Cubbyholes Safe havens and Stabilitas Lo

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci:
Quaring Small Town Gay Bars
Sarah Lynn Jones
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Communication Studies
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
415 Oldfather Hall
Lincoln, Ne 68588
sarahlynnjones84@gmail.com

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 2

Abstract
I explore intersections of sexuality and place in the construction of public memory. Malcolm
Ingram’s Small Town Gay Bar documents a GLBTQ community in rural northeast Mississippi. I
use quare theory, public memory, and “be longing” to explore collective authorship of a
stabilitas loci navigating sexual and rural identities and communities. I extend the flexibility of
quare theory to intersections of place and sexuality as interviewees constitute rural gay bar public
memory. The “be longing” patrons communicate are explored through four dialectical tensions:
visibility/invisibility, safety/danger, mobility/immobility, and assimilation/separation.
Keywords: Public memory, Quare, Sexuality, Stabilitas Loci, “Be longing”

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 3

Malcolm Ingram’s 2006 documentary Small Town Gay Bar begins by fading in on the
words “once upon a time…” and as a techno-jazz infused song picks up momentum the screen
fades into a skyscraper that could be found in any city across the United States.1 The camera then
shifts as if on a truck and the viewer is transported by road from skyscrapers to small office
buildings to highways to churches, trailer homes, fields, and finally drag queen Alicia Stone
welcoming the viewer to Lake county, Mississippi—home of Rumors, “the only gay bar in
northeast Mississippi.”2 Within five minutes of the documentary, Rumors’ owner, Rick Gladish
confesses: “Mississippi would not have been my choice. I was born here. I’m here now because
(1) I own a bar, and (2) because I have a great job. As far as being gay in Mississippi—it’s hard.
It’s very hard.”3 Another interviewee proclaims that “‘Whatever they feel about me, I still belong
here.’”4 Ingram’s documentary situates the narratives of GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer) experiences within small town life. As the film’s narrative unfolds,
viewers witness the intersections between sexuality and place. Both agent and scene exist in a
dynamic picture: “You might as well try to launch a gay bar or two in Wyatt Earp’s Dodge City
than in rural Mississippi, but the folks profiled here did.”5 Through the negotiation of dialectical
tensions, GLBTQ patrons communicate the correspondence of sexual and rural identities
constituting life in a “small town gay bar.” My analysis contributes a framework for approaching

the communicative strategies of GLBTQ individuals as they make sense of their sexualities and
spatial locations in rural South.
Small Town Gay Bar is an independent documentary that received a warm welcome in
small theaters across the United States 2006-2007. The film was recognized with professional
accolades as well: 2006 L. A. Outfest Best Documentary, 2006 Miami Gay and Lesbian Film
Festival Bests Documentary, and nominated for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 4

prize.6 Ingram’s film received reviews from periodicals both large and small—from Video
Business to Rolling Stone. Variety proclaims that the documentary “demonstrates ‘how gay bars
function as oases of acceptance and alternative families.’”7 I argue in this essay that the bars
portrayed by Ingram emerge as stabilitas loci for GLBTQ individuals as they negotiate four
dialectical tensions framed by hierarchies of sexuality and place. Translated from Roman,
stabilitas loci is the “stability of place” anchoring public memories.8 In this paper I understand
the gay bars discussed in Ingram’s documentary as stabilitas loci that patrons use to frame the
interactions between their sexual and small-town identities. As community members negotiate
tensions across these identities, I contend that the construction of memories for these places is a
rhetorical strategy for GLBTQ individuals to express their sense of “be longing.” Originating
from transracial feminist alliances, “be longing” draws our attention to two dynamics: the

longing that we feel to ally with various groups, and who we actually choose (or do not choose)
to ally ourselves with. The perception of who is a desirable ally and the building of that
relationship is a political and power-laden choice.9 The “be longing” that the interviewees in
Ingram’s film communicate speaks to their belonging to a GLBTQ community and a desire for
“be longing” within rural Mississippi.
Membership in multiple identity and social groups and their intersectionality has been
developed in many different arenas. Counterracist quare theory emphasizes the intersectionality
of race and sexuality, noting how the two subjectivities are mutually influential.10 In this essay I
adapt the malleability and insights of this theory to understand the intersubjectivity of place and
sexuality. In the original framework, Black GLBTQ individuals are positioned as experiencing
sexual and racial “be longing” in ways different from white GLBTQ individuals. My intention is
not to undercut the importance of race and sexuality, but instead to recognize that “be longing”

