Latest / Healthier Together: Larimer County's Public Health Podcast / Celebrating Local Queer History

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Celebrating Local Queer History · Healthier Together: Larimer County's Public Health Podcast

0:04
I celebrate LGBTQ History Month because I grew
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up in the Southeast, where there's not a lot
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of visibility for gay and queer people. And growing
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up and then starting to see people, when I moved
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to different places, I realized how much of an
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impact it makes seeing people like yourself being
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out in the crowd and celebrating. And so I wanted
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to be a part of that, you know, as an adult,
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being able to make those choices for myself.
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You know, I want to be there to show that, like,
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it's okay to love who you love. It's okay to
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be who you are. And it's okay to be yourself
0:41
authentically and openly. And, you know, I celebrate
0:45
because it's important that people see that we're
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here and that we're just loving each other. I
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think my favorite part of local queer culture
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is getting to... Meet people in your community
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a little bit more deeply than we always allow
0:59
ourselves to see each other in everyday life.
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It's something very vulnerable. And we get to
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suddenly see each other in our full unapologetic
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and like open selves. And that's something so
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beautiful about being able to connect with your
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community and see each other authentically 100
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% without having to worry about the precursor
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of judgment from people outside the community.
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You just get to be. And I think that's the best
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part about being involved locally. Welcome to
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Healthier Together, Larimer County's public health
1:28
podcast, where we come together for healthier
1:30
lives, connected communities, and real conversations.
1:32
From your local public health team, I'm your
1:34
host, Tom. And I'm Joanna. Today we're talking
1:37
with Dr. Tom Dunn, a professor in the Communication
1:40
Studies Department at Colorado State University
1:43
and the founding director of the Queer Memory
1:45
Project of Northern Colorado. Tom's work examines
1:49
the intersection of LGBTQ culture, politics,
1:52
and rhetoric with a focus on public memory. As
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we celebrate LGBTQ History Month, Tom joins us
1:59
to share a bit about the Queer Memory Project,
2:02
discuss some key events from local queer history,
2:04
and talk about the importance of preserving these
2:07
stories. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank
2:10
you so much for having me and happy LGBTQ History
2:13
Month. So to start, can you just tell us what
2:16
the Queer Memory Project is and how it got started?
2:19
Sure. The Queer Memory Project of Northern Colorado
2:22
has been in existence since about 2020, right
2:26
during the pandemic. But we really, really came
2:29
into our own in about the year 2021. The goal
2:33
of the project has always been to discover, preserve,
2:37
and share back out again to the community the
2:40
LGBTQ history of Northern Colorado. That's always
2:44
been done. with the support of community members,
2:47
as well as the educational mission of CSU, particularly
2:51
through the Department of Communication Studies.
2:53
Where did the idea for the project come from?
2:57
That's a great question. The idea largely came
3:00
from my own research. As you mentioned, I spend
3:02
a lot of time thinking about the LGBTQ past.
3:05
And in previous work that I've done in my first
3:08
and second book, I've really focused on doing
3:11
that research elsewhere, right? LGBTQ history
3:14
in major cities in the United States, in major
3:18
capitals across Europe and other parts of the
3:20
world. And during the pandemic, it became a really
3:23
good opportunity to take some of those questions
3:25
and take some of those resources and turn them
3:28
to the very local level. Nobody could travel,
3:31
including me. Everybody was with their family
3:34
and friends close by and spent a lot of intimate
3:37
time together in ways that were both good and
3:39
maybe a little problematic from a communication
3:41
standpoint. And so it became a really good opportunity
3:44
to say, what can we do here in northern Colorado,
3:48
particularly in the Fort Collins area, but more
3:51
broadly than that, to talk about LGBTQ history,
3:54
to have those conversations and to change what
3:57
the conversation looks like in this part of the
3:59
state about who's always been a part of it. The
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Queer Memory Project Archive is expansive. What
4:07
did the process look like to... collect and archive
4:11
all of those stories? It was a process. Obviously,
4:15
it's a multi -year process. It involved not just
4:18
me, it involved a lot of different people, which
4:20
I think is the most important thing to underline
4:23
at the beginning here. Because I'm a professor
4:25
at CSU, it was really important for me to incorporate
4:28
my students into this process. And so a lot of
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the research was done by our students in both
4:33
the Communication Studies Department, but also
4:35
in other majors and other departments across
4:37
campus. We ran two undergraduate classes called
4:41
Communicating the Queer Past, and that's where
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we did a lot of that work with students. We also
4:45
had a number of graduate students who were involved
4:47
with that who were really interested in these
4:49
kind of questions. This is also a community project,
4:52
and we really, from the beginning, wanted to
4:56
have our community elders involved in that conversation
4:58
with us to partner with other members of the
5:02
community here in Larimer County, but also in
5:04
the city of Fort Collins. And did a lot of work
5:07
to bring those folks together. So all of those
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people spent a lot of time together. We did a
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lot of digital archival work that helped us do
5:17
a lot of the early lift to put together the archival
5:20
piece of it. Another big part of it was curating
5:25
that into stories that would be accessible to
5:29
people that made sense. You may have seen our
5:31
timeline that we have as part of our. online
5:34
exhibition, which really allows people to see
5:36
the flow of that history a little bit more and
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to link out to other resources to learn more
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about that information. We've also just wrapped
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up in the last year or so an oral history project
5:48
that was connected to that. And those, as you
5:50
all as hosts of a podcast understand, are very
5:53
time intensive, very conversational intensive,
5:56
and can take a lot of processing on the backside.
