Questioning the Narrative of the Gay Bar

A great local blog I enjoy reading that covers news and politics of interest to the GLBTQI community in Minnesota posted this entry today:

Lavender Magazine has an article about Over the Rainbow's closing. One of the owners, Charmaigne Wood, has a great quote about supporting the community through GLBT owned bars:

We remind all GLBT people to support your home bars: your homo bars. GLBT bars are not a community service—they are businesses, and rely on revenues. Owners of GLBT bars are taking a stand, politically and personally. Support that. No one wants to be in the position of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Gay bars are important socially and politically. They’re where we are most comfortable, most accepted. They’re where we find common cause, politically and emotionally...Until we are accepted in the larger society, until we can marry, until we have adoption rights, until we are not outsiders, we need these gathering places. GLBT bars are where we can be totally who we are. As diverse as the GLBT community is, the one thing we have in common is a need to belong. GLBT bars allow us to belong. Be there!

I responded to it and thought I would copy my response here:

While I agree with Woods’ main points, that it's important to support GLBTQI businesses and that safe spaces are important both emotionally and politically for us, I disagree with the strong bias toward bars as places ”where we are most comfortable, most accepted.” This certainly hasn’t been my experience with gay bars. I’ve had fun at bars, I’ve been depressed at bars, heck I’ve even been drunk at bars, but ultimately it’s the people you’re with that can make the place comfortable and comforting. I can be with my friends nearly anywhere.

I wonder, are gay bars and bar owners serving our best interests? Or the best interests of the community? After all, bars are businesses as Woods asserts, and they are in the business of selling alcohol. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good gin and tonic, black Russian or vodka martini as much as the next guy. And I certainly don’t want to imply that Woods or any other gay bar owner in the Twin Cities is taking advantage of us. I honestly believe they care for their fellow queers and want to support all of us. But it’s important to remember that alcoholism is a problem within our community that has come under a lot of scrutiny lately. I think this can only be exacerbated when our fun pastimes become the way by which others identify us. Especially as businesses vie for control of the “pink dollar” and start co-branding with us.

Do we want Absolut, Miller, and Coors, sponsoring our parties? Is that the yardstick by which we ought to be judging our acceptance within the mainstream, straight world? Or our acceptance of ourselves? Rather than looking to gay bars to incubate us and insulate us, I think we should be questioning the community’s relationship to alcohol and also to other communities. We should be asking ourselves why aren’t neighborhood associations, PTA meetings, hiking groups and workplaces not considered “our spaces”?