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LGBTQ-plus History of the University of Virginia
Queer History
50+ years of building LGBTQ+ community
By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall
Fall 2024 / Features
1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, History, Traditions & Grounds, Past generations & bygone eras, Student Life, Diversity & Demographics
Editor’s note: This story is a deep dive. For a condensed version, click here.
The classified ad appeared in the back of the Cavalier Daily in March 1972, under the Miscellaneous section. It got right to the point. “Charlottesville’s first Gay organization is now in the works,” said the ad. “If you would like to help start a Gay Activist Group, please call …”
Just five or six people—“a pretty nervous lot”—showed up to an early meeting that same month, according to the organization’s September 1973 newsletter. “It seemed impossible to conceive of an organization like this in Charlottesville—indeed, some overzealous members of an unnamed fraternity, armed with rocks, bottles and a real shotgun, sought to prove that it would be impossible,” the newsletter article continues. “But the Union survived and matured. [Its] great achievement of that truncated first year … was simply existing.”
Over the decades, the experience for UVA’s queer community often tracked national sentiment. And in the early 1970s, “simply existing” was difficult enough for the LGBTQ+ community on Grounds and across the country.
In 1973, 8 in 10 people believed that same-sex relations were “always” or “almost always” wrong, according to the General Social Survey, a five-decade-old survey of U.S. adults, conducted through the University of Chicago. Sentiment remained about the same, subsequent social surveys found, until the early 1990s. ... UVA “was a hostile environment for anybody gay or lesbian,” says Bob Elkins (Col ’79), whose status as the “gay RA” at UVA made national headlines.
The Resident Staff page in the 1979 Corks & Curls, including Bob Elkins
{snip}
50+ years of building LGBTQ+ community
By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall
Fall 2024 / Features
1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, History, Traditions & Grounds, Past generations & bygone eras, Student Life, Diversity & Demographics
Editor’s note: This story is a deep dive. For a condensed version, click here.
The classified ad appeared in the back of the Cavalier Daily in March 1972, under the Miscellaneous section. It got right to the point. “Charlottesville’s first Gay organization is now in the works,” said the ad. “If you would like to help start a Gay Activist Group, please call …”
Just five or six people—“a pretty nervous lot”—showed up to an early meeting that same month, according to the organization’s September 1973 newsletter. “It seemed impossible to conceive of an organization like this in Charlottesville—indeed, some overzealous members of an unnamed fraternity, armed with rocks, bottles and a real shotgun, sought to prove that it would be impossible,” the newsletter article continues. “But the Union survived and matured. [Its] great achievement of that truncated first year … was simply existing.”
Over the decades, the experience for UVA’s queer community often tracked national sentiment. And in the early 1970s, “simply existing” was difficult enough for the LGBTQ+ community on Grounds and across the country.
In 1973, 8 in 10 people believed that same-sex relations were “always” or “almost always” wrong, according to the General Social Survey, a five-decade-old survey of U.S. adults, conducted through the University of Chicago. Sentiment remained about the same, subsequent social surveys found, until the early 1990s. ... UVA “was a hostile environment for anybody gay or lesbian,” says Bob Elkins (Col ’79), whose status as the “gay RA” at UVA made national headlines.
The Resident Staff page in the 1979 Corks & Curls, including Bob Elkins
{snip}