Bloomington Indiana University Memorial Union ‘gay center’ (#0262)

Not an attractive picture, but its an historic place. Though modernized, the layout of the cafeteria in the student center is much the same as it was in the early 1980’s – the food line on the right, a large amount of open seating. In the early 80’s, before there was any such thing as physical gay student centers, the ‘gay student center’ was wherever lesbians and gays happened to gather. There’s an entrance from inside the union in the back, and the tables we occupied were typically back there. At almost any time during the day, you could walk into the union and find a gathering of other gays and lesbians having lunch or just there for coffee, complaining about departments or teachers, talking state and national politics, the men discussing where to cruise on campus – all providing a sense of family.

There was some status discrepancy in who gathered at the tables, but that was mainly a function of homophobia. Most of those who were open about being out as gay were undergraduate students, with a relatively small number of graduate students and no faculty – in the early 80’s, being out as a faculty (or senior staff) member was a way to lose a job. Similarly, many graduate students were closeted out of fear about being able to get references for future jobs (my situation is in a later picture). Though, despite the prejudices, there were some straight graduate students who would join us for lunch.

Most important, we never kept our conversations hidden or discrete, any passerby could have figured out that this was the ‘gay section’. Though I had come to IU from San Francisco where there was a large and open gay community, it was at IU that I became most comfortable with something else – being casual and open as gay person in a predominantly straight environment, without feeling that I had to always be on edge, or be an educator about gay for straights. Just to live. For contemporary times that may seem odd, but it was quite liberating to be in a state where the students around me might have come from fairly conservative backgrounds, and to yet feel safe.