‘There's Beauty Inside Our Doors': Queer Bars in Red States Forge On

Eater

2 days ago

On a sweltering evening in mid-May, the Texas House of Representatives is in session. Among the dozens of bills on the docket, debating everything from public information law to renaming a highway, is House Bill 1106, which would specify that denying a child's gender or sexual orientation is not abuse or neglect in the eyes of Texas family court.
As House Bill 1106 is under consideration, seven blocks away from the Capitol building in Austin, another kind of meeting is in session. Brigitte Bandit, a local activist and drag queen in a humongous blonde wig and extra-short denim dress, is attending to a standing room-only crowd at Oilcan Harry's, a longtime downtown gay bar.
With a pointer in one hand and a mic in the other, Bandit has brought in an element rarely seen in drag shows — a PowerPoint presentation. To educate the community in a more accessible way, Bandit is breaking down the national and local LGBTQ+ news of the week in her weekly show at Oilcan Harry's, LegiSLAYtion and Liberation.
In recent decades, gay bars have been first and foremost a hangout or party spot, but renewed animosity towards the queer community has brought them back to their roots.
Among the discussion topics this week: the federal transgender military ban, a history of drag and trans people in the military, a recap of Texas Democratic U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett's viral 'Trump or trans' speech, the news of a lesbian who was kicked out of a women's restroom in Boston, the defunding the LGBTQ+ suicide and crisis line, resources on how to change your name and sex marker on your passport, and updates on the latest anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the Texas legislature — including HB 1106.
As Bandit says grimly at the start of the show, it's a lot.
While Oilcan Harry's might be a little more direct in its approach, it's far from the only bar responding to the current political moment. At a time when attacks against the LGBTQ+ community have skyrocketed — from the Trump administration, from local governments, from conservative media, and more — many gay bars in the South, in particular, are making an effort to educate their local communities and bring people together right now. In recent decades, gay bars have been first and foremost a hangout or party spot, but renewed animosity towards the queer community has brought them back to their roots, when LGBTQ+ people turned to each other because the rest of the world didn't understand them.
'I think people are becoming more educated on their lawmakers and about the legislation,' says Mark Cummings, the owner of Al's on 7th in Birmingham, Alabama. 'Because when it affects you, the shit gets real.'
Cummings, a 55-year-old native Alabamian, is firm that the Pride flag on top of a 25-foot pole on top of his bar isn't going anywhere. The Birmingham queer community has grown tremendously over the last 20 years — Cummings says he remembers his first Pride parade in Birmingham in 2000, which lasted about 12 minutes. Last year, it was two and a half hours long.
At the same time, Alabama, like Texas, is undergoing its own barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including its own version of 'Don't Say Gay,' banning drag in some public spaces and banning the Pride flag from public schools. (Those were all passed on the same day earlier this year.)
'Our Legislative calendar is very small, so we breathe every week when something didn't happen,' Cummings says.
While Cummings hasn't had legislative-themed drag shows, he's resisted in his own ways. He pulled all Molson Coors products from his bar last summer — including Miller Lite, Coors Lite, and Blue Moon — after learning that Joseph Coors was a notable primary investor in alt-right think tank the Heritage Foundation. He also pulled Brown-Forman products, which include Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve, because the company ended its DEI initiatives.
'That was my first test: Are people going to see why I'm doing that? And for the most part, there's been very little pushback,' he says.
Jenna Hill-Higgs, the owner of Liberty Lounge, a gay bar in Fort Worth, Texas, feels fiercely protective of the local queer community. Hill-Higgs is 50 years old and still remembers when local police used to provide the media with the license plate numbers of cars parked at gay bars in the 1970s. The environment today reminds her of when she was a teenager, she says, volunteering for people infected with HIV/AIDS at a time when the Reagan administration openly joked about the ongoing AIDS crisis.
While the bar and the community has been safe since the election, a recent incident left her deeply shaken.
In late April, a man walked into Liberty Lounge and stood silently at the front door. He was wearing a full face covering and was dressed, unseasonably, from head to toe. Hill-Higgs says she got between him and her customers and asked for an ID. He said something unintelligible, but left without incident after Hill-Higgs shooed him out the door. The man might have been unhoused or confused — Hill-Higgs says unhoused people wander into the bar sometimes — but she isn't certain what his intentions were.
