100 YEARS OF COLUMBUS GAY/LESBIAN HISTORY

by George Painter

1891

Daily proceedings in the Columbus police court are published in a newspaper, with 'humorous' comments made about Lesbian/Gay defendants. 1893 The Columbus Medical Journal introduces the word "Lesbian" to Ohio. 1895 -All three Columbus dailies give detailed coverage to Oscar Wilde's trials. The Columbus Dispatch editorializes prophetically that Wilde's prison term will be the smallest part of his penalty. 1895A Columbus paper distinguishes "The New Woman" from "The Third Sex." 1895A Granville medical journal publishes the first article in the world to make the homosexuality/ heterosexuality dichotomy. It is written by a closeted member of Oscar Wilde's circle.

1898 The Columbus Press Post begins the city's first regular comic page, and includes cartoons with Gay and Lesbian references.

1902 A Lesbian sex scandal at the Girls' Industrial School breaks out. The Governor of Ohio orders an investigation. 1902 Two Columbus dailies give positive reviews to Lesbian Mary MacLane's autobiography.

1904 Two teenage Columbus brothers are sent to the Boys' Reform Farm in Lancaster for engaging in sodomy with each other.

1912 -The Columbus Citizen editorializes negatively on male homosexuality. 1914 -Columbus Mayor George Karb, who may have been Gay, issues a directive to Columbus police no longer to enforce laws against "vice." Sodomy arrests in the city drop to zero during his administration.

1919 -Mayor Karb is defeated for reelection when the issue of unchecked vice in the city is used against him. 1922 The Columbus Dispatch writes a feature on Greenwich Village and discusses two men flirting in a bar.

1926-Rudolph Valentino makes an unscheduled visit to Columbus just a month before his sudden death. He is seduced in the Deshler-Wallick Hotel by 17-year-

old Sam Steward.

1927 Blues singer Bessie Smith performs in Columbus and has a public confrontation with her husband in the Pythian Theater over her female lovers. 1930 The Columbus Dispatch theatre section contains a banner drawing of boys at a bathing hole, openly admiring each other's genitals.

1932 The Columbus Sunday Star begins publication and includes cartoons about Lesbian/Gay people.

1934 Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas visit Columbus. They claim later that it is their favorite city in the United States. 1935A Lesbian sex scandal at the Marysville Reformatory leads to the dismissal of its superintendent. 1936 The original Broadway cast of The Children's Hour performs in Columbus.

fuses to indict an Ohio Penitentiary inmate who killed an inmate who had solicited him.

1937An anti-Gay newspaper crusade in Columbus begins as part of an unsuccessful right-wing effort to topple the city's power structure. 1968 Officials blame a riot at the Ohio Circa '37 The Apparel Arts Club, a Gay Penitentiary on homosexuality. bar, is flourishing downtown. 1940--The word "Gay" is first used in a Columbus newspaper to denote homosexual.

1941 -A dance manager states that her troupe, visiting the Ohio State Fair, discriminates against Gay men.

1946 -A member of Congress criticizes the Doughboy statue on the State House grounds as sissified, and asks the Governor to have the General Assembly appropriate money for its removal. 1949 The Columbus Citizen and the Coshocton Tribune publicize the relationship of two Lesbians in Conesville, with front page articles and photos. 1950The Columbus Citizen and the Ohio State Journal editorialize in favor of Senator McCarthy's crusade against Gay and Lesbian federal employees. 1950 The film Caged is released, portraying a predatory Lesbian prison maThe screenplay was based on Marysville Reformatory.

1968 Central Ohio Mattachine Society, the first documented Gay rights organization in Central Ohio, is founded. 1969-Openly Gay poet Allen Ginsberg visits Ohio State and reads a "happy, homosexual poem" according to a review in The Lantern.

1969 A trial for the robbery and murder of a Gay man ends with the acquittal of the defendant. One juror is overheard saying that the victim "deserved it." Central Ohio Mattachine Society sends petition to state Attorney General Paul Brown demanding an investigation. Brown doesn't reply and is defeated for reelection the next year. 1969-After the Stonewall riots in New York, Columbus Mayor M.E. Sensenbrenner goes on local television to assure the public that there are no "homosexual perverts" in Columbus. 1970--During the trial of a drag queen on charges of cross-dressing, Franklin County Municipal Judge Wilbur Shull, 1951 The Columbus Citizen reviews the who is not involved in the case, bursts into book The Homosexual in America. the courtroom and disrupts the proceed1953 Police in Columbus set up a naings with a diatribe against homosexualtional dragnet to catch a Gay man acity. cused of sodomy. The man's employer helps, as does the New York Times which prints a bogus message from his mother. He is apprehended and committed to a mental hospital and then to prison. 1954 -The Columbus Citizen sends a reporter to Hollywood to write a feature on Liberace's private life, trying to determine if he is Gay. This leads to a six-part series

tron.

in the paper.

