group, Unity, to create a community center. After two years, Unity grew from eight to 39 groups and the Gay Community Center of Colorado (now, the GBLT Community Center) opened its doors. “We were the only city that got laws repealed as a result of a protest,” Gerash explains. “We got relief from oppression, and we galvanized more people to the notion of gay liberation and no longer being so fearful.”