5:59
So we haven't released those yet. But that's
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another place that we've done a lot of that work.
6:03
So it's been a very intensive process, but very
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community driven, very much, very engaged across
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the board. And honestly, it's been a lot of fun,
6:12
even in some of those harder moments when you're
6:14
banging your head against the wall. Every day
6:17
is a new discovery. And that was a really great
6:19
reason to keep coming back to the work. I do
6:21
want to commend the efforts that you guys put
6:23
in. We had a chance to look through the archive
6:25
and looked at the timeline, and it's quite extensive.
6:27
There's a lot of really interesting information
6:29
on there. What was the most challenging part
6:32
of putting together this history? I think the
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most challenging part, just as a practice, right,
6:37
oral history work is just really hard work. It
6:39
is greatly rewarding, but just a lot of work.
6:42
It is a trust -building exercise. People need
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to trust you to talk about their life history
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with you, to tell you stories. It's a lot of
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work on the backside to preserve those, to transcribe
6:53
those, to make sense of them, and to make sure
6:56
that they... comport with the wishes of the person
6:58
who told you that story. So those are maybe the
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most challenging from a time intensive sort of
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process. I think the archival work is easier
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because I had an army of students to help me,
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which is great. And I'm very much appreciative
7:11
of all the work that they did to do that. But
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that work was made so much easier and so much
7:17
more possible just because of the digital advances
7:19
that have happened in the last couple of years.
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If we had tried to do this project 20 years ago,
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I don't think it would have happened. Because
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it would have been really hard to find those
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obscure references in, you know, the 1800s in
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a small Colorado town newspaper. Unless you went
7:34
to a library and actually found it, you would
7:36
never come across it. So digital advances and
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digital archiving have made a lot of that work
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a lot easier. That would have been the hardest
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part had we done this much sooner. For people
7:48
who haven't heard of the Queer Memory Project.
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Can you just kind of explain what it looks like
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and what they can expect to find when they go
7:55
visit it? Yeah, that's a great question. So we
7:59
are a group of people in some ways, but our presence
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is mostly going to be online. When you go to
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the website, which is www .qmpnoco .org, you
8:08
get a nice sort of introduction to who we are
8:11
and where we come from and what our goals are.
8:14
But the website really has. two key components
8:17
to it. One being this archive, which is a clickable
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archive that you can go to and sort of click
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through particular artifacts that are in many
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cases material artifacts that we have a picture
8:30
of and a description of that you can kind of
8:32
click on and look at. So if you want to see a
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political button from the 1960s or a magazine
8:38
talking about Matthew Shepard or any number of
8:41
other interesting things. That's a really great
8:43
place to do that. And there's more than 200 different
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objects on there that you can click through.
8:47
The other part is this timeline that we've alluded
8:49
to a couple of times, which is very much that
8:52
just one very long document that's deeply footnoted
8:56
and talks every decade about what's kind of going
9:00
on in LGBTQ life in northern Colorado from about
9:04
the late 1800s all the way through 2024, which
9:08
is when we sort of stopped doing that project.
9:10
So those are most of the things that you would
9:12
encounter if you were to go to the website. As
9:14
I said before, sometimes we're also in places
9:16
doing real things, right? We tend to be at the
9:19
Pride Festivals in Northern Colorado a lot. And
9:21
so come see us if you encounter us at a booth.
9:24
We want to talk to you. We have slideshows and
9:26
presentations that we'll do in different spaces
9:28
sometimes as well. And we'll do interviews like
9:30
this also. But most people interact with us through
9:33
that website. And that's where a lot of that
9:34
information lives. You know, on that note, just
9:38
with regards to the timeline. I'm curious, how
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has Colorado's acceptance of the LGBTQ community
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changed over time? It's really fascinating. In
9:47
some ways, Colorado in general and northern Colorado
9:50
in particular has not been any different than
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the rest of the nation. There's a long history
9:58
of people being very uncomfortable with LGBTQ
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people and any of the other words we would use
10:05
to describe that community of people in the past
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as well, too. A lot of laws that were put in
10:09
place to police those behaviors and a lot of
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social and moral pressure. That's that's one
10:16
of the parts I found really interesting. Yeah.
10:19
I mean, there's a number of different ways to
10:21
think about this. Right. In some parts of the
10:22
country, we have laws that are coming over from
10:26
the colonial right off the boat. Right. You know,
10:29
right from England, right from English law. In
10:32
the West out here, it's a little bit different.
