Take a Tour of Gay New Haven

John Allen leads a revealing walk into LGBTQ+ history

By FRANK RIZZO

Sometimes gay history is all around you, and you don’t even know it.

John D. Allen, Ed.D, is seeking to change that by bringing decades—even centuries—of the joys and fears, triumphs and tragedies, both the romantic love and the steamy sex, of being gay in New Haven with his walking tour: “New Haven’s Closet: 400 years of Queer History in the Elm City.”

Allen tells stories of the state’s first public gay execution, when Oscar Wilde visited the city, where Judy and Lisa performed; Thornton Wilder hung out, and Cole Porter frolicked. He talks about New Haven’s “Stonewall” moment in the ‘90s and of Jodi Foster’s theatrical bow at Yale and of Larry Kramer’s angst at the university, where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’s colorful furniture resides along with the papers of Langsford Hughes—and so much more.

Allen, a case manager at the Connecticut Department of Developmental Services and a long-time LGBTQ+ advocate, said the tour keeps New Haven’s queer community visible, as well as informs it of its past, which he says is especially important for younger generations.

His tour indirectly began about 25 years ago when Allen reached out to the city’s long-running International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the annual two-week gathering in June, noting a lack of LGBTQ+ programming. A modest grant allowed Allen to bring such speakers as Stonewall pioneer Sylvia Rae Rivera, writer-author-activist Urvashi Vaid, journalist Jonathan Capehart, gay advocate and Boy Scout David Knapp, and gay marketer Michael Wilke.

In 2015, Allen further proposed that the LGBTQ+ community be represented among the many walking tours the festival offered—and he’s been leading the popular strolls ever since. Allen has also spun the tour into informative and entertaining talks elsewhere throughout the year, such as one he presented last fall at the New Haven Museum.

Allen’s tour includes scores of historic markers of people, events and sites: from old cruising spots, to early gay bars, from gravesites to visits by queer figures, celebs and icons; from political struggles to the triumphs

Allen himself is a witness to much of that history, along with his husband Keith Hyatte, who worked Long Wharf Theatre from 1975 to 2015. (The couple met in 1982 and married in 2009.) Allen founded what is now the New Haven Pride Center in 1996 (now located on 50 Orange St.) with attorney Jane Griffith and Tom Jackson, as well as the Rainbow Support Group, the first organization for LGBTQ+ people with intellectual disabilities.

SUBHEAD HERE: ‘Our Stonewall Moment’

Gay history didn’t just begin after New York City’s Stonewall Riots in 1969, said Allen. “We’ve been a part of history since New Haven was founded,” he said. “People just don’t know it.”

Allen noted the city’s own “Stonewall moment” came in 1993 when queer activists sought a domestic partnership registry from the aldermen—which put front and center a face on New Haven’s queer community. The proposal brought out fierce and frightening opposition from Catholic and Evangelical Christians, some of which was aggressive and threatening, said Allen. “It was a mob scene.”

As an aside, Allen notes that Howard Nash, the Catholic priest who led the opposition, was later posthumously accused of sexual abuse of minors.

Though the measure failed at first by a single vote, it resulted, with the help of then-Mayor and active LGBTQ+ ally John DeStefano, in the formation in 1996 of the New Haven Gay and Lesbian Community Center—now the New Haven Pride Center. “We wouldn’t have the Pride Center if it wasn’t for John De Stefano,” says Allen.

The creation of the center was a result of Allen’s first-ever LGBTQ+ needs assessment during his graduate work in education at Southern Connecticut State University, which found there were more than 40 groups in the region with no central gathering place.

The center became an organizing hub, a meeting and event space and a physical and mental health resource organization for Southern Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ community.

SUBHEAD HERE: “Gay Ivy”

Some of the highlights of Allen’s tour and talks is centered on the New Haven Green which was the site of New England’s first public execution in 1646 when George Spencer was charged with sodomy, one of three executions to take place in the state, Allen said, who also noted that in 2015, Spencer was given a posthumous pardon.

Going beyond the Green and walking throughout the campus, Allen tells how Yale and the LGBTQ+ community have been intertwined for decades.

Allen said Yale alum Julie V. Iovine, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 1987, branded the university as “Gay Ivy,” claiming that one in four students was gay, which later resulted in the slogan “One in four—and maybe more.”

Yale certainly has its share of gay figures, and Allen points out their histories here, including those of composer Cole Porter, non-binary African-American writer Pauli Murray—one of Yale’s two new colleges is named after her,  AIDS activist, author and ACT UP founder Larry Kramer, medieval historian John Boswell, filmmaker Jennie Livingston (Paris Is Burning) and playwright Thornton Wilder (Our Town), who had a regular booth at the Anchor bar.