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 5

to multiple groups and subject positions can be productively extended to sexuality and place.
The bar patrons in this film not only identify with their sexuality, but also view the bars and the
small towns as their homes. As they go to work, get together with friends, and build lives with
partners, GLBTQ individuals express the “be longing” they feel toward their sexual identities
and rural communities. My analysis of the documentary explores the interaction between rural

and sexual affiliations across four dialectical tensions: visibility/invisibility, safety/danger,
mobility/immobility, and assimilation/separateness. The dialectical nature of “be longing” in the
experiences of rural GLBTQ community members in Ingram’s documentary emphasizes the
dynamism of where and with whom we feel we belong. Exploring the contours of memory,
place, and sexuality, each dialectical tension is situated within the ways in which interviewees in
Small Town Gay Bar communicatively construct the bars receiving their patronage.
Visibility/Invisibility
The myth of the small town is showcased in Small Town Gay Bar through our first
dialectical tension: visibility/invisibility. There are a number of myths foundational to the
American credo, highlighting that they (re)shape and are reshaped as the nation moves forward.11
Indeed, as it transforms and persists temporally “The small town myth is a master story of
American identity.”12 This rhetorical narrative draws together popular tales such as John
Winthrop’s shining city on a hill (later revived by Ronald Reagan), Norman Rockwell’s features
from The Saturday Evening Post, and the civic ideals of the New England town hall meeting
captured in small government as in Sarah Palin’s 2008 campaign rhetoric. The narrative threads
of the American small town myth (in both its fictitious and non-fictitious forms) are too
numerous to expound upon here, but the themes are pervasive: small towns are tight-knit,
virtuous communities shaped by traditional ‘family values’ and morality outside of the

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corruption of the Big City.13 One view of suburbia—the popular alternative to Big City life—
paints it as a declining “suburban sprawl” of urban life responding to the ‘needs’ of cars rather
than people—garages appearing bigger than homes, intersections more responsive to cars than
pedestrians, highways more likely to be built than bicycle trails and so forth. This car-centered
approach to city-planning lead to difficulties in generating tax revenue for infrastructure and an
inability to coordinate civic engagement, thus leaving us with the small town as the only
appropriate model to look back on.14
I articulate this image of the small town myth so that we can get a sense of two key tenets
of the ideology: closeness and virtuosity. There are many possible manifestations of closeness
and virtuosity—all of them (welcome or unwelcome) rely on a panoptic community where
neighbors watch (out for) neighbors. In her widely cited essay, Gayle S. Rubin argues that
“Dissident sexuality is rarer and more closely monitored in small towns and rural areas.”15
Visibility in small towns is seemingly unavoidable as there are fewer people with whom we can
blend in and ‘disappear.’ This visibility becomes more difficult to avoid if, as for many
community members in Small Town Gay Bar, the morality of the town and its citizenry is a
religious imperative for which the community is deemed responsible. Throughout the film, the
American Family Association’s seemingly panoptic observation of the now-closed gay bar
Crossroads in Meridian, MS is a point of contention for many GLBTQ individuals. AFA
members wrote down the license plates of cars as they drove past. Former employee and patron

Jackie Cox describes this forced visibility: “the next mornin’ you hear the whole list. Kinda like,
somebody like Billy Graham would get on there an’ talk about the morning and how went and
then the followin’ cars were spotted out on Tulip Creek. And everybody knew in Tupelo that
that’s where this bar was. And basically would tell the whole world.” Tim Wildmon,