10:34
In fact, we have lots of people who flee the
10:36
coastal regions to sort of get a little bit more
10:39
freedom here out West, and Colorado is a part
10:41
of that. And so for a really long time, there's
10:43
not a lot of laws on the books. A number of those
10:46
early laws tend to be what they would call crimes
10:50
against nature laws. But the laws are really
10:53
fascinating and really interesting, and they've
10:55
changed a lot, and a lot of them not as recently
10:57
as you might expect. Colorado Amendment 2 is
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another great example of one of those laws that
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got a lot of national headlines and that really
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shaped the legal landscape in this part of the
11:09
state and also the state more generally. Amendment
11:12
2 was really about clawing back at the state
11:16
level protections that were being extended at
11:18
the local level to LGBTQ people to protect them
11:21
in housing discrimination, to protect them from
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employment discrimination. And so when Amendment
11:26
2 passed, it was really surprising. This was
11:29
in the early 90s, right? It was really surprising
11:32
to a lot of people and provoked a real pushback
11:35
in the community. And so a lot of the activism
11:37
we see in northern Colorado around that time
11:39
period is directly in response to Colorado Amendment
11:42
2 passing and the work to have that repealed
11:45
a couple of years later. What do you think kind
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of drove those changes? I think change in public
12:00
perception here is the same kind of change that
12:03
it's, I think those changes come from a lot of
12:07
the very common ways people change their minds
12:10
about things. And as a communication scholar,
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I put a lot of stock in the fact that when people
12:14
start to talk to other people about who they
12:15
are and what they believe and who they love and
12:18
what they care about. It's a very human thing
12:20
to have to take that seriously and to change
12:23
your mind. And we have a long history in northern
12:25
Colorado of people doing exactly that sort of
12:27
work, right? People in different forums, whether
12:30
that's a letter to the editor in the Colorado
12:33
Inn in the 1950s saying, hey, maybe we shouldn't
12:36
be so freaked out about these homosexual people
12:39
who are getting all this attention during the
12:41
Red Scare or the Lavender Scare in Washington,
12:44
D .C. at that time. Students who are involved
12:48
in the LGBTQ Speakers Bureau at CSU in the 1980s
12:52
who are going into classes and talking to high
12:54
school students about these kind of things. And
12:56
then certainly the more traditional activism
12:58
that you'd expect as well to people protesting
13:00
and marching. Those conversations, I think, really
13:03
drive a lot of it. And so while we should put
13:06
a lot of stock in the big picture things, the
13:08
big media stories, the big national headlines,
13:12
you know, certainly an event like the. death
13:14
of Matthew Shepard in northern Colorado was a
13:16
game changer for how people understood and thought
13:19
about LGBTQ acceptance and understanding. But
13:23
those smaller stories of conversations, of showing
13:27
up for each other, of participating in events,
13:30
of going to a pride festival for the first time,
13:32
those I think are the things that really undergird
13:34
the massive change that we've seen in LGBTQ acceptance
13:37
in this part of the state. How do you think the
13:41
Queer Memory Project helps provide space for
13:44
some of those conversations. That was one of
13:47
the impetuses for the project was to be able
13:50
to give different kinds of people an opportunity
13:54
to talk about LGBTQ life in northern Colorado
13:57
who maybe didn't see themselves in that. I was
14:00
thinking of two particular parts of the community
14:02
in particular when the project was started. One
14:06
is that we've had a lot of people move into the
14:08
state and move into northern Colorado in the
14:10
last couple of years from different parts of
14:11
the country. And I often hear people who are
14:13
newer to this region say, you know, where's the
14:16
queer culture or is this a safe place to be?
14:19
That can look really differently depending on
14:22
where they're coming from. They might think it's
14:23
more accepting or less accepting, but there's
14:25
often this question mark. And so part of the
14:27
work that we do is to sort of invite people into
14:29
a conversation to learn about that local history
14:31
and to have a better understanding of. what this
14:35
community is and who this community has always
14:36
been, which has always had, as I think the timeline
14:39
suggests, a queer sort of perspective to it.
14:42
The other part, particularly in 2020, and I think
14:46
one of the ones that's really important today
14:47
is thinking about LGBTQ youth is really important.
14:51
LGBTQ young people have had a really hard time
14:54
in this country over the last couple of years,
14:56
particularly during the pandemic. That was really
15:00
challenging because young people who had very
15:02
few spaces to be together and to sort of grow
15:04
into their gender identity or their sexuality
15:06
lost those spaces, just like so many of us lost
15:09
our ability to be in community with each other.
15:12
And so the project was trying to respond in a
15:14
digital kind of way to offer them a way to have
15:18
that conversation and to see themselves in the
15:20
community as well. But as we've had ongoing political
15:23
conversations in this country about transgender
15:25
youth and LGBTQ youth in general. I think these
15:29
lessons and these invitations that the Queer
15:32
Memory Project offers continue to create a space
15:35
for people to reconsider what they think they
15:38
know about what it's like to be LGBTQ in this
15:41
part of the state, to be an LGBTQ Coloradan,
15:44
and what's been acceptable in this community.
15:47
I think oftentimes the history suggests that
15:50
we've been more accepting at times than we think
15:52
we might have been. And that's a tradition and
15:55
a part of our heritage that we should be embracing
15:57
and not necessarily be trying to arrive at over
16:00
and over and over again. We wanted to dive into
16:03
some key events from local LGBTQ history. So
16:07
first, what role did LGBTQ people play in early
16:11
communities here in northern Colorado? I think
16:14
to start, when we talk about early LGBTQ communities
16:18
in northern Colorado, we have to think about
16:22
the... earliest inhabitants of this part of the
16:24
state, which is the indigenous communities that
16:26
inhabited northern Colorado well before white
16:31
settlers came here. And those communities had
16:34
very unique and very culturally rich ways of
16:38
thinking about gender and sexuality that might
16:41
not map really well onto those that we think
16:43
of as fitting into the acronym of LGBTQ today.
16:47
And yet I think we do a great disservice when
16:50
we think about the history of the LGBTQ community
16:53
in this region to not acknowledge that that history
16:56
has been there and that those conversations and
16:58
those communities and those ways of being in
17:00
the world were present here as long as those
17:02
communities have been present and continue to
17:05
be present here as well, too. In addition to
17:07
the indigenous communities, all the pioneers
17:10
of this region, all those settlers who came to
17:13
this region. also brought with them their own
17:15
sort of understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality
17:18
that really helped build this community, right?
