Most recorded history of the LGBTQ community in Seattle begins with the Washington Sodomy Law of 1893. In the 1920s and 1930s there were several establishments in Seattle which were open to homosexuals. The Double Header, opened in 1934, may have been the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States until it closed in December 2015. On 19 November 1958, an injunction instructed the city police not to question customers of gay bars unless there was a "good cause" in connection with an actual investigation. In the 1960s, Seattle came to be seen as providing an accepting environment, and an increasing number of gay and lesbians were drawn to the city. In 1967 University of Washington's Professor Nick Heer founded the Dorian Society, the first group in Seattle to support LGBTQ rights.
Seattle's LGBTQ community is the second largest in the United States after San Francisco with 12.9% of the city identifying as LGBTQ. The Capitol Hill neighborhood in particular is considered by many the "center of gay life" in Seattle, with gay-friendly businesses and nightlife, and a resource center.
Pre-Statehood Some historians claim that businesswoman Eliza Hurd had a love affair with Sarah Yesler, who was married to sawmill owner Henry Yesler. Hurd's letters to Sarah Yesler passionately describe them sleeping and bathing together.:4,7
At this time, the timber industry brought many workers to the region but not many women. Transient workers in the Pacific Northwest often organized relationships between men and youths along jock-punk lines, designating the jock as the penetrator during anal or intercrural sex. Historians believe that youths generally entered into these relationships as punks to obtain material protection and goods, and jocks used the relationships for sexual release. Seattle's upper classes viewed these relationships as against their moral values but did not label them as gay.
Post-Statehood The Washington Territory was admitted into statehood by the United States as Washington State on November 11, 1889, bringing Seattle with it.
The Washington Sodomy Law was adopted in 1893, and in the same year, a King County court sentenced Charles Wesley to seven years at hard labor for "intent to know" Eddie Kalberg, "a male person". Over the next two decades, about 60 people were prosecuted for sodomy in Seattle. However, this included many people prosecuted for a range of prohibited sexual behaviors, not just sex between people of the same sex. Most people prosecuted with detailed records were working-class people from the Pioneer Square area.:13 Although sodomy could be applied to people in heterosexual relationships, it was mostly used to punish men engaging in sexual acts with each other. The maximum punishment was twice as long as that for heterosexual rape.
Harry Allen was the first person in Seattle documented to perhaps be transgender. Allen worked various jobs designated for men and was well-known throughout the Pacific Northwest, and documented in The Seattle Times since 1901. Alice B. Toklas lived in Seattle with her family in the 1890s, attending the University of Washington. Hanna Banana also moved to Seattle in the 1890s following the Alaska Gold Rush, and might be called transgender today. A contemporary described her as a popular queen who lived in and out of drag and lived in Seattle for decades, sharing stories about her relationships with Seattle's transient workers.
In 1909, George Vanderveer and George Cotterill successfully pushed forward a state law that strictly banned abortion and public nudity, condemned common law marriages and the pursuit of sex outside of marriage, prohibited people from writing about sex crimes, and explicitly specified what behaviors the crime of sodomy covered.:28-30 This made Washington one of three states to specify what sodomy entailed, and it ensured that the definition would remain expansive. It included oral and anal sex, removed the need for prosecutors to prove that penetration had happened, and specified punishment by a maximum of ten years in jail.:29
In 1912, Seattle and many other Pacific Northwest communities had a moral panic after the first news of the Portland vice scandal broke, when local media covered a gay subculture among white American middle-class men in their cities. Public officials and writers shared their shock at "respectable" men participating in same-sex sexual activity, because the public's previous understanding was that this was only an aspect of working-class and immigrant subcultures. During the 1910s, local authorities grew concerned about the large numbers of youths participating in the male sex trade in Seattle. The industry had grown large in Pioneer Square, patronized by the many visiting transient workers in the lumber, mining, and fishing industries.
In 1913, the local press wrote about Pearl Roberts, who had dressed as a boy while touring the United States and was now returning to Seattle. She was one of many women and people assigned female at birth who dressed or lived as men in the West, often for stated reasons of safety, opportunity, or freedom, but also for expressing gender and sexual identity.
Bars, cabarets, clubs, and dancefloors
In the 1920s and 1930s, early establishments open to homosexuals were concentrated in areas of ill repute. Pioneer Square, also known as "Skid Road" or "Fairyville," with its bars, clubs, and cabarets probably was the center of early public gay life in Seattle. The Casino, opened in 1930 on the corner of Washington Street and 2nd Avenue, was known as "the only place on the West Coast that was open and free for gay people", and where same-sex dancing was allowed. The Double Header above The Casino, opened in 1934, was possibly the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States until it closed at the end of December 2015. The Spinning Wheel on Union Street and 2nd Avenue, was a cabaret featuring female impersonators. Both were open to both gay and straight clientele during the 1930s. The Greyhound bus depot, Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, and the restrooms in the University Plaza Hotel and at the University of Washington were also known as meeting spots for gay men.