Artist Paul Cadmus, whose works are hung at Yale Art Gallery and throughout the world, has his archives at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where a host of other LGBTQ+ figures’ archives are also housed. They include including Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, David Sedaris, David Rakoff, George Platt Lynes, Oscar Wilde, Langsford Hughes, photographer and gay chronicler Samuel Steward, and National Coming Out Day founder Jean O’Leary.

Allen notes that Cadmus and Boswell are buried in New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in the nation. “Keith and I recently bought a plot there, and we want to be buried in ‘the gay section,” says Allen.

When John Hinkley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to impress Jodi Foster who was a Yale undergraduate at the time, the actress was about to be featured in Marsha Norman’s play, Getting Out at the Educational Center for the Arts.

Foster, who came out publicly in 2013, went on to play an FBI agent in Silence of the Lambs. Ironically, down the street from the ECA is the FBI regional center. The building was built on the site of the former New Haven Arena and where bisexual rocker Jim Morrison was arrested by New Haven Police in 1967 for exposing himself during a concert—and later wrote a song about it, “Peace Frog”. There is a plaque commemorating the arrest in the FBI building’s basement, said Allen. Gay icon Elton John was the venue’s last attraction in 1972.

https://youtu.be/X09B_nqIT6g?si=3DGR4M79YJ5ti4Aj

As a further aside, Allen noted former longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover created the “lavender scare”—the infamous surveillance, arrest and persecution of many from the LGBTQ+ community, including Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin. Allen pointed out Hoover’s own intimate relationship with associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson.

SUBHEAD HERE: Cruising and Gay Icons

No tour would be complete without mention of the city’s gay social and clandestine gathering spots over the decades, including The Pub, Kurt’s, the Neuter Rooster, Partners, Gotham Citi and 168 York Street Café, as well as adult bookstores on both York and lower Chapel Streets, with stalls to view porn privately.

Then there was the basement bathroom at Woolsey Hall and its tall stalls, which in 1971 were included in Bob Damron’s LGBTQ-friendly Address Book and described as relatively safe cruising spots for gay men. Also mentioned in the guide were the Farmington Canal Trail, the Long Wharf waterfront and nearby rest stops. (The nearest gay bathhouse was in East Hartford.)

“These cruise stops and bars were necessary because these were the only places where gay men could meet,” said Allen.

The Shubert Theatre on College Street was featured in many films beloved by the gay community, including, All About Eve, Valley of the Dolls, Auntie Mame and is also where many Broadway musicals had their world premieres, including Flora the Red Menace starring Liza Minnelli. Liza also returned with her own concerts at tghe Schubert and across the street at The Palace, now the College Street Music Hall. At the former Loew’s Poli Theatre on 23 Church St.  a young Judy Garland—along with Mickey Rooney—performed in 1939, just days before “The Wizard of Oz” was released.

Not far from New Haven’s entertainment district is the world headquarters of the Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus, which is a longtime supporter of anti-LGBTQ+ measures. Allen makes it a point to note the organization was the largest donor supporting California’s Proposition 8, which called for the elimination of the right to same-sex marriage.

SUBHEAD HERE: Gay Haven

But as a whole, New Haven is a gay haven, said Allen.

Even Ned Lamont and his family took his tour and since becoming governor has passed legislation strengthening LGBTQ+ rights, including the Connecticut Parentage Act and a ban on “gay panic” defense.

Allen said he is proud of the progressive approach the state and the city has had towards the LGBTQ+ community, noting that in 1971 Connecticut repealed a law criminalizing sodomy and that it was the second state in the country to do so. It was the first state capitol to fly the rainbow flag; the second state to offer civil unions in 2005; and one of the first states to offer same-sex marriage in 2008 through the legislature (and not the courts)—seven years before it was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state legislature, he said, added civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ youth and adults, and later added protections for transgender people who are incarcerated, as well as giving state residents the option of a non-binary designation through the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles. New Haven’s board of education passed measures meant to recognize and protect trans and nonbinary youth. In the early 1990s New Haven also had one of a handful of openly gay publicly elected officials at the time. (Michael J. Morand, as alder).

“It’s not by chance that these things occurred,” said Allen. “We are a small progressive state and the things that we do reverberate around the world.”

It’s all part of the important LGBTQ+ history to remember, he said.

In further support of LGBTQ+ causes, the couple has established the John D. Allen and Keith E. Hyatte for LGBTQ+ Interests Fund, the first LGBTQ+ fund at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, one of the state’s largest foundations.

https://www.cfgnh.org/increasing-giving/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund