A gay bar is a refuge to people whom lawmakers have actively legislated against, at whom relatives and peers have spewed vitriol and hatred.Ĭollege towns across the country have a Pulse. Those naysayers, perhaps, have never rehearsed their gait or needed to adjust their intonation to fit in. A gay bar, drenched with alcohol and sweat, some may think, can’t be holy.īut those disbelievers have perhaps never found themselves meticulously studying the minutiae of how to eat, dress, walk, or talk to conform to some overly perfected gender stereotype just so no one beats them nearly to death. If Orlando’s popular gay bar, now the blood-bathed site of the nation’s worst mass shooting, was a sanctuary, its walls sheltered its congregation from the outside world. If Pulse were a chapel, its dancers would be its faithful flock. Above, people gathered at the Gainesville club on Monday night to pay their respects to the victims of the shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.
University Club, in Gainesville, Fla., near the U.
Patricia Ochoa, WUFT News Gay bars in college towns offer LGBTQ students a sense of freedom that differs from what they may find on campus.