Las Vegas

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Las Vegas, Nevada Out History Timeline - 1969 to 2009

(c) Dennis McBride, 2009

Read a general OutHistory of Nevada, and find out about our contributors here: http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/User:Nevada


1969 – 1982: Community Foundations

  • 1969:
    Kenny Kerry in the late 80s, early 90s
    Las Vegas entertainer Kenny Kerr remembers being at the Stonewall Riots



  • January 16, 1970:
    Le Café neon sign, c. 1975
    Cocktail waitress Marge Jacques buys the Club de Paris and changes its name to Le Café. Le Café functions as the de facto gay and lesbian community center for Las Vegas, and in 1971 begins publishing Gay Notes from Le Café, the gay community's first publication, compiled by Rafaél Navarré. Le Café is torched and closes in 1978. Le Café set a new standard on the quality of gay bars in Las Vegas. Openly gay, Marge's political activities in the 1970s established the political consciousness of Las Vegas's gay community.


  • March 14, 1974: An article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that Rev. Clonnie Lambert is pastor of a Las Vegas chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). In October, 1979, a new chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church in Las Vegas conducts its first service in St. Matthew's Episcopal Church at 4709 S. Nellis Boulevard. Rev. Ron Gee officiates and from this day MCC-Las Vegas becomes one of the cornerstones of the gay community.


  • May 1, 1975: The American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] opens an office in Las Vegas with a $5,000 grant from the national office. In 1977, the ACLU-Las Vegas sponsors a gay rights seminar at the Clark County Library on Flamingo Road. The gay community’s first newspaper, Vegas Gay Times, is published in 1978 "in conjunction with" the ACLU's Human Rights Committee.
Flier for the Reno Gay Rodeo, 1979
  • October 2, 1976: The first Reno Gay Rodeo is held at the Washoe County Fairgrounds in Reno. The event is closed to the general public. The rodeo's presence in Reno is contentious. In 1981, Lt. Governor Myron Leavitt, remarking on the Reno Gay Rodeo (RGR), says, "I'm strongly opposed to queers using public property. ... They call them queers because they've got a screw loose." Governor Robert List follows this up on March 27 by complaining, "I just don't like the notion that the nation looks toward Nevada as the gay rodeo capital." Within a few years, the group reorganizes and moves its base of operation to southern Nevada. On August 10, 2002, the Nevada Gay Rodeo Association celebrates its 10th anniversary at Badlands.


  • May 13, 1977:
    This is Boy-Lesque, 1977
    Boylesque opens at the Silver Slipper Casino, starring Kenny Kerr as "Mr. Barbra Streisand, Mr. Marlene Dietrich, Mr. Carol Channing, and Mr. Diana Ross." The show sets a new standard for female impersonation productions, and soon becomes a Las Vegas institution. Initially reluctant to be openly gay, Kenny Kerr goes on to become one of the Las Vegas gay community's most thoughtful and honored leaders.





  • July 31, 1977: The Las Vegas Review-Journal begins a two-part series on gays in Las Vegas. The series is generally positive, but still depicts the gay community in Las Vegas as a shadowy netherworld turned in on itself through fear. Marge Jacques, owner of Le Café, reflects Las Vegas's homophobic attitude when she declines to give addresses for the city's other gay bars, and when she says, "Gays wear a mask here when they are in the straight world."



  • January 13, 1979: The first meeting of Nevadans for Human Rights (NHR) is held. Incorporated in the fall of 1978 as a non-profit political group, NHR is Nevada's first gay rights organization. NHR formally adopts the Vegas Gay Times as its newsletter.



  • March 15, 1979: Following on the heels of anti-gay state measures such as California’s recently defeated Proposition 6 (the “Briggs Initiative”), Democratic Assemblywoman Karen Hayes announces plans to introduce a bill allowing school officials to fire or refuse to hire gay people.


  • September 24, 1979: Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt introduces the Family Protection Act of 1979 [Senate Bill 1808], a 57-page omnibus of conservative religious and social values that was, among other things, anti-abortion and anti-gay.


  • January 27, 1980: The Camp David bathhouse opens at 2631 South Highland Avenue. It becomes not only a center for socializing but an important site for safe sex education and activism.




  • June, 1982: The Southern Nevada Social Service Center, which operates Las Vegas's Gay Switchboard, releases a detailed master plan to establish a Las Vegas Gay Community Center.


