Emma Jones

Economic expansion and ideas about the free market had a profound impact on what magazines and books could print as well as distribute, which meant that queer folk in far-flung places could gain access to information about homosexuality, civil rights activity, and identity-based discourses. They could become part of the national imagined community of gays and lesbians. In Pensacola, “adopted brothers” and lifelong lovers Ray and Henry Hillyer had a desire to keep abreast of the latest news and other homosexual happenings. The started a small book club in their home under the cover of a non-descript name Emma Jones that by 1974 had grown into a weekend-long convention with beach parties and patriotic drag shows at the San Carlos Hotel that drew thousands to the beaches of Pensacola. When queer visibility threatened Pensacola tourism, bars were raided, arrests were made, and Emma’s party was cancelled. Partying does not always lead to political action, but creating a space for gay men and lesbians to feel at ease with themselves is a profoundly political act. By deploying their bodies and their dollars, the Emma Jones Society established an LGBT presence in “The Sunshine State.”

Drinkin’ and Carryin’ On in Search of Community

Before market forces created recognizable sites of gay and lesbian community, some queer Floridians leveraged their race and class privileges to create or gain access to spaces in order to find others like themselves. This chapter uses bars, “gay parties,” and friendship networks to show the ways that postwar mobility shaped queer socializing through complex negotiations of desire and access. In Tallahassee, the Cypress Lounge at the Floridan Hotel became an unofficial gay bar, while Florida’s powerbrokers schmoozed and facilitated connections to national identity-based rights discourses. Others used their private homes to host networks of gay and lesbian friends from around the panhandle. In Pensacola, Trader Jon’s and the Hi-Ho Five O’Clock Club were queered by sexually and gender non-conforming individuals.

Cruising and Boundary Crossing

The ability to travel, sometimes moving across boundaries of race and class, characterizes male cruising for sex along the Redneck Riviera at midcentury. Access to cars, busses, and boats coupled with the ever expanding and improving transportation infrastructure greatly expanded sexual possibilities for mobile men at this time. In ones and twos they turned their cars into gay spaces, they queered public restrooms, and they found each other on urban streets. Hustlers in Pensacola created networks and shared information about how to procure sexual partners and supplement their incomes, while some played with gender and notions of community. This chapter uses Florida Legislative Investigation Committee interrogations as a guide to the queer geography of the region and explores some of the inventive ways that men took advantage of mobility in the search for sexual partners.

Introduction

This chapter lays the foundations for the book’s argument about the intersections of capitalism, tourism, sexuality, and queer identity. It begins by explaining “The Sunshine State” and proceeds through an explanation of key terms and concepts such as “queer” and “redneck.” The chapter situates the work in broader LGBTQ scholarship and establishes it as a corrective to scholarship on the Redneck Riviera. It includes explanations of the source material and its uses, as well as the work’s treatment of proper names. It ends by establishing the temporal and identity parameters for the remaining chapters in order to orient the reader.

Selling “The Sunshine State”

In order to capitalize on local particularities, there was no single blueprint for selling Florida. “The Sunshine State” was both a descriptor of the weather and a hint at the imagined possibilities; but there was also a set of enforcement mechanisms that sought to maintain this hologram of paradise. This chapter lays bare the careful construction of Florida as a product to be sold on the increasingly competitive tourism market. This chapter examines both the image and the support/enforcement structure to show how “The Sunshine State” was deliberately crafted through promotion to outsiders, advice on good citizenship to residents, and selective enforcement of morality through agencies such as the John's Committee. “The Sunshine State” was a product, it was a destination, and it was a dream, but queer men and women were not welcome.

From Redneck to Gay Riviera

Though LGBTQ people had lived and vacationed in the area for decades, it was not until the mid 1970s that they began to conceive of the region as an LGBTQ vacation destination. Marketing had created “The Sunshine State” and the proliferation of print media coupled with a growing recognition of pink capital begin to craft the “Gay Gulf Coast.” The Fiesta Room Lounge in Panama City became definitively gay, the South’s first chapter of the Gay Liberation Front was established in Tallahassee, and Pensacola again played host to LGBT beach events during Memorial Day. In 1993, as the culture wars raged nationally, gay and lesbian tourists in Pensacola found themselves in the crosshairs of moral entrepreneurs attempting to capitalize on the growing conservative evangelical movement with a return to straight, white, wholesome, family-friendly tourism promotion. The response of local businesses evidences a profound attitudinal shift from earlier decades, a direct result of increasing LGBTQ visibility and their growing status as citizen consumers.

Queer Circulation and the Economics of a Moral Panic

Bay County’s economy in the 1950s was retooled to accommodate and focus on tourism. The rapidly changing economy and population created opportunities for queer connection even as it created the backlash against homosexual visibility. The communication networks and advancements in transportation, which made Florida so attractive to visitors, also made it attractive to queer men. Information networks, from national magazines to local graffiti, pointed the way to queer hot spots while better roads and vehicles made them easier to reach. Queer men circulated, congregated, made contact, had sex, and were at times punished for it. The men arrested in a downtown public toilet in October of 1961 were subjected to a campaign of public shame. Selling “The Sunshine State” and the policies that went along with it made this time in Florida a perfect storm that swept up the residents of Bay County in a moral panic.

Epilogue

This final chapter brings the narrative forward to the twenty-first century around the exploration of capitalism, the selective enforcement of morality, and the queer subject/citizen/consumer. It contrasts the treatment of drunken, heterosexual, college-aged Spring Breakers with the moral panics over gay and lesbian visibility. In 2015 anti-alcohol ordinances went into effect that were meant to curb the worst excesses of Spring Breakers. The beaches were finally quiet. In 1961, 1974, and 1993 “the homosexual” and more broadly queer shenanigans were the bogeyman that would supposedly scare away tourists. As the century ended, gay and lesbian visitors marshaled their market share and respectability politics to push back against moral panics. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, gentrification, pink capitalism, and respectability politics have proven hollow, which threatens to tear apart fragile coalitions.