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representative of AFA, views accountability through visibility as necessary for building
community, while for the interviewees who experienced this ‘outing’ saw such hyper-visibility
as a way to “either frighten ya into stayin’ home or cause enough trouble to close the bar”
(Jackie).16
As a rhetorical topos, the small town myth shapes one part of the intersectional hierarchy
presented within Ingram’s documentary. Interviewees in Small Town Gay Bar construct their
intersubjective identities and negotiate dialectical tensions specifically related to both sexual and
small town rural identities. Working with quare theory and the intersections of place and public
memory, this section argues that GLBTQ community members in northeastern Mississippi
communicatively manage a dialectical relationship between forced and voluntary (to the degree
that oppression enables a voluntary action) visibility and invisibility through the use of public
memory making and collective authorship. When visibility or invisibility is voluntary the
GLBTQ community exerts control over the sources of their “be longing,” while forced visibility

and invisibility by the extant community is a message resisting the “be longing” GLBTQ
individuals communicate.
Any effort to make sense of intersectional identities and collective authorship needs to
account for interlocutors speaking beyond individualistic identity categories and subject
positions. I find leverage for this argument in Aimee Carrillo Rowe’s postulation of transracial
feminist alliance formation rooted in an alternative to Louis Althusser’s interpellation—a way of
configuring individual identities through ‘hailing.’ Instead of ‘hailing,’ Rowe contends that
alliances require a differential belonging marked by a sense of “belongingness” to multiple
communities and the ability to move among those communities and belongings “without feeling
trapped or bound by any one in particular.”17 Conceiving of identities as multiple, fluid, and

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 8

emerging from be-longingness opens up rhetorical space for a discussion of interviewees’
communicative navigation of simultaneous hierarchies and public memory within their specific
time and place.
I use quare in this analysis tentatively, as a starting point, and for intellectual exploration.
In his proposal of quare as an alternative to, and a critique of, queer, E. Patrick Johnson deployed
the term as a “reconceptualization [that] foregrounds the ways in which lesbians, bisexuals, gays,
and transgendered people of color come to sexual and racial knowledge… differences that are

also conditioned by class and gender.” Emphasizing that areas of queer theory do not incorporate
racialized experiences, he argues more explicitly: “Quare studies is a theory of and for gays and
lesbians of color.”18 The quotations I have chosen here highlight the racialized nature of quare
theory; however as Johnson points out in the first quotation and in his etymology of the word
from Anglo-Irish literature, the word ‘quare’ works across class and gender boundaries as well.
In his concluding comments, Johnson explains that “Quare studies addresses the concerns and
needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people across issues of race, gender, class, and
other subject positions.”19 Given such fluidity, I work in this essay to expand quare studies to
address the intersectionality of sexuality and place.
Across the four dialectical tensions I have inductively developed from Small Town Gay
Bar, I will utilize four tenets of quare studies as insightfully articulated by Julie M. Thompson in
her efforts to quare public address to buttress my analysis. The first critical principle of a quaring
project is that it must open up a rhetorical forum for a multitude of speakers and hierarchies. She
explains that “Our scholarly efforts must speak to the multiplicity and complexity of human life,
for the speaking subject is never ‘simply’ gay or black or working-class or Buddhist or
transgendered. The speaking subject indeed occupies multiple positions in the social and cultural

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 9

hierarchies that inform everyday lived experience.”20 Indeed, we speak from and are spoken to

from a number of hierarchical locations.21
In Ingram’s documentary, Rumors patron and drag queen entertainment coordinator
Alicia speaks to the intersection of sexuality and place: “Being from a small town, a lot of people
are basically, in the closet. So, we have some slow nights and then we have our really good
nights. Um, it can be tough at times—um, course, we’re in the middle of the Bible Belt, so you
know, there’s a lot of name calling, but I chose to live this life, so I know there are repercussions
with that decision.” Debbie Shutack describes the tension that Alicia brings up: “This is my first
time to be here. And it’s ok, ya’know it’s a small town bar, but it’s a place to go. It’s just nice to
get out where you don’t to deal with terrified heterosexuals. This area is bad—I mean, ‘if you’re
gay, you’re goin’ to hell.’” For both Alicia and Debbie, their personal sexual identities are in a
mutually influential relationship with Bible Belt interpretations of their sexual identities. For
Alicia, one ‘solution’ for this tension is division and attempting to make sexuality invisible:
“That’s one thing that I try to keep separated—is my professional from my personal.” This
division is maintained through filming as Ingram interviews both Alicia, the drag identity and
Jim, the gay man at work. During his interview, Jim reveals that the invisibility Alicia describes
is not entirely effective: “there has been a couple of questionable things said to me up there.
There have been some comments made that they are going to convert me and everything. They
said that they’re gonna pray for me.”22
The visibility/invisibility tension also manifests itself as patrons utilize the second critical
principle of quare theory: collective authorship reflective of “speaking subjects as diverse

collectives.”23 In the previous paragraph, Jim, Alicia, and Debbie collectively author sexuality
and place as mutually influential; their multivocal narrative follows the dynamic relationship

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 10

between the sexual-identity and place-based “be longing” they experience, or the lack thereof.
More broadly, throughout this documentary, bar owners, employees, and patrons are
interviewed, thus the small town bar experience is not told from only the patrons’ or the workers’
perspectives, but instead the diverse collective of the GLBTQ community in northeastern
Mississippi speak together in their responses to the multiple hierarchies in which they are
situated. As GLBTQ individuals in this community fight against homophobia in a place shrouded
with judgmental rhetoric, patrons (re)constitute public memories in and of gay bars and GLBTQ
community. This “public memory requires what the Romans called stabilitas loci, ‘stability of
place,’ in which to arise and last.”24 Early in the film, Ingram splices the interviews of close to a
dozen individuals and couples together as they described Rumors and Ween’s “Homo Rainbow”
played in the background. While the collective authorship that Casey describes is focused on
interlocutors who are physically present with one another, Ingram consistently uses a splicing
technique encouraging the viewer to perceive interviewees’ co-presence, and thus a collectively
authored narrative. The interviewees demonstrate here that from a rhetorical perspective, the
documentary presents a collectively authored text and a multiply-interpellated place:

“To have a bar like this is very relieving”;
“I was ecstatic to be around gay-friendly people”;
“I felt right at home”;
“Right now, this is the only bar in Lake county—that I know of—that I can come and be
myself.”25
GLBTQ-friendly bars in northeastern Mississippi are places where GLBTQ individuals
come together to construct a place where they can resist hierarchies influencing their daily lives.
Among other tenets, stabilitas loci require a public presence and the gathering of a collective

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 11

around a common topic.26 On a larger scale, the interviews in the documentary are spliced
together as if the interviewees are having a conversation with one another about the same big
topic: living as a GLBTQ individual in the rural south. This topic is a clear focus, dynamic and
reshaped by the voices in the documentary. In the presence of owners and patrons, members of
the GLBTQ community collectively construct meaning for the newly opened Different Seasons.
Previously named Crossroads, this bar closed down in Meridian, MS in 2003 and lesbian couple,
Lori and Ruby, bought the property to recuperate the space from its torrid past (a past I expand
on in the final dialectic). In the context of Different Seasons, owners, employees, and patrons
gather on opening night to celebrate a new beginning with conversation, drinking, dancing, and
drag performances. One patron described the experience of Crossroads closing and Different
Seasons opening: “It was like the heart of the place just stopped beating when Crossroads closed
down and when everyone heard that this one was reopening it was like the heart caught a second
wind and started beating again.”27 In both the construction of the documentary and on the
opening night of Different Seasons, GLBTQ individuals gather in the presence of one another to
constitute this bar as their safe-haven. The re-emergence of a gay bar in the area creates a visible
presence for the GLBTQ community that had been rendered invisible with the closing of
Crossroads.
While the bar is established as a place where GLBTQ individuals can make their sexual
identities visible, we must also recognize the dialectical invisibility as many GLBTQ individuals
remain closeted in their daily lives. Just as Alicia steps out at Rumors and Jim is present at the
veterinary clinic Tupelo, Rumor’s owner, Rick maintains both visibility and invisibility. He
explains that despite owning a gay bar, he is in the closet to his Pentecostal family, which
“Makes it a little bit difficult when I go to visit my family ‘cuz I have to keep the biggest part of

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myself secret. Ya’know can’t tell ‘em how my love life’s goin’, what’s goin’ on with my family,
my friends, that kinda stuff. But it’s a choice I made to protect them.”28 Rick compartmentalizes
aspects of his identity, controlling his “be longing” to two communities through visibility and
invisibility. This choice, however, is not always in the hands of GLBTQ individuals. While Jim’s
sexuality was communicated as visible at the veterinary clinic, representatives of religious
groups have been even more forceful in making patrons’ sexuality visible—as with tracking
license plates and radio ‘outings.’ Despite the GLBTQ patrons’ stabilitas loci, external forces
continue to bring forth tensions between visibility and invisibility in the community.
Safety/Danger
Related to rural Mississippi gay bars as places where visibility and invisibility are
simultaneously present and navigated, Ingram’s interviewees experienced the community and the
bar as concurrently safe and dangerous. I framed the visibility/invisibility dialectical tension
using small town myth to emphasize the intersectionality of rural and sexual identities. In
addition to this mythic framework, the dialectical tension between safety and danger experienced
by interviewees is communicated within a context of homosexual panic. This anxiety is “the
homophobic terror of guilt by homosexual association that subtly governs our social bonds and
warrants visceral and vicious responses to any potential encroachment by the queer contagion.”29
This particular form of homophobia not only requires distancing from and marginalization of
GLBTQ individuals, but also frames non-heterosexual identities in a rhetoric of contagion. While
Small Town Gay Bar emphasizes the experiences of patrons in northeastern Mississippi, Ingram
uses news stories and interviews from both Alabama and Kansas to situate northeastern
Mississippi within a larger southern context. This move positions the GLBTQ community’s
experiences not as isolated, but instead as part of a larger body of homosexual panic and

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prejudice. Beginning with a narrow scope early in the documentary, Ingram interviews
heterosexual patrons of Marilyn’s Place—a confederate flag decorated bar down the road from
the GLBTQ-friendly Rumors. When asked if he had heard of Rumors, one man responded
“Rumors? [uncomfortable, surprised laugh] Why’d you ask me that? Hey, you ask me a
question, I’m gonna ask you a question: why’d you ask me about Rumors? I personally, would
never set a foot in Rumors. Ever. As long as I live.” For this heterosexual bar-goer, the very topic
of a gay bar insights homosexual panic about contact—both literal (stepping foot) and symbolic
(asked to provide information).
Throughout the documentary, patrons of Marilyn’s Place and representatives of religious
organizations are asked of their knowledge about gay bars in the area—their responses are
consistently tinged with homosexual panic. Fred Phelps describes the events that acted as a
catalyst for his “God Hates Fags” movement: “There’s a park over here named Gage Park. We
noticed when we would go over there to jog or anything, our people would be over there, that the
people would be over there—the fags had taken over the park and we couldn’t go over there any
time, day or night, without them groanin’ and rollin’ around in the bushes.” Phelps’ description
is tinged with visions of a seedy moral sickness (“groanin’ in the bushes”) and frames GLBTQ
individuals as spreading in the park like a plague takes over bodies.
Ingram also splices together the voices of homosexual panic with the voices that present
two other critical principles of quare theory: contesting heteronormativity and addressing both
hegemonic- and counter-publics.30 After interviewing AFA representative Tim Wildmon, Ingram
meets up with Alicia and three of her friends in what appears to be a limousine. From the camera
angle, Alicia looks as though she is addressing Ingram; however through splicing together the
two interviews, she appears to be having a conversation with Wildmon:

