HUFFINGTON
11.10.13
STONEWALLED
idents acknowledged her bar’s potential economic benefits. Instead,
residents made vague insinuations about Newton’s morals. “The
children will be influenced,” one
man said, according to the meeting minutes. One woman said her
son practiced soccer in a nearby
field. “I don’t want my son playing
soccer anywhere near the bar,” she
said, according to Newton.
No one asked whether the bar
would serve gays and lesbians,
but maybe they didn’t need to.
Newton is gay. Her former establishment, O’Hara’s, which
opened in Shannon in 1994, was
a gay bar. So was Rumors, the
bar that opened in the same location after O’Hara’s closed in
1998. Rumors was the subject
of a 2006 documentary called
Small Town Gay Bar. It closed in
2010. Now Newton wanted to reopen O’Hara’s on the same spot.
Although some people at the
town hall meeting said they simply didn’t want another bar in
town, no matter the sexual identity of its patrons, several residents who signed the petition
presented that night confirmed
to The Huffington Post that they
did so because they knew the bar
would cater to gays. One 80-year-
old resident, Betty Scott, put it
bluntly: “I’m anti-gay.”
“I know that’s not politically
correct these days, but that’s
the way I feel,” she said. “I’m a
Christian and in the eyes of God
it’s an abomination.”
For gay people living in small
towns throughout the country,
and especially in the South, it
may come as no great surprise
that a town like Shannon would
reject a gay establishment. As the
gay rights movement has cleared a
path to equality for gay citizens in
Democratic-leaning states and at
“I’m anti-gay. I know
that’s not politically
correct these days, but
that’s the way I feel.”
the Supreme Court, towns across
Mississippi have made news trying to restrict gay people from
living openly. In 2009, a school
in the southwest part of the state
excluded a lesbian from her high
school yearbook because she wore
a tuxedo in her photo. In 2010, a
school district in northern Mississippi canceled a high school prom
after a female student demanded
she be allowed to attend with her
girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. And