1983 – 1994: Loss, Strength, and Survival

  • February 5, 1983: The Gay Academic Union of UNLV holds its first formal meeting in the Moyer Student Union.
  • March 10, 1983: A 32-year-old man, resident in Las Vegas just six months, is the first person to die of AIDS in Southern Nevada. Just over a year later, in March 1984, Aid for AIDS of Nevada [AFAN] forms in a meeting at MCC-Las Vegas attended by representatives of MCC, Nevadans for Human Rights, Nevada Gay Times, the Gay Switchboard, UNLV's Lesbian Gay Academic Union, the Community Action Committee, and the Buffalo bar. The parent organization is Aid for AIDS, founded in Los Angeles in mid-1983. The organization begins publishing AFANews in 1985. In 1987, the First Annual Superstar Aid for AIDS Benefit is performed in the Lido showroom at the Stardust Hotel. Entertainers include Norm Crosby, Lola Falana, Robert Goulet, Suzanne Somers, the McGuire Sisters, Roberta Sherwood, the Smothers Brothers, and cast members from a number of Strip shows. The event raises more than $8,000 for AFAN. In 1991, Las Vegas holds its first AIDS Memorial Walk. By 1992, Nevada AIDS cases pass 1,000. In 2001, AFAN's 11th Annual AIDS Walk breaks all previous records for participation and revenue: more than 3,000 people raise $172,483. On August 27, 2004 Fighting AIDS in Our Community [FACT] opens a new, larger facility on Wheeler Peak Drive. FACT was founded in 1998 as an outreach to the African-American HIV/AIDS community, and had been operating from a small office at the University Medical Center [UMC].



  • June, 1983: The Las Vegas Gay Archives is founded by Dennis McBride.


Alfred Parkinson(l) Fred Schoonmaker(r) Stonewall Park Rhyolite, 1987

November 19, 1984: Reno gay activist Fred Schoonmaker announces in the Reno Gazette Journal that he intends to establish a gay town in Nevada where the state’s gay community could find a “safe and peaceful place” to escape institutionalized homophobia. The town will be named Stonewall Park for the 1969 Stonewall Riots that sparked the fight for gay equality. Schoonmaker, his lover, Alfred Parkinson, and several loyal friends attempt first to establish Stonewall Park in Silver Springs, Nevada; then in Rhyolite; and, finally, on a ranch near Thunder Mountain north of Reno. Each time, local hostility, lack of broad support in the gay community, and Fred’s own lack of business sense, doom the project. His dream unrealized, Fred dies of an AIDS-related heart attack on May 20, 1987.

  • March 29-31, 1985: The first Desert States Lesbian and Gay Conference [aka the Desert and Mountain States Lesbian and Gay Conference] is held at UNLV.


  • February 4, 1987: Women United of Nevada holds its first organizational meeting. At this meeting a faltering lesbian social group established on July 12, 1986 is absorbed. From this point, Women United of Nevada becomes Las Vegas's longest-lived and most popular lesbian organization. Ten years later, on February 14, 1997, for one grand night, Women United of Nevada and Ladies Night Out—both long defunct—resurrect themselves for a Valentine's Dance Reunion at the Flex nightclub. More than 400 women show up.


  • December 11, 1987: Taking over where the Las Vegas Community Bookstore left off in 1984, Bright Pink Literature (Get Booked) opens at 4310 Paradise Road, Suite 202-A, adjacent to the Body Shop bar. Bright Pink is owned and operated by Las Vegas Bugle publisher Rob Schlegel and quickly becomes one of the community's most popular hangouts. Bright Pink hosts art shows and autograph receptions and provides gay titles Las Vegas's commercial bookstores won't carry.


  • April 1, 1990: The Community Counseling Center opens at 1006-1008 East Sahara Avenue. Within a short time Community Counseling becomes one of the gay community's greatest resources, providing a host of counseling programs tailored for Las Vegas's gay population that are unavailable anywhere else; meeting space for community groups; and outreach efforts to such mainstream organizations as the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police force, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the Teamsters Union.


  • October 11, 1991: Las Vegas throws its first National Coming Out Day celebration in Sunset Park, sponsored by the Lambda Pride Association.


  • May 13, 1993:
    Letter from Assemblyman, John Bonaventura, 1993
    Senate Bill 466, drafted by State Senator Lori Lipman Brown to repeal Nevada's sodomy law, is introduced in the Nevada legislature. In May, it passes the Senate and in June, the Assembly. On June 16, 1993, Governor Bob Miller signs the bill, decriminalizing consensual sex in private between gay people. Nevada the only state whose legislature voluntarily repealed its sodomy law. Nevertheless, the infamous crime against nature is still defined in Nevada as anal intercourse, cunnilingus or fellatio between consenting adults of the same sex.



  • October 15, 1993: When the Gay and Lesbian Community Center holds its grand opening at 912 East Sahara Avenue, the ever-vigilant Christian Resistance group puts homophobic fliers on the windshields of cars in the parking lot. In 2000, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, still going strong, shortens its name to The Center to better include bisexual and transgendered people.



  • January-June, 1994: Lon Mabon exports his fundamentalist organization, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, to Nevada as the Nevada Citizens Alliance [NCA]. The NCA joins with a number of right-wing and religious fundamentalist organizations indigenous to Nevada [including Nevada Concerned Citizens] to get the homophobic Minority Status and Child Protection Act on Nevada's 1994 ballot. Their petition drive fails due in part to active opposition from Nevada Governor Bob Miller and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones.

1995 – 2009: Political Action and Reaction

  • February 28, 1996: Gays and Lesbians of Color begin meeting bi-weekly at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center.


  • November 5, 1996: David Parks wins election in Assembly District 41—the first openly gay person elected to public office in Nevada. On March 10, 1999, Parks introduces Assembly Bill 311 prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill goes on to win passage in both the Assembly and Senate, and on May 29, 1999, Republican Governor Kenny Guinn signs AB 311, noting that signing the bill is "a matter of fairness and doing what's right for the people of Nevada. I have always felt that discrimination based on race, gender, religion or sexual orientation is wrong, and I hope this law sends that message loud and clear."


  • May 10, 1997: Las Vegas's first Gay Pride Parade, sponsored by the Las Vegas Bugle and marshalled by Auntee Social, winds its way for several miles through Las Vegas from the Flex nightclub to Sunset Park where the Gay Pride rally is being held. This year's rally only draws about 4600 people, considerably fewer than the year before.
  • June 15, 2000: :
    Freedom to Marry Fundraiser, 1999
    The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage in Nevada files its anti-same-sex marriage initiative petition with the state, known as Question 2, having gathered more than 120,000 signatures—three times the 44,009 required to get the question on the November ballot. In September, Equal Rights Nevada, established to fight the anti-same-sex marriage question (Question Two) scheduled for popular vote in November, holds its first press conference. On November 7, Question 2 passes with a 69.5% vote. The question appears on the ballot again in 2002, passes again, and becomes an amendment to the state constitution.


  • September 7, 2000: The Center Stage, Inc. theater company presents Kate Bornstein's Hidden: A Gender, the first transgender-issue play performed in Las Vegas.



  • December 11, 2000: A new lesbian organization called Betty's Outdoor Adventures—soon changed to Betty's Outrageous Adventures—is founded.


  • March 19, 2001: Despite his anticipation of intense opposition, Nevada State Assemblyman David Parks introduces Assembly Bill 496, which would allow unmarried couples, gay and straight, to sign a Declaration of Reciprocal Beneficiary Relationship. The legislation fails.



  • May 17, 2003: Dan Hinkley, founder of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Southern Nevada, is elected the first openly gay official of the Nevada Democratic Party. At the Democrats' state meeting in Tonopah, Hinkley is elected party secretary.
  • November, 2008: Assembly member David Parks is elected Nevada’s first openly gay State Senator. The state “turns blue” and elects both Barack Obama as President and Dina Titus as member of Congress.



  • February 17, 2009: AB 184 is introduced by Senator Parks to prohibit discrimination in Nevada based upon gender identity or expression. In March, the Nevada State Senate Commerce and Labor Committee introduces SB 207, adding sexual orientation to Nevada's anti-discrimination laws in matters of public accommodation. Parks and Senator Bob Coffin introduce SB 283, the Nevada Domestic Partnership Act, to establish a Domestic Partners registry in Nevada.
  • April 21-22, 2009: The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada organizes the first-ever LGBTQ grassroots lobbying effort, called Equality Days, in Carson City, Nevada.


  • May - June 2009: In late May, SB 283 is passed by the Nevada Legislature. On May 25th, Governor Jim Gibbons vetoes the bill, only to have his veto overturned by the legislature on June 1st.
  • October 31, 2009: The First Annual Las Vegas Transgender Health Fair is held at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada.
  • November 20, 2009: For the first time, Las Vegas observes the National Transgender Day of Remembrance.
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