1955 Bars in Columbus include the Town Grille for Lesbians, and the Oasis, the Blue Feather, and the Pink Poodle for Gay men.

1957 A man blackmailing Gay men at Ohio State University is captured but later acquitted by a jury. 1959 Due to inside lobbying from Gay people, new Ohio Governor Michael DiSalle vetoes a proposed sex offender registration law, and later refuses to sign a statewide solicitation law. DiSalle also shields Gay staff members from blackmailers. 1960

A national Gay "pornography" ring is broken with the arrest of the leader while making a delivery in Columbus. 1962 Columbus police estimate that there may be as many as 500 Gay men in Columbus.

1963 The Columbus Star reports that Columbus is a "homosexual center" and a "mecca" for Gay people.

1964

After presidential advisor Walter Jenkins is arrested for solicitation in a Washington YMCA, the Columbus YMCA begins a surveillance program, allegedly due to national security. 1965A Franklin County Grand Jury re-

1971 -The first two Gay rights rallies in Franklin County occur. The first is in Upper Arlington at the Fourth of July celebration. Police prohibit Gay people from passing out literature. A second rally downtown is held despite the city's refusal to give a permit and despite threats of violence from the Columbus police and the right-wing group The Minutemen.

1971 What is now OSU Gay and Lesbian Alliance is founded as the Gay Liberation Front. It is denied official university.

1972 -Under a new university administration, the Gay Liberation Front resubmits its application for university recognition as the Gay Activists Alliance. The application is approved. The GAA sponsors Bridal Day, featuring a large group of drag queens in bridal gowns. The event receives enormous publicity, mostly negative.

1972

Gay men and Lesbians win a major legislative victory with passage of a new Ohio criminal codes. It eliminates Ohio's sodomy law, making Ohio only the seventh state to do so.

1973 -The Ohio Department of Health is first in nation to do outreach to the Gay community regarding sexually transmitted diseases.

1973 -The first successful election campaign in Franklin County with strong, open Gay support occurs when attorney Bill Boyland unseats outspokenly antiGay Municipal Court Judge Wilbur Shull. 1973 Columbus City Council passes one of the nation's first laws prohibiting

discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations. Making reference to the "nodules of disease frightening to the citizenry and inimical to the public health, safety and welfare," Mayor Tom Moody vetoes the law. Council unanimously sustains veto and works on new law.

1974 Revised city law, with all Lesbian/Gay rights provisions deleted is introduced. Council member Dan Schoedinger introduces amendments to restore Gay rights provisions. Amendments protecting Gay men and Lesbians from discrimination in housing and public accommodation pass; the job protection amendment fails by one vote. Moody signs the bill but doesn't appoint anyone to the Community Relations Commission, the agency charged with enforcing the law.

1974 -A Lesbian mother wins custody of her children in Newark.

1974 -Columbus ombudsperson Nodine Henniger-Miller agrees to investigate alleged police harassment of Gay community. Mayor Moody orders her to stop and when she refuses, he fires her, and abolishes the ombuds position altogether.

1975 The group Central Ohio Lesbians is founded. It later conducts the first survey of employment practices by major companies in Columbus and prepares the first Gay Voter's Guide.

1976 An openly Gay student at Upper Arlington High School attempts to start a Gay support group and encounters opposition from school authorities.

1976 On Labor Day, The Gay Activists Alliance and Central Ohio Lesbians sponsor a Gay rights rally on the Statehouse grounds. Approximately 300 people attend. Virginia Apuzzo is featured speaker.

1977-Another rally is held on State House steps to protest Anita Bryant's anti-Gay campaign in Florida. 1977 Two new groups form the Central Ohio chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays and the Central Ohio Gay Rights Coalition (COGC), an umbrella group for groups in the area.

1977 COGC organizes meeting about Lesbian/Gay issues with Lieutenant Governor Richard Celeste. It is the first such meeting in Ohio with a state official on a state-wide agenda. Celeste later publicly states his support for Lesbian/Gay rights.

1978 The Ohio Gay Rights Coalition sponsors first Lesbian/Gay booth at Ohio State Fair.

1978 -COGC sponsors highly publicized demonstration at Veteran's Memorial Auditorium against Anita Bryant, who was there to entertain a convention. By tragic coincidence, Harvey Milk is assassinated on the morning of the protest, prompting one participant to carry a sign