'It's been a long time since I felt this fear,' Hill-Higgs says. 'The people that don't want us to exist — it feels like they might give in to a need.'
Unlike other major cities in Texas — including neighboring Dallas — Fort Worth tends to lean conservative. Slightly more than half of Tarrant County voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, compared to 38 percent in Dallas County. Liberty Lounge, a bar so small it has no room for drag shows or live entertainment, is across the street from the former Rainbow Lounge, a now-defunct gay bar that was the subject of a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and Fort Worth Police Department raid on June 28, 2009, the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
In short, Fort Worth isn't known as a gay haven. But Hills-Higgs has put a lot of effort into making the bar a gathering place for all LGBTQ+ people, even for those that don't drink. She stocks the bar with THC drinks and mocktails and doesn't charge for soda. She also hosts a run club, book club, and art market, among other low-key events.
'I'm trying to force people to meet each other, because now more than ever, we need those relationships. We're just trying to figure out ways to take care of each other.'
'I guess I'm trying to force people to meet each other, because now more than ever, we need those relationships,' Hills-Higgs says. 'We're just trying to figure out ways to take care of each other.'
While, historically, LGBTQ+ people have often been targets of discrimination by local law enforcement, some queer bars have leaned on law enforcement for assistance, and speak highly of their experiences. Before current FBI Director Kash Patel took charge, Cummings met with Birmingham FBI officials in a talking session with local LGBTQ leaders. After some threats were made against the bar several years ago, Cummings says local FBI officials were 'amazing.'
Similarly, in Houston, Julie Mabry, the owner of Pearl Bar, the only lesbian bar in the city and one of two in Texas, says she met with former mayor Sylvester Turner and former chief of police Troy Finner during their tenure several years ago, in a training session for local gay bar owners on how to deal with an active shooter.
'That's the other side of this business,' Mabry says. 'There's beauty inside our doors. But our job is to make sure that the outside world does not affect the inside. I think that's the challenge a lot of our owners have. If a LGBTQ+ bar owner does not have that fear, that would scare me.'
Nearly half a dozen gay bars throughout the South that I talked to describe a sense of fear, uncertainty, and disappointment in their spaces when Trump won the 2024 election. But despite some typical seasonal lulls, no one says that fewer people are coming out to gay bars. (There is one notable exception. Mabry says that some Hispanic and undocumented customers have stopped coming to Pearl Bar — or stopped going out at all — out of fear of possible detainment or deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)
They say the Southern gay community is still finding moments of queer joy, despite the relentless news cycle. Sam Star, a performer at Al's on 7th, tied for third place on the latest season of RuPaul's Drag Race ; Al's celebrated along with weekly watch parties. In Fort Worth, the local Pride parade lost about $55,000 in corporate sponsors, but local LGBTQ+ leaders, including Hill-Higgs, started a grassroots campaign to raise the funds, and far exceeded their target.
Arcana Bar and Lounge, a lesbian cocktail bar in Durham, North Carolina, has a nonstop schedule of events leading up to Pride in September, including burlesque shows, mushroom gathering parties, craft nights, a jazz trio, nights for transgender people of color, Dungeons & Dragons nights — and much more.
'There's this one regular here in particular who has the most wonderful laugh,' Arcana owner Erin Karcher says. 'I came up to her table one time and was like, 'I wish we could just bottle up this queer laughter.' When you look around and you see that we are all existing here, and we're happy, and there's laughter and dance and flirtation and play and dress up and themes, it's all really cool. I'm very proud of us.'
By the end of that hot night in May, Bill 1106 passed in Austin. But at Oilcan Harry's, after Bandit's presentation, there were three drag dance numbers, and a member of the ACLU of Texas instructed the crowd on how to protest the ongoing onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ bills. The crowd was animated, with many people chiming in with more ways to get involved or with questions on how to best make their voices heard.
'We're in this together,' Bandit says. 'There's people who love and support you, despite the headlines, or who's across the street.'