Seattle's LGBTQ sex worker community during the Great Depression was later described by a community member called Vilma. Vilma said that Seattle's young prostitutes who were assigned male at birth identified as either queens or hustlers in the 1930s: in today's terms, queens likely included out gay and bisexual men and transgender women. Vilma recounted that queens traveled together between Seattle and San Francisco on railroad boxcars, staying in each city for several months at at a time. They gathered at The Casino while in Seattle. At the pool hall, Hanna Banana, a queen who had lived in Seattle for decades, mentored young queens and shared stories of her life and the city.
The Garden of Allah was the most popular homosexual Seattle cabaret in the 1940s and 1950s. Regular vaudeville and drag shows were held there with singers dressed in drag. It was a hotspot in the post war period with service-persons, but in the 1960s the military made most gay establishments in Seattle off-limits during the Lavender Scare.
By the 1960s, 90% of Seattle's gay bars were located in Pioneer Square. In the 1960s and 1970s new gay Seattle hotspots such as the Mocambo,"Seattle History: The Mocambo" Seattle Gay News 3624 10 2008 9 March 2009. the Golden Horseshoe and the Golden Crown opened. In the 1970s vaudeville had changed and Seattle began the trend of courts, public drag clubs "with 'emperors' and 'empresses' where "lip –synching would remove the need for singing talent and open the way to any man who could dance, quip, or even just costume. Performances would change, with ever-more flamboyant costuming, more energetic and choreographed dancing and even laser shows."Gary Atkins (2003), p. 67
In the 1950s and 1960s, Seattle's dance clubs served as important points for the gay community to meet and strategize, which according to Gary Atkins, author of Gay Seattle. Stories of Exile and Belonging, may be likened to the African-Americans who used churches to organize during the civil rights movement.
During the 1950s, when anti-sodomy laws were still in effect in the United States, gay bars, clubs and bathhouses became scrutinized. Owners of such establishments would frequently bribe law enforcement to ensure their survival as well as prevent harassment of their mostly gay clientele and escape legal consequences themselves. Seattle city officials believed that the city was not doing enough to enforce laws discriminating against homosexuality and feared that eventually it would be as openly acceptable as in cities such as San Francisco. As a result of the political upheaval regarding Seattle gay bars, the Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board sent fourteen gay establishments letters threatening to bar them from military personnel. In 1966, the Seattle police chief suggested restrictions on gay bars such as withholding their liquor licenses.
The Dorian Society
In 1965 a group of openly gay men were contacted by Rev. Mineo Katagiri to talk with religious leaders in the city. The first radio interview with openly gay men was broadcast on KRAB radio by members of that group. The Dorian Society was formed in 1967. The book Gay Seattle goes into detail about this group.
The Dorian Society founded in 1967 by Nick Heer, a professor at the University of Washington was the first group in Seattle to publicly support gay rights and which published a newsletter about current issues and events in the gay community. The name was a reference to the Doric Hellenic warriors of Ancient Greece who considered homosexuality glamorous and the society was modelled on New Zealand's Dorian Society. Their mission was to create a more respectable image of the Seattle homosexual. They also wanted the reform the Seattle sodomy laws. In response to their efforts a Seattle Times headline stated on September 21, 1966, Tolerant Reputation: Seattle homosexual problem reported to be 'out of hand. This article stated the Seattle police wanted to suppress the LBGT community, partially by removing liquor licenses at gay bars. In May 1967 The Daily of the University of Washington did a series on the gay community, which for the first time represented the community in a more positive light. Much of this positivity had to with the vigilant PR and work of the Dorian Society.
Post-Stonewall
The Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969 sparked the Gay Liberation movement at a national scale. Like communities across the U.S., the Seattle LGBTQ community advocated collectively for public acceptance and equal rights. The movement upheld same-sex sexuality as something to celebrate, not hide. It took many inspirations from the civil rights movement, including in how it described power and freedom.
LGBTQ people in Seattle began to create a number of support and activist organizations, including a chapter of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Women's Alliance. Many of these groups were defined by specific communities, either aligned with the gay liberation movement's focus on gay men or lesbian feminism's focus on lesbian women. This exclusivity was partly due to geographic shifts in Seattle's LGBTQ community, whose social core had begun to move away from the often-integrated LGBTQ venues in Pioneer Square. Many lesbians lived in the University District and Wallingford, while Renton Hill and Capitol Hill hosted communities of gay men.:158-159 Seattle's gay business community grew with the help of the gay liberation movement, but catered to white middle-class gay men. Not all organizations believed in exclusivity or separatism, and the Union of Sexual Minorities was particularly opposed, advocating for an LGBTQ coalition which was anti-racist and anti-imperialist.