It’s Las Vegas in the 1970s. You’re not exactly out — you can’t be, after all, as it’s illegal in Nevada to engage in any homosexual activities — but you’ve managed to find secret pockets of people like you. You go for a drink at a local bar, known for its queer patrons, only to walk outside and notice a police cruiser crawling past.

“We had to park our cars in such a way that the license plates wouldn’t be seen from the street by the Las Vegas Metro Police,” remembers Dennis McBride, ’77 BA and ’82 MA English, now a historian and author. “Whether or not they pursued anything against you really was not the point. The point was to intimidate us and keep us scared.”

It was a time when violence and discrimination toward the gay community increased as activism brought visibility to LGBTQ issues and thrust individual rights into the spotlight across the country.

“When so many of us were struggling and fighting in the 1970s and 1980s for basic rights — the same rights straight people already enjoyed — we were really fighting in the wilderness with danger everywhere: being arrested and charged with a felony; humiliated in the local press; losing our jobs; losing our families,” says McBride.

The gay community did see eventual progress with the repealing of anti-gay legislation and an increase in safety measures from federal agencies. In 1986, Congress held the first antigay victimization hearing, and the FBI began tracking gay-related hate crimes in the early ‘90s. 

Such efforts provided today’s LGBTQ youth with more rights, even if there were instances that cost early activists their lives.

“The generations that have come after us have not had to fight and struggle like we did,” says McBride. “It pleases me that queer communities today have it easier than we did.”

Yet,they are not free from reprisals, he says. LGBTQ youth now are witnessing an increase in violence toward their particularly against transgender individuals. He points to recent executive orders from the federal administration that are taking aim at nondiscrimination protections in the workplace; healthcare access of transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals; and the military service of transgender individuals.

“I fear this is the first step toward pushing all of us back into the closet and erasing us from society and from the culture,” McBride says.

As a historian, McBride hopes the lessons his generation learned throughout the course of the early gay rights movement will prove beneficial to the current one — and all the generations that follow.

Building a Community: Nevada's First Gay Rights Movement

As with the civil and women’s rights movements, change in what is now known as the LGBTQ community only came about thanks to the struggles — and accomplishments — of previous generations.

McBride was among those pioneers in Las Vegas, although he’s quick to acknowledge that his fight for equality was grounded in his 1970s reality. “Personally, I wasn’t looking ahead to the next generation,” he says. “I was fighting for myself and the community I was part of at the time. But also, being who I am, I was fighting out of respect for those who lived before me who were unable to fight.”

After graduating from UNLV, McBride worked as a curator in UNLV's Special Collections & Archives as well as the Boulder City Museum & Historical Association and was also director of the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas. He's documented his experiences through several books on the history of Las Vegas and Boulder City, including Images of Modern America: LGBTQ Las Vegas and Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State.

The LGBTQ community McBride he knew growing up was not, in fact, a “community” at all, he says: “The only thing we had in common really was the gay bars. What passed for a community was really more a matter of small cliques of people — gay people who had something [else] in common. For example, if they were teachers in the Clark County School District.”

Forming a social network or organizations was hampered by Nevada’s sodomy law (NRS 201.190), which was enacted in 1911 and made “any sexual penetration that wasn’t vaginal” a Class D felony.

“So, it was very repressive politically, legally. … You could be arrested if you were caught having sex with someone of your own sex,” says McBride.

At the same time Nevada laws had gays such as McBride living in fear, other parts of the country were moving forward. The Stonewall Uprising took place in 1969 and is considered the starting point of the Gay Liberation Movement. By 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and in 1974, the first openly gay politician to run for a state legislature — Elaine Noble — was elected in Massachusetts.

“Gay people began moving into Las Vegas from other places where they had been more open, more involved, more active,” explains McBride. “Those activists brought that attitude and that drive with them.”