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 14

Wildmon: I guess that’s [Rumors] where they go and congregate and meet one another.
That’s an unfortunate and unhappy group of people most of the time.
Ingram: Why are they unhappy?
Wildmon: A very high rate of promiscuity. I don’t know why they’re unhappy exactly. I
think they’re spiritually unhappy, but I would say there’s high level of promiscuity in the
homosexuals community that’s greater than in the heterosexual community. And I don’t
what that means exactly except maybe they’re lookin’ for somthin’ or tryin’ to find love
or tryin’ to find what they think is acceptability.
Alicia: I just wanna know, who is he to say that there is somethin’ missin’ from our lives.
I feel that my life is complete. Ya’know there’s obviously somethin’ missin’ from their
lives because they have nothing better to do than sit around and criticize us. I’m with
somebody that I love dearly who I’ve been with for three years, ya’know we don’t have
children, but we have five very beautiful dogs. All of ‘em are purebred by the way.
Who’s to say—ya’know what is the definition of family?…You know, it is my life, God
put me on this Earth ya’know to make my decisions, I don’t have to answer to him. What
we need in the gay community is all these people out here makin’, that’s tryin’ to make
our decisions for us, let us be the grown adult tax payers that we are and make our own
decisions.
Wildmon: I knew there was a gay bar around here 15 years ago, but I didn’t know there
was one that existed even today. And I don’t know, I mean ya’know in small towns
things get reputations—maybe that’s a singles bar over there and that’s a gay bar over
there.
Ingram: It’s been a gay bar for seven years.

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Wildmon: Oh well, that’s, I don’t—[shakes head]
Alicia: oh whatever they have been boycottin’ outside our bar. Now that right there’s a
lie. You tell me how Christian-like they are. Yes, lyin’s a sin and aren’t all sins equal? I
guess that makes him right in the same boat as we are. Boo-yah, AFA.
Wildmon characterizes GLBTQ bar patrons and their community as one that is morally (and
most likely sexually through STDs) tainted. While he tries to appear as though speaking from a
place of concern and present himself as a moral compass, Alicia responds to his discourse by
contesting heteronormativity (“what is the definition of a family?”) and addressing both
hegemonic-publics (“who is he to say…?”) and counter-publics (“what we need in the gay
community”).
Homosexual panic speaks to a homophobia that opens doors to homosexual violence—
both hate crimes and the impending violence are never far from the discourse of Small Town Gay
Bar. Ingram splices together interviews describing homophobia, consequences of a visible
sexuality (being out), and living in a small town. One patron, Cindy Sartin, summarizes the
relationship between danger and rural place on a broad scale: “You’re gonna have a fanatic here.
You’re gonna have somebody that thinks they can make the world all better and right according
to their beliefs. And those are the type of people that are gonna cause problems. There’s some
crazy out there who’s gonna do somethin’. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. That’s what scares me. I
keep waitin’ for the bomb to drop. Somethin’s comin’—it always does.” The screen then dims to
black and fades back in on a high school photograph of Scotty Weaver and another photograph
of police taped crime scene. In Bay Minette, AL in 2004 (three years before the documentary’s
release) Weaver was tied up, tortured, and brutally murder by three peers because of his
sexuality. In an interview, his mother recalls, “I says, ‘Scotty, you got to realize what you’re

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 16

doin’.’ I says, ‘people out there will hurt you on stuff like that.’” Unfortunately, Weaver’s death
is framed not only by the actual violence that occurred but also by the impending, constant threat
of violence perceived by interviewees in the documentary. The brutal murder of Weaver is not
the end of the violent narrative, but part of a larger story. His narrative and the words of his
mother assemble a specific place and time for the narrative arc of the documentary: rural south
marked by religious zealotry, homophobia, violence, and an overall air of homosexual panic.
Ingram emphasizes the narratives of Rumors and Crossroads/Different Seasons, but the
documentary includes a brief history of gay bars in northeast Mississippi revealing that the
recorded tension between safety and violence dates back at least 25 years. This historical journey
introduces us to Tulip Creek and The Sugar Shack & The Chute. Former patrons of these
establishments describe the popularity that the bars enjoyed while simultaneously being riddled
by police raids and community rejection. Jackie Cox recalls of Tulip Creek, a popular 1980s gay
bar: “On the nights when we would get raided, there would be drag queens in full-dress runnin’
across the field, across that there in high heels tryin’ to clear a couple’a barbed wire fences.” Cox
later remembers that “They shot through that house right over there. There’s people inside the
house, and somebody opened fire on it.” Despite threats of violence from going to the bar and
the rejection by the community of GLBTQ individuals’ visibility, these bars are described as
escapes, safe-havens, get aways, and places to let go and be free. Terry Capps reminisces about
his time at The Sugar Shack & The Chute between 1978 and 1984: “finally, I decided to come
and once I came, I was here from Wednesday to Saturday. Bar was very important to me. I mean,
I enjoyed myself here and met a lot of new people and realized that I wasn’t the only one in the
world.” At The Sugar Shack & The Chute and Tulip Creek, patrons express a simultaneous