17:21
And not just in the ways that I think people
17:23
want to talk about a lot, which is who they were
17:25
in love with, how did they understand their notion
17:27
of gender, but these were members of the community
17:30
just like anybody else, right? They were business
17:32
owners. They were cattle ranchers. They were
17:36
working in the sugar fields, right? They were
17:38
harvesting beets. They were doing everything
17:41
that everybody else was doing. And I think the
17:44
work that we've found in the Queer Memory Project
17:45
has shown us that a lot of the people who we
17:50
pull out and highlight as great examples of our
17:53
local LGBTQ past are really people that the community
17:56
already knew and celebrated for all the other
18:00
things that they did that were amazing. Sarah
18:03
Ellis Eddy is a great example of that as somebody
18:05
in the late 1800s who was a woman who... for
18:09
decades, walked around town in men's clothing,
18:11
who was a business owner, who had close relationships
18:14
with women that we can read between the lines
18:17
about. But somebody who, when she died, was sort
18:20
of heralded and lifted up by the community as
18:23
a great community member and a great citizen.
18:25
And so some of these people have always been
18:29
a part of the story of Northern Colorado. And
18:30
that's not just a story about the late 20th century
18:32
or the early 21st century. That goes back into
18:34
the 19th century and before. When was the first
18:38
Pride event held in northern Colorado? Very contentious
18:41
question, actually. There's some disagreement
18:44
about this, right? I think the safe answer is
18:46
to say sometime in the late 90s, different groups
18:49
of people started gathering in Fort Collins for
18:53
community -driven events that they would think
18:56
about or call a Pride celebration. They'd look
19:00
a lot different than the ones that we have now.
19:01
They look very different than what the folks
19:03
down in Denver do. And certainly those events
19:05
in Fort Collins and northern Colorado have grown
19:07
exponentially. But there's examples of people
19:12
in City Park and Fort Collins getting together
19:14
and having, you know, just a big picnic in June
19:17
every year. And that being very much focused
19:20
about celebrating pride in LGBTQ identities.
19:24
Certainly, at least by 1998, we see that. There's
19:27
also a history of people from this area going
19:30
other places to do that, too. Right. There's
19:32
a lot of stories that people have earlier of
19:34
going up to Wyoming and camping and having like
19:38
weekend celebrations of pride that were more
19:40
private events, but that were also, I think,
19:43
potentially would fall into that category. And
19:45
then we get the organizational work that gets
19:47
done where it gets a little bit dicey. You know,
19:49
are we talking about the student population?
19:51
Are we talking about the non -student population?
19:53
So I would say in the late 90s, certainly. And
19:56
it's. It's certainly grown into a really important
19:58
annual event since then. And then when were the
20:02
first marriage licenses issued to same -sex couples
20:05
here in northern Colorado? I have a very specific
20:07
date for you. So October 7th, 2014 was when the
20:11
first same -sex marriage license was granted
20:14
here in Larimer County. And that was, if you
20:17
were around during that time, not something you
20:20
could really put on a calendar and plan for.
20:22
A lot of these... opportunities for people to
20:25
get wed were contingent upon a cascading number
20:28
of lawsuits that were hitting different levels
20:31
of the U .S. court system at different times.
20:33
And so that was the day that Colorado was sort
20:38
of granted the opportunity with a number of other
20:41
states to be able to offer these in a legal way.
20:45
It would not be recognized by the U .S. Supreme
20:48
Court nationwide for a whole nother year still.
20:51
But yeah, 2014, October 7th, we have the first
20:54
wedding and the first two people to get married.
20:56
It's two women and members of the community who
20:59
were lucky enough to get married. And it's a
21:02
great story and a lot of great press in the local
21:04
newspaper about that event, too. So how did the
21:08
AIDS epidemic show up then in northern Colorado?
21:11
I think a lot of us who grew up. during the era
21:15
of AIDS have these memories, depending on where
21:18
you're from, of AIDS being this thing that only
21:20
happened in certain places at first or only happened
21:23
to certain individuals. But I think the more
21:25
we unfurl this history, we sort of realize that
21:28
this disease affected a lot of people a lot earlier
21:30
than we think, that it was present in our communities
21:32
earlier than many of us imagined, that there
21:35
was a lot of fear and shame and anxiety that
21:37
kept people from talking about these things or
21:39
even knowing what was going on. And so HIV AIDS
21:43
appeared pretty quickly in northern Colorado,
21:46
not too long after it started being talked about
21:51
by the CDC in 1981. Right. And so there's documents
21:56
and you can see this on the Queer Memory Project
21:58
website. Right. There's documents that the CDC
22:01
puts out very clearly in December, in June 1981,
22:07
talking about this new gay cancer among homosexuals.
22:11
that they don't really have a name for yet and
22:13
they don't really understand. We don't know then
22:16
the very first person, and nor should we for
22:19
privacy reasons, right, to sort of contract the
22:21
virus in this part of the state after that. But
22:23
there's good documented evidence to sort of suggest
22:26
that by the end of 1982, as many as eight people
22:30
had died in the state of Colorado from what we
22:33
believe was HIV AIDS at that time. And so that
22:35
was very much. going on pretty soon thereafter
22:39
and was something that the community, just like
22:42
every community in the United States and the
22:44
world, had to confront and learn how to do. And
22:47
so there's a long, complicated history about
22:49
sort of the response to HIV AIDS that also shaped
22:53
what the LGBTQ community has been and is today
22:58
in northern Colorado. One of the organizations
23:02
to sort of just do a hat tip to in that work
23:05
is NCAP, which was the Northern Colorado AIDS
23:08
Project, which was founded in 1986, which is
23:11
still in existence today as the Colorado Health
23:13
Network. Right. And so you've probably seen them
23:15
and heard them in different places, but might
23:18
not know that that's a part of that history.
