Colorado Springs, Colorado (KKTV) – When the icons opened their doors in 2020 in downtown Colorado Springs, there were few places considered to be created specifically for the LGBTQ +community.
At the time, the only other LGBTQ + bar was the owners of club icons. And the Maris Joshua and John Franklin-Wolfe said that the opening of a new LGBTQ + bar, in particular the city center, was a risk.
“I think it was a risk,” said Josh. “I mean, any business will have a high risk, but for us in particular, we just did not know if the community was ready for us to be as noisy and gay as us.”
For Josh, however, this idea for an outside place for his community had an additional meaning.
Josh had grown up in Colorado Springs.
And when he was young, he sailed his trip to a city that seemed very different from the one he would come back in decades later.
“I went out in the 90s, late 90s, which, if you remember, was a rather terrifying period for a young gay child in Colorado Springs,” said Josh.
While returning to a city which had a famous space for the LGBTQ + community and an annual pride festival with large crowds of participants, the environment in which it came out was shaken by a crime of hatred.
Up North, at the University of Wyoming in 1998, Matthew Shepard was found brutally beaten by two young men and linked to a distant fence. He died in a Fort Collins hospital shortly after.
Shepard was a gay student and his death fueled a movement for LGBTQ +rights; But for Josh, the idea of a gay of his age is killed for whom he loved it made the idea of going out more terrifying.
“It was a scary moment to go out,” said Josh, “but I’m also really daring and stubborn, so I went out in the 90s, but I was afraid of being in Colorado Springs very frankly.”
Despite fear, however, Josh said that living like someone other than his authentic self was unthinkable.
“I think being your authentic self is always the way to follow,” he said. “Throughout my life, I was confronted with adversity and people who want me to be something other than what I am and that simply did not seem authentic.”
It is a quality with which her husband, John, agrees. John said that he had grown Mormon, coming out while attending Brigham Young University, but finding common ground in authenticity and their shared love for musical theater when he met Josh.
The trip to Josh’s exit came at a time a transformer for the fight for LGBTQ + rights both in Colorado Springs and in the country.
Carolyn Cathey, participant in the LGBTQ + oral history project in Colorado College, has been a long -standing activist for the rights of Queer. While Josh sailed on her own trip, she said she had continued the fight she had started a long time ago.
“The 90s were a decade of fluctuation and progressive movement,” said Cathey.
In the early 1990s, Colorado had become the “HateIn large part due to the adoption of amendment 2 in 1992. This made it illegal to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
“That night, the evening of the elections, the leaders of the gay community were poor Richards, it was the center,” said Cathey. “When the bill was adopted, it is adopted only because the county of El Paso has turned the scale.”
Cathey said it was just an example of a story of discrimination against people like her. In fact, she said that when she grew up, loving differently from others was criminalized.
While places like icons are now used as safe spaces, Cathey said that she, and those in front of her, had to count on hidden spaces to find comfort and community.
“We are very aware of the bars that came and left for Colorado Springs, and they served such an important goal,” said Josh. “There is no way we would be here without a Q club and hide n Seek and the metro.”
According to Cathey, hide n seeks to hide n Seek.
“And we had to be underground because it was illegal,” she said. “Our community, we were not allies. We were accomplices in criminal activity. “
But ultimately, the laws criminalizing homosexuality were repealed.
“And seeing these repeated laws … is freedom,” said Cathey.
But the fight was not over, with amendment 2 allowing discrimination against people like it. However, she said that she and others pushed, it was also repealed. The United States Supreme Court canceled it in 1996.
“For decades, we have fought, demonstrated and manifested and traveled a million miles and called our elected officials and begged equality and we obtained it,” said Cathey. “We won the battle.”
And while things have happened with the death of Matthew Shepard, Cathey said that the LGBTQ + rights struggle has also done so.
“We were Ground Zero, this is what we have named ourselves, for the struggle for the rights of homosexuals, for queer rights,” said Cathey. “All that is queer through the country has resonated and started, is from Colorado Springs.”
Over time, conversation around homosexuals has increased, paving the way to the legalization of homosexual marriage, at the level of the state and on a national scale.
Soon, the city of Josh had already been terrified to exist was transformed.
After high school, Josh had become a Broadway artist alongside her husband. The two found the community in New York, playing with people sharing the same ideas and looking at culture around LGBTQ + rights change from a unique center. But Josh said it was finally time to go home.
“What our mission was was to provide a party space that was a little less hidden, less secret, brighter, daring and shameless,” said Josh.
“I think that for the two of us, we have learned that people who have different opinions or opinions on the LGBTQIA + community have a lot to do with lack of exhibition, fear or misunderstanding,” added John. “I think it also inspired us to come back here.”
The icons have opened up to a community with open arms; The one who, even after a hate shot at club Q, adopted his community, with companies even online lines putting flags of pride in their windows, declaring that their space was sure for a community which had once had trouble finding the sanctuary in the same city decades ago.
“It is incredible to see rainbow flags in the bridges during the month of pride and flags displayed everywhere, rainbow flags and companies saying that everyone is welcome,” said Cathey. “That’s why we fought.”
“It can save lives, be just nice and provide a space where you know you are welcome to celebrate,” said John.
The conversation has been transformed and after years of secret in secret, Colorado even elected the first openly gay governor of the State, Jared Polis.
“We thought it would never happen here,” said Cathey. “To go from hateful state to the great state of Colorado. We are the greatest state of the nation. ”
But the battle, said Cathey, is not over.
And offering a safe space, said the Franklin-Wolfes, is the root of the current battle for acceptance and equality.
“I would be neglected if we did not lie that the Trans (genre) community is attacked, and I just want to see more support for this community,” said John.
The Franklin-Wolfes and Cathey agree: the conversation around the LGBTQ + community has become more political, once again and more hostile. But Cathey said she was convinced that the world would come, just as he did.
“So the fight is now not to abandon the field. Do not let them take from us,” said Cathey. “Tell the story, each of us is nothing more than our story. Tell it. Tell it to all those who listen. Because when they know you, they can’t hate you.”
His words were resolved by Josh, who said that this kind of representation can save lives and maintain the conversation of equality in the dominant current.
“I think that whatever, we continue to introduce ourselves. We continue to offer space, we continue to celebrate who we are and ultimately the community puts itself behind us and themselves and want to be part of all this,” said Josh.
Josh said he hoped that he and her husband created the safe space and the sense of the community he needed when he came out for the first time as a young gay in Colorado Springs.
“I think that, daily, of this wall on the side of our building, it is a huge flag of pride,” said Josh. “And I am thinking of this child who is in high school who walks in the city center and sees this on a building and sees that someone, many people, famous who they are. And that they don’t have to be afraid.
“I think it’s super impactful and I hope, in particular, young people know that there is a huge community here just ready to support them.”
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