Two such activists who relocated to Las Vegas were Lamont Downs and Steve Hinkson. When they arrived from Rochester, New York, they were astonished to discover that Las Vegas offered few resources for gay people. That led the two men to found Nevadans for Human Rights in 1978, and form a partnership with the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter. They also started the city’s first communitywide publication, the Vegas Gay Times.

Within a few years, two other pivotal LGBTQ organizations were established: the Metropolitan Community Church in 1979 and UNLV’s Gay Academic Union (GAU) in 1982. 

“People that were involved in one (organization) began getting involved in the other,” says McBride, “and then the organizations began collaborating.”

The Figures Behind the Movement

When McBride graduated from high school in 1973, he wasn’t sure he could afford college, as his parents had divorced and his mom was left to raise two sons on her own. However, after receiving a scholarship, McBride decided to enroll in UNLV’s English program. After earning his undergraduate degree in 1977, he promptly enrolled in the master’s program.

In September 1979, McBride and fellow queer student Bob Aniello put together a three-day creative arts symposium in which they invited well-known literary personalities, including Allen Ginsberg and his partner, Peter Orlovsky. The two men gave readings from the stage of UNLV’s Moyer Student Union ballroom.

The event was one of McBride’s first forays into staging a campus event specifically for members of the gay community. Then, in fall 1982, McBride met Will Collins, a transfer student from Arizona.

“Growing up, I learned what discrimination and prejudice was like from a racial perspective,” Collins said in a 1998 interview with McBride. “Even through in my heritage — from my biological father, I have Pottawatomie Indian and on my mother's side I have Aztec and Apache Indian.”

Collins described to McBride how other children bullied him because of his physical features.

“The boys used to make a circle around me and push me around and say, ‘You're father likes squaws.’ They said other things more graphic: ‘You're just some kind of dirty-name Indian. You're better off dead. The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ Things like that.”

And as he grew, he experienced prejudice based on his sexual orientation. His stepfather distanced himself because of Collins' interests in music and dance, he said. "Growing up I always wanted to be things they wouldn't allow you to be."

Upon arriving in Las Vegas, he, too, was shocked to find the lack of resources for gay individuals both on campus and throughout Las Vegas. 

He submitted ads in the student newspaper and posted flyers around campus, including in the Flora Dungan Humanities building — which is where, one late summer day, McBride ripped off a slip of paper with Collins’ phone number on it. 

The ads were targeted to those interested in joining a “special-interest support group.” While not explicitly describing itself as a gay organization, the same-sex symbol on the flyer not-so-subtly confirmed its intended audience.

“Because [Collins] came from a background of deep bigotry and prejudice against his race, I always felt that his motivation for coming out, for community building, and for bringing the rest of us along was deeply sincere and empowering,” McBride says.

Gaining Momentum and Support

UNLV administrators, including then-President Leonard Goodall, generally supported the Gay Academic Union, but not everyone on campus was enthusiastic. In a letter to the editor published in the student newspaper on Oct. 28, 1982, one student wrote: “Homosexuals need counseling to help eliminate their homosexuality — not 'UNLV recognition' to promote it.”

The majority of the student body — at least according to an informal survey — remained supportive however. Sociology professor Donald Carns agreed to be the GAU’s sponsor, and the group held its first official meeting in UNLV’s Moyer Student Union on Feb. 6, 1983.

In addition to McBride and Collins, another significant GAU supporter was Christine “Christie” Young. Young, a native of Reno who was straight, graduated from UNR with a degree in anthropology and had studied male homosexuality.

In an interview McBride conducted with Young in 1998 for UNLV’s Special Collections & Archives, she talked about moving to Las Vegas and becoming active with the Metropolitan Community Church. It was there where she met Collins, who invited her to join the GAU.

Being straight and an anthropologist with a deep understanding of human relationships and communication, Young became an asset to the movement. She spotted the need for gay men and lesbians to start breaking down the gender barrier between them.

“It was quite possible for a gay man — outside of going to the grocery store or the bank — to be completely immersed in gay culture and a lesbian to be completely immersed in lesbian culture,”  Young told McBride. ”And the twain don't meet.”

Young said that, while gay men had generally accepted her into their social groups, she experienced occasional hostility from other factions of the LGBTQ community. 

“There was a point where the Gay Academic Union and Nevadans for Human Rights were giving awards for people's work in the community. And, there were many, many people who did not want to give Christie an award because she was straight,” says McBride. “And yet, she went on the media, on television — she was there. It was tough for her as a straight ally.”

In May 1983, through a collaboration that involved the Gay Academic Union, Metropolitan Community Church and Nevadans for Human Rights, the first-ever gay pride event in Las Vegas was held in UNLV’s Moyer Student Union. Not officially a gay pride event, the event was referred to as the Human Rights Seminar. 

“We were striving for visibility and recognition, but without using the word ‘gay’, because we were worried it was going to scare people away,” says McBride. 

A day of seminars took place in the union’s Fireside Lounge, which was surrounded by tall glass windows — meaning the event was visible to the campus community. Speakers included Terry Wilsey, president of Nevadans for Human Rights; GAU’s faculty sponsor Donald Carns; UNLV history professor Vern Mattson; radio personality Carol Reynolds; and Dr. Walter Herron, who discussed medical issues facing the queer community. An LGBTQ dance was also held in the evening.

Despite one incident in which a marquee outside of the student union was vandalized to include a gay slur, the milestone event was well attended. 

A similarly successful event was held the following year, and not long after, the GAU changed its name to the Lesbian and Gay Academic Union.

The AIDS Epidemic’s Impact on the Movement

Just as they were gaining ground in the late ’80s, UNLV activists and others across the country encountered setbacks. The AIDS epidemic brought about fear and intolerance toward the gay community, and morale started to wane, as did attendance at events.

To reinvigorate the local movement, activists organized an all-encompassing gay pride event in 1991. Leading the charge again were Will Collins and the Metropolitan Community Church as well as Las Vegas Bugle publisher Rob Schlegel and other LGBTQ-related organizations. 

“Everyone put every effort they had into it, and we learned to work together — where we really had not before,” says McBride. “We learned to be compassionate with and supportive of each other. All of that ‘lesson learned’ [from what we’d gone through together] went into this event, and it was a smashing success.”

So much so that it brought out community members who to that point had avoided public activities.

“It provided the [LGBTQ] community an emotional respite from the AIDS epidemic, which had sapped a lot of drive, motivation, and political fight as we fought simply to stay alive,” McBride says of the 1991 gay pride event. “The queer community was recharged with new people and new energy that leaders took with them into the fight for the repeal of Nevada’s sodomy law.”

Those leaders included several of the original activists who first connected at UNLV.

“By 1993, we succeeded in persuading the Nevada State Legislature to repeal NRS 201.190 — the sodomy, or anti-gay, law,” says McBride.

When Gov. Bob Miller signed the legislation, it was no longer a felony for people in Nevada to engage in a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender.

“That was a tremendous, tremendous load off of our backs,” says McBride. “Nevada was the only state where its legislature voluntarily repealed a sodomy statute without a court order. It kind of restored our faith in Nevada government.”

Though the efforts of McBride, Collins, and Young (among others) are only one chapter within the greater story of a national movement, their contributions retain a place in UNLV, Las Vegas, and Nevada history.

Indeed, these activists fought to earn certain rights and protection that affected the generations of youth after them. At the same time, though, McBride has growing concerns about initiatives to roll back regulations and policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Removing these protections, he fears, will result in discrimination against LGBTQ in employment, housing, education, and healthcare.

This cyclical nature of history, McBride says, is exactly why he started curating a collection of artifacts and authoring books detailing the early gay rights movement.

Now, he says, “the question I’m left pondering is, ‘Can people who’ve never had to fight for their basic rights and dignity fight when they need to?’ I want to think, ‘Yes,’ but that remains to be seen. I worry about those who might lose what they’ve always had — unlike my generation, which gained what we’d never had.”