23:20
And so it's just a great example of how the work
23:23
continues, even though that that struggle looks
23:26
really different today. It's one that we've been
23:28
living with for a really long time in northern
23:29
Colorado and people were deeply affected by it.
23:33
Can you talk about the history of drag in northern
23:35
Colorado? Yes. And it's so fascinating to me,
23:39
right? I mean, your listeners may or may not
23:42
be plugged into the local drag scene in northern
23:44
Colorado, but I think we have one of the greatest
23:46
local drag scenes of any community our size in
23:50
the United States. A lot of that is driven by
23:53
CSU, which has a really strong. campus community
23:57
and different organizations on campus that are
24:00
invested in this LGBTQ art form and that really
24:04
create spaces to nurture that and to sort of
24:07
launch people into the community, both here in
24:10
Fort Collins and in Denver and nationwide into
24:14
the really awesome artwork, which is drag performance.
24:18
There is lots of evidence historically, though,
24:21
that that's been going on well before. That work
24:24
started at CSU in, you know, maybe the early
24:26
2000s, give or take. Much like a lot of the people
24:30
that we're talking about, this would have gone
24:31
by a different name, right? And so there's some
24:33
evidence of female impersonators being very popular
24:37
in northern Colorado going way back into the
24:41
1920s and 30s. Female impersonators would often
24:46
be a common part of minstrel shows that traveled
24:49
around the country. And those shows, which, by
24:52
the way, had a deeply racist connotation to them,
24:55
would often appear in Fort Collins and other
24:57
surrounding communities. And so it wasn't unusual
24:59
for people living in northern Colorado a century
25:03
ago to be familiar with the idea of people wearing
25:07
clothing that was different than the sex that
25:10
they were assigned at birth. using that to do
25:15
some sort of performance. And we've seen that
25:17
evolve in different ways throughout as well,
25:19
too. That's one part of the project that we haven't
25:21
done as much on, in part because I think a lot
25:23
of the local drag performers in this community
25:26
are doing some of that work on their own and
25:27
they're unpacking their own story. And I think
25:29
it's great that they're doing that work. And
25:31
we always want to support them in being able
25:34
to tell that story because it's a rich and beautiful
25:36
and just a fun and exciting one. So like we've
25:39
mentioned previously, the timelines. quite extensive
25:41
and it goes on for quite some time. Do you have
25:43
a favorite story of local LGBTQ history? Oh,
25:47
there's so many. I know it's hard to pick. I
25:50
really, really like one of my favorite, which
25:54
is my favorite, but is also because I asked this
25:56
question to my students and it's their favorite
25:58
also, is the story of Theron Abbott. Theron Abbott
26:02
was the first male student at CSU to be elected
26:07
homecoming queen. In October 1974, it was a huge
26:12
scandal because obviously it was not something
26:17
that had ever happened at CSU before. It was
26:19
certainly norm -breaking in a number of different
26:21
ways. Theron Abbott was very specifically doing
26:25
this to make a point. He was making a point about
26:27
feminism and gender equity and some of the systems
26:31
and traditions that make it harder for equality
26:35
between the sexes to sort of take place. But
26:38
this was also something that was very much about
26:41
gender transition and gender performance. And
26:45
in the background, although this wasn't a part
26:47
of the conversation about Theron Abbott's sexuality
26:49
as well, too. And so that's a really great story.
26:52
I think our students really respond to it because
26:54
it's one that is really. murky about, you know,
26:58
this is something that people vote for. Right.
27:00
And so are the people in northern Colorado voting
27:02
for this because they agree with the point? Are
27:05
they doing it to sort of poke fun at this person
27:08
who's doing that? Does it really matter? Because
27:11
at the end of the day, he wins and he gets crowned
27:13
and has the halftime recognition on the football
27:17
stadium, gets in the national newspapers, tells
27:21
us something about this community. And so it
27:23
is it's a really fun and interesting one. The
27:26
Fort Collins Gay and Lesbian Alliance, when it
27:28
was very active in the late 70s and early 80s,
27:31
used to host dances in Fort Collins, various
27:35
different locations. And those were often held
27:39
at the various different granges, right? And
27:42
those are, if you're not familiar, right, these
27:45
are like agricultural community spaces that tend
27:48
to be out in the middle of nowhere, but you could
27:50
rent them, like you could rent any kind of hall.
27:53
And so these groups would often rent these halls
27:55
for a unspecific party, but was a place where
28:00
in the middle of nowhere you could gather a whole
28:02
bunch of people and men could dance with men
28:05
and women could dance with women and everybody
28:06
could have a good time. And those are remembered
28:09
so fondly by so many LGBTQ elders. It's hard
28:13
to sort of tell that story because it's not,
28:15
again, one thing or a one time occurrence, but
28:17
people will. Talk about the fact that they were
28:20
so popular you had to like park a mile away because
28:23
the cars could only park on the side of this
28:25
one single lane road and you'd have to walk up
28:28
this giant pathway to get there. Other people
28:31
will talk about how, you know, people would drive
28:33
from like South Dakota to come to these parties
28:35
because there was there were no gay bars in South
28:38
Dakota. So the fact that there was a dance within
28:40
a couple hours of a drive, this was worth doing
28:43
on a Friday night. And it's just a really. fascinating
28:47
and cool part of that history, which is the fun
28:52
part, right? It's the community. It's the expression.
