Moments in Queer New Orleans History

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Bostock V. Clayton County, GA affording job protection to LGBT+ people was a landmark decision that represented the culmination of a decades-long struggle.  The fact that it was handed down this month in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement is appropriate considering its origins in the 1950s during the social turmoil of the civil … [Read more...] about SCOTUS, Trans Inclusion, & the “Network of Mutuality”

In 1978, the Pink Triangle Alliance hosted the first Gay Pride rally ever held in New Orleans. The Pink Triangle Alliance was the public face/political name of the Louisiana Sissies in Struggle, a group that came out of the Mulberry House Collective in Fayetteville, Arkansas, when Dennis Williams, Dimid Hayer, Stacey Brotherlover, and Aurora relocated to New Orleans. The … [Read more...] about The Archbishop, Sissies in Struggle, and Gay Pride

Of all the nuns and orders of nuns in New Orleans, the most fabulous is The Big Easy Sisters, Parish of the Muddy Waters.  The Big Easy Sisters are an order of 21st century queer nuns. Their primary goal, in their own words, is “to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt or, in other words, we are the clowns of our community and we banish any negative … [Read more...] about The Big Easy Sisters

The enduring appeal of Frank Capra’s classic holiday film It’s a Wonderful Life is its premise—that the quality of a person’s life is measured by how it affects others.  George Bailey’s guardian angel, Clarence, tells him, ““Dear George, remember no man is a failure who has friends.”  By that measure, Charlene Schneider, legendary lesbian bar owner, was amazingly … [Read more...] about It’s a Wonderful Life, Historically Speaking

As 2019 draws to a close, the New Orleans-based LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana can look back on a year of solid accomplishments. In addition to facilitating the donation of material to area libraries and museums across the state, the Archives Project also launched an Oral History Initiative and opened a new exhibit space. As a statewide collective, the Archives … [Read more...] about The LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana Year in Review

In 1977, Tom M. Horner, a former Episcopal priest, had two things on his mind—finishing his book on homosexuality in the Bible, and opening a gay & lesbian-themed bookstore.  By 1978, Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times was published by the Westminster Press and Horner signed a lease on a space for a bookstore at the corner of Frenchmen and Chartres … [Read more...] about The Bookstore on Frenchmen

Christopher Daigle was a banker before he became a gay activist in the early 1990s.  Educated at Loyola University, Fairfield University and Dartmouth College, Daigle settled in New Orleans and took a job as the Director of the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life at Tulane University, Daigle became involved in LAGPAC and led the organization for roughly … [Read more...] about Remembering the Legacy of Chris Daigle

There have always been queer people in New Orleans, and while the city currently looks favorably upon us, it wasn’t always so.  It wasn’t too long ago that rainbow flags on Rampart Street and Mayoral proclamations for Pride and Southern Decadence would have been inconceivable.  The New Orleans Police Department was still raiding gay bars as recently as the … [Read more...] about The Rose Room, the Goldenrod Inn, and Police Raids

I recently had an especially memorable and quite perfect lunch with Katie Nachod.  Although Katie is a long-time reference librarian with a career’s worth of experience at Tulane University and the Louisiana Supreme Court Law Library, and although I serve as President of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana, and although we both have degrees in English, and although we … [Read more...] about The Gentlemanly Last Years of George Dureau