The Gay Life in Idaho

Less than a decade after Sacajawea led Lewis and Clark into Northern Idaho, another Idaho-born woman entered the annals of history. In June, 1811, the fur traders at Fort Astoria, on the Oregon coast, wrote of a Kootenai Indian woman who came out of the interior carrying a written message from the trading post on the Spokane River, four hundred miles away. Not only was the Kootenai woman's journey remarkable, but so was the woman herself. At first the fur traders thought she was a young man, because she dressed like a man and was accompanied by a woman she called her wife. But eventually the traders learned she was a woman, too. Her dress and behavior perplexed them, but not so much as to discourage them from employing her as a guide to lead them into the Columbia River country in search of beaver.

Over the next quarter century, other traders and explorers also wrote of the "manlike woman" who worked for them as a guide and courier and served her people as a warrior, prophetess, and peacemaker. They consistently recorded that she was dressed in traditional male attire and was always accompanied by a wife. Her story was passed down through the generations by the Kootenai, even into the twentieth century. But unlike the story of Sacajawea, the story of Kauxuma nupika, also knows as Qangon, is not taught to Idaho school children. She is one of the forgotten gay people of Idaho's past.

It is important for the people of this state to know the history of gays and lesbians in Idaho. Contrary to popular belief, there was a gay presence in this state long before the infamous Boys of Boise episode in the 1950's.

Gay men and women have lived and worked in Idaho for generations, contributing to the culture, economy and well-being of the state. It has not been an easy history or a smooth story; gays have been endured periods of intense persecution. But for all the travails there have also been triumphs, and the gay community in Idaho prepares to enter the new century stronger and more open and out than ever.

One of the triumphs in Idaho's history is the story of Dr. Alan Hart, a physician who led Idaho's public health crusade against tuberculosis in the 1930s and 40s. Dr. Hart and his wife maintained a home on West Jefferson Street in Boise while he traveled around the state lecturing and conducting clinics for the Idaho Anti-Tuberculosis Association.

Unknown to most Idahoans is that Dr. Hart was a transgendered individual, born a female and named Alberta Lucille hart in 1890. But after earning a medical degree from the University of Oregon and undergoing extensive psychiatric evaluations from one of her professors, she underwent surgery and entered the medical profession as a man.

Dr. Hart's new life was not an easy one. More than once he moved on when his past caught up wit him. But eventually time and distance lent him protection and he compiled a distinguished career in medicine in Idaho and later in Connecticut. Dr. Hart wrote a novel, entitled The Undaunted, about a young physician of ambiguous sexuality who fought prejudice and bigotry early in his career. Though Dr. Hart kept the true nature of his sexuality a secret while here in Idaho, his novel, published in 1936, is his message to the Idaho of today.

The bleakest period in Idaho's gay history was undoubtedly the Boys of Boise episode in the 1950s so named by John Gerassi, author of a book-length study of the incident published in 1966. On Halloween night 1955, three men were arrested for having sex with teenage boys. The authorities announced that these arrests represented only the tip of an iceberg; they they had uncovered an extensive homosexual ring operating within the city. TIME magazine reported the story; The Idaho Statesman expressed shock and indignation that such perversion could exist in Boise. The Statesman's editorial advice was "Crush the Monster." The first man arrested was quickly tried and sentenced to life in prison.

During the next several weeks, more arrests were made and reported on the front page of the newspaper. Those apprehended included a shoe repairman and a bank vice president. The first arrests were indeed of men who had sex with underage teenagers, but soon the direction of the investigation changed. The police began arresting men whose crime was having consensual sex with other adult males, even in the privacy of their own homes. Regrettably, some gays turned on each other, informing in order to escape prosecution. The terror in the gay community was real; many gay men fled the state. Altogether sixteen men were arrested, but hundreds of people - neighbors, family members, and informants of the suspects - were questioned.

The furor eventually died down. The acquittal of a prominent Boise lawyer helped take the steam out of the anti-homosexual drive. But the damage was done to Boise's gay community was real, and Idaho's gays retreated deeper into the closet, not to reemerge for another twenty years. Gay life was quiet, and what social life existed was limited chiefly to small gathering in private homes.

But change in the outside world brought change to Idaho too. The modern gay liberation movement is said to have begun in June 1969 when the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, rioted when police conducted one of their periodic raids. Emboldened by the coming out of gays in other cities, gays in Boise stepped out a few years later. In 1975 two gay men opened the first gay bar in Idaho, Shuckey's Tavern, in the old Mitchell Hotel at the corner of Tenth and Front Streets. A year later, Boise gays organized a local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. With the establishment of the tavern and the church, it was as if a logjam had been broken. Finally there were public places where gays could meet and network without fear of intimidation. The result was a proliferation of gay associations of all kinds, from a drag court to a rodeo club. A community center was formed, a newspaper established, and they gay community flourished.

When the Boise Police Department fired several female employees on suspicion of being lesbians in 1977, they sued in Federal Court and won. Their legal victory lent further encouragement to those gays seeking equal rights and helped diminish many of the lingering fears from the Boys of Boise incident twenty-two years before. Gays in Boise began celebrating Gay Pride week in the late 1980's with picnics and parties, but it was not until 1990 that the community staged its first Gay Pride parade. For those who were not here, it is hard to imagine the conflicting feelings of apprehension and optimism felt in the gay community as the date of the parade approached.

The parade did attract some anti-gay protestors, but several hundred marchers proceeded peacefully on a route through downtown Boise. Another landmark in Idaho's gay history was achieved. The Religious Right's attack on gay rights four years later, in the guise of Proposition One, the anti-gay initiative, only galvanized the gay community more. Gays organized the No On One campaign, and together the community with its friends and supporters convinced the Idaho electorate to reject the proposition at the polls in November 1994.

"The Gay Life in Idaho" is a slide show that explores the history of gays and lesbians in Idaho since the formation of the territory in 1863.

Some other topics that were included in the slide show  are

• Where did gay men cruise in Boise in the 1920s?
• What leading homosexual rights advocate came to speak in Boise in 1911, and how was she received?
• Who were the first men prosecuted for sodomy in Idaho?
• How was Oscar Wilde's sensational sodomy trial in London reported and misinterpreted by the newspapers in Boise and Pocatello?
• How did public perceptions of friendship, sexuality, and physical affection in 19th century America, before the word "homosexual" was coined, give cover to gay lovers?
• And which Boise High School yearbook is full of homoerotic images, and what connections does it have with the Boys of Boise incident many years later?

Alan Virta is Head of Special Collections in the library at Boise State University. He is also a volunteer at The Community Center