28:55
It's the self -discovery. It's people having
28:58
a good time with music and a few drinks. And
29:00
that's something that people, even into their
29:03
80s and 90s, will look back on and say, I remember
29:05
those. Those were really fun. And I love being
29:09
able to hear about the different parts of that
29:11
that people want to share. There's lots of fun
29:15
and interesting and proud stories in that timeline.
29:17
There's also some really sad ones that I think
29:19
are worth ruminating on. A lot of people know
29:23
the story about Matthew Shepard, but there's
29:26
an equally tragic story about Thomas John Peters
29:28
in 1967, who is a CSU student who is murdered
29:33
essentially for being a gay man. The murder takes
29:36
place in Denver, but he was residing here in
29:38
Fort Collins when that happened. There are stories
29:41
that are tragic like that that a lot of people
29:42
don't know about. And then there are the exciting
29:45
and fun and interesting stories about progress
29:47
and change. And so LGBTQ history in northern
29:49
Colorado is rich and complex and has all of those
29:52
great examples. But the Theron Abbott one is
29:54
one that I like a lot. A lot of the events in
29:57
the archive are tied to CSU in some way. Can
30:01
you talk a little bit about the interaction between
30:04
CSU and the larger northern Colorado community
30:06
and how it's sort of influenced this history?
30:10
It's not unique to CSU. I think if we look more
30:12
broadly at LGBTQ history in the United States,
30:15
certainly the college town experience has often
30:17
been a driver in LGBTQ activism and conversations.
30:24
I think there's something about a university
30:26
setting which invites people to have harder conversations
30:30
and to think differently about who they are and
30:35
what they want. can foster these kind of things.
30:39
And that's certainly true at CSU. The LGBTQ community
30:43
at CSU was certainly really important in bringing
30:48
about larger conversations about LGBTQ life in
30:51
northern Colorado, particularly in the second
30:54
half of the 20th century, just like people of
30:58
color and... Others are sort of organizing in
31:03
the 1960s on campus and leading those conversations.
31:06
So are LGBTQ people. The clearest example is
31:09
the Fort Collins Gay and Lesbian Alliance, which
31:12
I think is the first sort of known organization
31:14
in northern Colorado that is doing the kind of
31:17
activism work that we would think that's very
31:19
prominent, certainly in the 80s, a little bit
31:21
in the 70s as well, too. That starts largely
31:25
from. student efforts on campus, but extends
31:29
beyond that, includes people from the larger
31:31
community into that as well, too. So there's
31:35
a really important connection there. But it's
31:37
not just like students are the only ones doing
31:39
this work, because I think there's this misperception
31:42
that when the students aren't here during summer
31:44
break, for instance, there is no LGBTQ community
31:47
in northern Colorado. And that's just not the
31:48
case. As we said, there have long been people
31:51
in this community who have been a part of the
31:54
LGBTQ community. They've always been here. They're
31:57
here during the summer. They're doing different
31:59
kinds of work. They're building different kinds
32:01
of networks as well, too. And so there's some
32:04
productive coalitions that happen between the
32:07
town and the gown in this sort of work throughout
32:10
this history. There's also some tensions, right?
32:13
And in my conversations with people who've worked
32:16
at CSU in the past around some of these issues,
32:18
right, there's sometimes a really challenging.
32:21
tension to sort of say, who do we serve, the
32:23
LGBTQ student population, or are we here to serve
32:26
the community writ large? And so there's some
32:28
real challenges about who's here to support who.
32:32
And the same thing is true for the community
32:34
center that existed here in the 90s. Was their
32:38
role to really work for the university or was
32:40
their role to represent everybody else who wasn't
32:42
doing that? So some real challenging back and
32:44
forth work there. But I think Fort Collins in
32:47
northern Colorado has benefited. from the fact
32:50
that we have a number of universities in this
32:52
part of the state who have helped drive these
32:54
conversations, and it's been a really productive
32:57
feedback loop over time. We talked about this
33:01
a little bit earlier, but I guess I'm curious,
33:04
what collecting these stories and learning about
33:07
this history can help us learn about how attitudes
33:11
and beliefs change over time? For me, I think
33:16
I've long been a believer that those two things
33:18
are connected, right? That the more we learn,
33:21
the more we grow as people, the more our attitudes
33:24
change. And in this case, hopefully the more
33:26
accepting we've become. To frame the project
33:29
this way as an event that has been partially
33:32
about inviting students and young people into
33:34
that process and also about letting community
33:38
elders. share stories that they thought nobody
33:40
cared about, that nobody bothered to ask about
33:42
before, that nobody wanted in the archives, and
33:45
have those two conversations come together has
33:48
been really, really powerful. So I'm just a big
33:53
believer in that dynamic that when you can bring
33:56
people together over a challenge, and that's
34:00
what I think LGBTQ history is, particularly at
34:02
the local and the regional level, right? The
34:05
challenge and the thrill of discovery that You
34:09
get to find together something that you didn't
34:11
think was there before. It really becomes a way
34:14
to bring people together, to build bridges and
34:17
to do that work. But as your question sort of
34:20
suggests, I think the key takeaway is that that
34:23
work isn't just for the people doing it. It's
34:25
to be shared out more broadly, too. That was
34:28
really important for me as a communication professor,
34:30
right, that that history had to be in service
34:33
of an audience at some point that we wanted to
34:36
talk about this at. Our bar, which is a LGBTQ
34:40
affirming bar here in Fort Collins, that we wanted
34:43
to talk about it at the Pride festivals that
34:45
operate in northern Colorado, that we wanted
34:48
to be on podcasts and places like this where
34:50
we get to talk about people who weren't part
34:52
of putting these things together, but get to
34:54
benefit from the stories that they they hear.