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 17

feeling of safety and danger. For Terry, being at a local gay bar not only provided safety, but also
belonging; he was a part of a GLBTQ community in this small town.
A sense of commonality and community drew many patrons, but this benefit was
predicated on trust. Debbie explains that “A lot of people are still in the closet. A lot of people
because of where they work or what they do cannot be out of the closet. You go to the bar, you
don’t have to worry about it because if they came in there, they probably know that what’s in
that bar needs to stay in that bar.” This trust is a necessity for patrons navigating the dialectical
tension between safety and danger. Gay bars experienced police raids and hostility from the
community, GLBTQ individuals experienced homosexual panic from the community, and the
community expressed condemnation and distance between themselves and both gay bars and
GLBTQ individuals. As GLBTQ individuals in the rural community navigated these tensions,
the homosexual panic provided a steep barrier to their efforts at “be longing.” Importantly, rather
than rejecting gathering in a public place as merely a dangerous risk, Ingram’s interviewees
collectively authored their gay bars as places where their identities and bodies can find safety
and freedom.
Mobility/Immobility
Contemporary media representations of GLBTQ individuals and their identities are
deeply embedded in an urban, cosmopolitan, Big City place. Consider the following popular
television shows and their locations: Will & Grace (New York), Queer as Folk (Pittsburgh),
Queer Eye For the Straight Guy (New York), and The L Word (Los Angeles) among many
others. Of course there will be exceptions like Glee located in Lima, Ohio, but still a town of
close to 40,000. From a GLBTQ rights perspective, progress narratives typically follow a plot
structured around the urban place: a gay man will move to the city “in order to live in a gay

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 18

neighbourhood, work in a gay business, and participate in an elaborate experience that includes a
selfconscious [sic] identity, group solidarity, a literature, a press, and a high level of political
activity.”31 In contrast, as Small Town Gay Bar unfolds, the viewer is struck by the lack of
progress narratives of leaving the community to live in the ‘big city’: the original owner of
Crossroads left the area for a period because of a run-in with the law; the owner of the closeddown Tulip Creek bar left; and Rumors’ owner Rick, in the course of the documentary, sells the
bar and prepares to leave. However, those are only three narratives out of dozens. The
interviewees’ progress narrative is a collaborative writing of gay bars as safe-places where
sexual and rural identities can “be long.” While any hypothesis on my part concerning why these
GLBTQ individuals would stay in a community appearing to be ravaged by homosexual panic
and marred by hate crimes would appear as unsubstantiated pontification, I do want to draw our
attention back to the intersectional nature of identities. The interviewees in this documentary
have lives in rural Mississippi: they have jobs, homes, partners, families (voluntary and
involuntary), and friends. Despite the homophobia they have experienced, this is where they “be
long.” This is home.
While it may initially appear that the rural loyalties of the identities of the GLBTQ
individuals in the documentary limit their mobility—we are reminded throughout the
documentary that these individuals are not trapped in their homes nor paralyzed by fear. While
Ruby voices her fear about Lori being out in the country alone renovating Crossroads to reopen
as Different Seasons, they are both filmed working on the bar repeatedly on obviously different
days and occasions. Ruby explains that Lori made a choice to resuscitate the bar: “It’s
everything, everything to us. Bein’ able to go in and not have to think of a move or a gesture or a
hug or a touch or to show who you really are—to be at ease, not to feel like you’re scared and

