When “an eclectic group of about 500” gathered on the Buffalo History Museum’s lawn on a Friday night in June 1991 – it was Buffalo’s first-ever outdoor demonstration of gay pride. Organizers called the event a “coming out” for the city’s entire lesbian and gay community.
Common Council President George K. Arthur was in attendance that evening. “We’re a melting pot, and we truly need to bring everyone together if we’re going to be the City of Good Neighbors,” he told News Reporter Gene Warner that night.
Arthur played a key role in passage of Buffalo’s very early anti-discrimination in hiring law. When the law passed in 1984, Buffalo’s gay and lesbian city workers were protected with laws that were in place in very few places elsewhere in the country. Arthur’s leadership, and a neutral stance on the law from Buffalo Catholic Bishop Edward Head, helped the bill survive a Mayor James D. Griffin veto.
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A 1981 Courier-Express article called “For Most, It’s Not an Easy Lifestyle” shared the story of an Elmwood restaurant owner who, earlier that year, ordered his staff to not serve gay customers. One employee looked around the bar and told him if that’s what he wants, we’re going to have to ask half the people in here to leave.
“That can’t be,” said the restaurant owner. “I know these people. They’re doctors and lawyers!”
“They are doctors and lawyers, and they are gay,” responded the man – who inspired a change in heart in the new policy.
The front-page article described the challenges of being gay. “It’s hard being gay anyplace, but it's especially hard in Buffalo,” said John Faulring, editor of Buffalo gay newspaper Fifth Freedom. Buffalo police vice squad Captain Kevin Kennedy noted that changes in state law meant that men could now dance with each other and kiss “without violating the law,” especially in Buffalo’s seven gay bars.
The change in laws didn’t necessarily end tensions between gays and the police in Buffalo. A crackdown on lewd behavior in LaSalle Park in 1986 saw as many as 30 men arrested on the east side of the park where gay men were known to congregate. There were no arrests on the heterosexual lover’s lane on the west side of the park – where necking couples were told to move along instead of leaving in handcuffs.
As a man was put into a communal cell in the city lockup, the jailer announced: “Here’s one of the girls for you guys. Take good care of her, but be sure not to hurt her."
Buffalo attorney and longtime gay rights proponent William Gardner advocated for uniformed – not plainclothes – police to patrol the parks, and inform all that they are there to enforce the law. “One would hope that the ideal of the law – even-handed, non-discriminatory enforcement – would become a reality in these situations, removing the just claim by gay men that they are being singled out by the heavy hand of the legal system for bigoted and political reasons.”
Most of the gay men and lesbian women quoted in articles through the 1980s in The News and the Courier-Express asked not to be identified. Bar owners asked that the locations of their establishments not be publicized. There was fear that tires might be slashed, but also jobs or apartments or even lives lost. Lesbian mothers feared losing their children.
At that first public, outdoor demonstration of pride in 1991 – one woman summarized it by saying: “We’re just ordinary people with hopes and dreams. We don’t want to be persecuted.”