34:57
And so there's a real joy that comes with that.
34:59
I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about
35:01
some of the bars or historical institutions in
35:04
Fort Collins that might come to mind. This is
35:07
a great question, and I'm not going to remember
35:09
all the names of them. I think this is something
35:11
that surprises a lot of people, too, right, is
35:13
that, you know, our bar is the bar that many
35:15
people, if you've been in northern Colorado in
35:19
the last 10 years, you've probably associated
35:21
with as a local community space. But it's probably
35:24
the eighth LGBTQ bar that has existed somewhere
35:28
in the Fort Collins, Larimer County space. Over
35:32
many, many, many years. Right. One of the earliest
35:34
is the Sagebrush, which was founded in 1983.
35:38
Very contentious is really mostly a pub and a
35:42
place to dance. But but was very explicitly geared
35:46
towards the LGBTQ community and was located within
35:50
the city limits of Fort Collins. And so had to
35:52
go through a permitting process and and local
35:56
approval to do that. And there was a. city meeting
35:59
where people stood up and sort of said, do you
36:01
want a gay bar in your town? Yes or no? And people
36:03
had to have that conversation. And so all of
36:06
that is really fascinating. And the fact that
36:08
the community approved that and that that place
36:09
existed was, you know, really, really just amazing.
36:13
There have been a number of other bars that have
36:15
sort of existed. And bars are just, as we should
36:18
say, right, a really important institutional
36:19
space in LGBTQ communities, right? Not just because
36:22
they're a place to go have fun. but because they
36:24
are businesses, right? Those businesses often
36:27
support and sponsor events that help build a
36:31
community. They are places where people get to
36:33
express themselves and where people get to have
36:37
fun. Those are just really important spaces.
36:39
So there's some really fascinating and interesting
36:41
stories there. But yeah, I could spend an hour
36:44
talking about that. And so having... a occasion
36:47
every June and often every October like we are
36:50
now to remind ourselves that LGBTQ history is
36:54
a thing, that LGBTQ people have always been here,
36:56
and to sort of refocus our attention on that
37:00
allows us to remind ourselves of the need to
37:02
be accepting of the great diversity of people
37:05
who've always been a part of our community. And
37:07
it really pays forward all the work that Other
37:10
people are doing every single day of the week
37:12
to make the world more just and more equitable
37:14
and more fair for everyone. Why is preserving
37:18
this history important? I think it's important
37:21
at a couple different levels, right? The ones
37:24
that I think are most obvious to the people are
37:26
these big community level approaches and rationales.
37:30
As we said before, we can very easily fall into
37:34
the trap of thinking that LGBTQ history is something
37:37
that happens in New York and Chicago and San
37:39
Francisco and nowhere else. We can also fall
37:43
into the trap of thinking that the stories that
37:45
are told there are the ones that matter or the
37:49
ones that reflect everybody's experience, which
37:51
is not true. And so doing this history, doing
37:54
this community driven work at the local and the
37:57
regional level is really important because it
37:59
allows us to diversify those stories, to complicate
38:01
those stories, to talk about lesbian ranchers
38:04
in a way that you're probably not going to get
38:06
in a great project that's taking place in Manhattan.
38:09
Right. But is really still a part of the rich,
38:12
complex history of who LGBTQ people and their
38:15
forebearers have always been. But there's also
38:18
this really more personal level that we've sort
38:20
of hinted at a couple different times. One of
38:23
my favorite stories to come out of this experience
38:26
was I had an opportunity in class to bring a
38:30
community elder in to talk to my students about
38:34
their life and their experience and to do some
38:36
of that oral history work in class with the students.
38:38
And it was a great learning opportunity. And
38:41
one of the things that came out of that experience
38:42
was I had. an lgbtq elder come to me afterwards
38:47
and sort of say thank you so much for letting
38:49
me do that i didn't think anybody cared about
38:50
these stories it sort of affirmed for me in the
38:55
last half of my life that what i spent my life
38:58
doing the life that i lived was not just for
39:00
my own you know personal satisfaction and existence
39:04
but but that it meant something and that people
39:07
benefited from that But the reverse was also
39:10
true because I had students, mostly transgender
39:12
students and non -binary students, who would
39:14
come up to me afterwards and say, thank you for
39:16
letting us have that conversation because for
39:18
the first time in my life, I can see that it's
39:20
possible to be an LGBTQ elder, that my life doesn't
39:25
end at 30, that there is a way to be happy for
39:29
decades after this. And I've never seen that
39:32
on TV before. I've never seen that anywhere else.
39:34
And I've really never seen it in my own community.
39:36
And so those local interactions, I think, are
39:39
another important reason to do this work. It
39:41
broadens the Overton window of what we can imagine
39:45
is possible, and it allows us to live our lives
39:49
in different and hopefully healthier ways as
39:53
a result of that. So, Tom, what does LGBTQ History
39:57
Month mean to you specifically? Most immediately,
40:00
it means I tend to get really busy. October every
40:03
year, I... I get a lot of phone calls from a
40:06
lot of people who are interested in having these
40:08
conversations, which is great. And that's really
40:10
what the event is about. And I said that before.
