Looking at Indianapolis’ unofficial LGBT history

INDIANAPOLIS — Last weekend, tens of thousands of college basketball fans headed to Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of this year’s Final Four. Less than two miles away, a cramped basement library sat empty, except for the photos of penises, kissing lesbians and drag queens that overflowed its narrow aisles.

For decades, the Chris Gonzalez Library and Archives, with a collection of almost 10,000 materials, has been the unofficial home of the city’s rich and relatively unknown LGBT history.

“If you were on stage in a dress in Indiana between ’85 and ’92, we’ve got tapes on you,” says Michael Bohr, the library's founder. He deadpanned, “I always thought there could be good fundraising money with that.”

In the hours leading up to the Final Four, Indianapolis was the focus of two of the nation’s biggest news and sports stories of the moment. A few days before, Gov. Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, prompting national backlash over its potential to aid discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Subtle and not-so-subtle reminders were all around the city, from a panel at the National Association of Basketball Coaches aimed at gay and lesbian athletes to the throng of fans looking for late-night eats at Downtown Olly’s, a 24-hour diner and gay bar.

And there was the weekend’s national anthem, performed by four athletes from the Final Four schools “in the spirit of solidarity and united as one community,” as the stadium announcer introduced them.

But for a true understanding of the history of LGBT culture here, there is perhaps no better space in and around the state capital than the Gonzalez Library, on E. Vermont Street. 

The collection has been 20 years in the making. In 1995, Bohr, now 66 and a retired auditor, began acquiring materials after an acquaintance died and his family threw out photos of the 1970s local LGBT scene that he had taken.

“His family just trashed all of it,” Bohr says.

It inspired him to ramp up his collection. Other materials in the library — housed in the same building as LGBT advocacy group Indy Pride, a law firm and a tattoo parlor —were acquired under similar circumstances, he said.

“There was always that going on,” said Bohr. “Families where they had someone in the gay community who had a collection of stuff related to the community, and after his death, they got rid of everything in his life they disapproved of.”

With Indiana suddenly the latest battleground in the debate over gay rights, he took “America Tonight” through the Gonzalez Library, showing off some of the items that have meant the most to him — and the city’s decorated gay community — for the past five decades.

Bohr: The fact we’ve accumulated these historical items, I think it’s important. Back in the '60s, when I first started collecting gay books, it was very hard to find this stuff. You'd find two or three titles maybe in six months. It didn’t matter how good it was. You picked it up because that’s all there was.

Bohr: Nurse Safe Sexx was part of the AIDS education campaign. He was a local guy. As you can see, he wasn’t trying to be real, as he still had his beard. They did a whole series of cartoons and different things to help educate people about AIDS, safe sex and condoms. It was a fun way to educate the populace.

Bohr: This is the poster from the first pride celebration on [Monument] Circle. Doing pride on the Circle was a way of stating that the gay community was here and that we had a presence in the city. Before it was done on the Circle, pride celebrations were small banquet affairs done out of the public eye.

At one time, after dark the only people on the Circle were hustlers. There was a police presence trying to drive people off the Circle. The pride celebrations were a way of taking back the Circle as a public space for everybody. You could be on the Circle and be gay without being harassed by the police. Monument Circle is the big circle of Indianapolis. Doing something on Monument Circle is saying, “Hey, pay attention to us. We’re here, and we’re a presence. We’re not going away.”

Bohr: This is Chris Gonzalez. His family gave us that picture after we named the library for him. He was the founder of the [first LGBT] youth support group [in Indianapolis]. He died several years ago of AIDS. His obituary made the front page of The Indianapolis Star. It was a really big deal.

Bohr: This poster was done by the Bag Ladies. They were called the Bag Ladies because that was the first theme for their first party. You could do mustache or makeup drag, and it was all a fundraiser for AIDS organizations.

The first year was just a social event. There was a well-to-do gentleman who used to have a Halloween party, and people from all over the country would come back for his Halloween party. And finally, it got too much, and he stopped doing it. So the first time the Bag Ladies did a bus trip, it was just as a replacement for that party. But because that circle of friends was from all across the country, Indianapolis started noticing its first deaths from AIDS who were a part of that group of people. It went on to become a fundraiser and went on to fund the [HIV/AIDS organization] Damien Center and different educational programs.

Bohr: This was done by a local artist. He died too young, before he could make a name for himself. The Rivoli is still in town. They rehabbed it once, and they might do it again. It’s a little neighborhood movie theater. I don’t know if you'd call it one of the great art movie palaces of its day, but it was a nice place. But it fell on hard times. It started showing porn and eventually started showing gay porn all the time to try to get a crowd.

Bohr: The bar I ran, the 21 Club, hosted the national Miss Gay America Pageant. It featured drag queens from all across the country.

We had one queen who came in who started her talent number in a mockup of King Kong’s arm. She ended the number climbing into a metal cage, and she was spun around by her male dancers. They whipped the cover back off, and inside the cage was not her but a live leopard. And she didn’t even make the top 10.

If you want to win the national title, you spare no expense.

Bohr: This was when we were following the gay marriage coverage when it was at its height. This is about the pride festival and how we got so mainstream. This was when the mayor let the gay police members ride in their cars and firemen ride in their trucks in the pride parade. It was a big statement in reaffirming that we’re part of the city. 

Things are very good in Indianapolis, compared to some of the other urban centers around the state. And things are a lot more iffy when you get out to rural Indiana.