40:12
It's an opportunity to remind ourselves that
40:15
these stories exist and that they need their
40:17
space and they need their place and that we need
40:20
to slow down every once in a while and acknowledge
40:22
those kind of things. But LGBTQ History Month,
40:26
I think, also means a little bit more to me right
40:28
now because in this moment, in a lot of places,
40:32
LGBTQ history is under attack, right? Maybe not
40:35
explicitly, but the resources, the locations,
40:39
the opportunities to do this kind of work are
40:42
significantly more limited than they used to
40:44
be. Funding is getting cut in a lot of places.
40:47
And people who just before would have shared
40:49
their story so much more easily feel reticence
40:52
about doing that. And so I think it's also a
40:57
call to us to not just celebrate the work that's
41:00
been done, but to remember that this work doesn't
41:02
come out of anywhere. It needs to be nurtured.
41:05
We need to create a space for it. We need to
41:07
make sure people feel safe telling these stories.
41:09
Because once it's gone, it's gone. And it's really
41:11
hard, particularly for LGBTQ history, because
41:14
you're not going to find as much of that stuff
41:15
written down, as much of that stuff recorded
41:18
somewhere. Once the people who can tell you that
41:21
story face to face are not available to do that
41:24
anymore, it's really gone forever. And so it's
41:27
taken on a little bit more importance in recent
41:30
years. How can people learn more about local
41:32
LGBTQ history here in Larimer County? Well, the
41:35
first place I would send them would be the Queer
41:37
Memory Project of Northern Colorado, which you
41:39
can find through a simple Google search. And
41:41
we do a little bit of programming throughout
41:44
the year to help encourage people to think about
41:47
these things and have these conversations as
41:49
well, too. But I've been really excited to see
41:51
other people pick up this mantle and do this
41:53
work in this community as well, too. The Fort
41:56
Collins Museum of Discovery has been really supportive
41:58
and open to having these conversations and does
42:00
some programming around LGBTQ history as well
42:03
as women's history, people of color communities
42:05
as well too, indigenous communities. And so that's
42:08
a great resource. The local libraries, Poudre
42:11
Libraries is a really great resource and has
42:13
been a big supporter of LGBTQ history throughout.
42:17
And so I'm a big fan of theirs and the work that
42:19
they do. Fort Collins Media has done a great
42:21
deal of work on this as well too. And don't forget
42:23
your... LGBT community members as well who don't
42:27
necessarily need an institutional platform to
42:30
be able to tell you these stories. Having those
42:32
conversations with people you know and asking
42:34
them about what their experience has been like
42:36
and what stories they've heard can be really
42:38
illuminating. Often going to a drag show is a
42:42
great act of education for oneself because not
42:46
only do you get to be entertained and learn a
42:48
lot of things, but our drag performers are often
42:51
some of the founts of memory in our community.
42:54
And they've been a really great resource as well,
42:56
too. So those are all good places to go. And
42:59
there's lots of different kinds of histories
43:00
to learn about, right? There are histories that
43:03
are great for adults to dig into, and there's
43:05
also histories that are great for kids to learn
43:06
about. And so knowing that those are all available
43:08
to you in this part of the state is something
43:11
that I'd encourage people to go explore. Is there
43:13
anything you'd like to see in our community moving
43:16
forward to help preserve and teach this history?
43:19
I do think making a continued commitment to doing
43:24
this work every single year is really important.
43:27
And honestly, I think of many of the places that
43:30
I've lived, Northern Colorado, Fort Collins has
43:32
done a really good job of doing that, right?
43:36
But the work never really ends. We have to keep
43:38
doing it over and over and over again. And so
43:40
having an opportunity like this five years after
43:42
we started the project is a great example of
43:44
that. Making sure we are resourcing those opportunities
43:48
and people interested in doing that as well,
43:50
too, I think is important. And one of my own
43:53
personal missions here is to make sure we continue
43:55
to expand the story in northern Colorado beyond
43:58
a history that can be very Fort Collins centric
44:01
sometimes. There's lots of cool and interesting
44:04
stories that happened in Loveland and Greeley
44:07
and Windsor and all the way up to the border
44:10
of Wyoming that we want to be able to talk about
44:12
and have those conversations with. The last thing
44:16
I'll say is that I think it's really important,
44:17
and this has been a commitment that we've made
44:20
with the Queer Memory Project since the beginning,
44:22
that we keep these histories local. There's often
44:25
a tendency to try to consolidate LGBTQ history
44:28
into those institutional spaces that have big
44:31
donors and big budgets that can keep them safe,
44:35
and it's actually really important to keep them
44:37
safe. But the minute we take local history out
44:39
of the local and put it somewhere else, it becomes
44:42
harder for people to access. And so making a
44:44
commitment to make sure that we keep our history
44:46
told, but also here, I think is a really important
44:50
thing I'd like us to see going forward. Dr. Tom
44:53
Dunn, thank you so much for joining us today
44:55
and taking the time. We really appreciate it.
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Thank you so much. Appreciate you both. You can
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find links to learn more about the topics we
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discussed today in the show notes. If you have
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a question about public health in Larimer County,
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or a topic you'd like us to discuss, let us know.
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Email us at healthiertogether at larimer .org.
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Thanks for listening, Larimer County. Until next
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week, stay well, stay connected, and remember,
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we really are healthier together.