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 19

restricted.” The threat of violence would render many individuals immobile, but as these women
work to reopen the GLBTQ community’s safe-haven, they demonstrate their mobility.
Interviewees also communicate how they control the mobility of their identities through what is
visible and where. Alicia/Jim controls the mobility of a drag identity by presenting a non-drag
identity at work. Debbie controls her mobility based on where she lives, outside of Tupelo, MS:
“to get here you either have to follow me or follow smoke signals or I have to pipe in sunshine to
tell you where we are.” While homosexual panic may create a place reinforcing
heteronormativity, interviewees consistently communicate the ways in which they constitute
their community as a place of their own—a place in which they have agency over their
movements and degree of visibility.
The gay bars in Ingram’s documentary are positioned as stabilitas loci of and by gay
community, presence, resistance to heteronormativity and hegemonic publics, and coalition
building. Contextualizing the struggles, we are introduced to the failed Tulip Creek, Crossroads,
and The Sugar Shack & The Chute; however, in the closing scenes Different Seasons reopens in
a celebratory, lively scene, and Rumors survives under new ownership. These bars are stabilitas
of the GLBTQ memory in this rural community. While there are some interviews with GLBTQ
individuals in their homes and even one in what appears to be a limousine, most of the
interviewees are inside or standing in front of Rumors or Crossroads/Different Seasons. This
consistency creates a stable location—an immobility—for the GLBTQ presence to be
consolidated and the GLBTQ public memory is anchored by the bar and its patrons.
Interestingly, the location of these interviews also works with the visibility/invisibility and
safety/danger dialectical tensions by taking place outdoors. Reminded that there is a heterosexual
bar down the road from Rumors and the narrative of rural south is riddled with dangerous

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 20

homosexual panic and neighbors armed with guns, we cannot help but recognize that the
visibility of the interviews challenges that panic and the heteronormative hegemony driving it.
Assimilation/Separateness
Throughout the documentary, it becomes apparent that in gay bars in northeastern
Mississippi GLBTQ sexuality and rural identities are not mutually exclusive. As these identities
interact, interviewees communicatively negotiated their level of visibility in the community, the
degree of safety and danger they felt, and their mobility in the area. My analysis has emphasized
GLBTQ intersectionality in quaring Small Town Gay Bar to draw our attention to the small town
myth, homosexual panic, and the enactment of control in managing dialectical tensions from the
experiences of the interviewee. The final dialectical tension I draw out of the film is assimilation
and separateness. This tension is reflective of a larger tension between assimilationist and
separatist goals in the broader GLBTQ community. As gay activists sought to ‘define’ a queer
identity in the 1960s and 70s around which a movement could function, two competing
definitions emerged: “(1) rights activists who wanted to reinforce the homosexual/heterosexual
distinction to achieve minority status [and thus civil rights protection as a minority group] and
(2) liberationists who sought to erase this distinction through a global revolutionary crusade and
as part of a general sexual revolution that would celebrate many forms of erotic behavior and
relationships.”32 As the gay rights movement has developed, there continues to be competing
definitions concerning how the GLBTQ community should relate to a heteronormative society.
For advocates of gay marriage rights, ‘pro’ arguments are made on grounds of similarity and
sameness. For groups like Againstequality disapproving of gay marriage, ‘anti’ arguments are
based on a differentiation-view that marriage is a heteronormative institution counterintuitive to
the GLBTQ movement.

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 21

In Small Town Gay Bar, the simultaneous performances of GLBTQ and rural identities
are constitutive of assimilationist and separatist tensions. Interviewees articulate assimilationist
and separatist ideologies as they appeal to arguments grounded in similarity or difference. One
male interviewee is explicit in his appeal to similarity: “I’m just like every ordinary person, I
work forty hours a week and this is my stress-reliever. I come out here, have a few beers.” Rick
positions his bar Rumor’s ideology as initially based on assimilationist attitudes while revealing
a seemingly contradictory perspective: “My priority motto when I opened the bar was: It’s here
for everybody. I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, black, white, male, female—whatever. As
long as you come here to have fun and you respect everybody else’s right to have fun. That’s
what it’s here for—that’s what we’re here for. We want everybody to know this is a place to
come and hang out and have fun with gay people. Gay people are just like everybody else.” For
Rick, Rumors is a place where difference is simultaneously embraced (“for everybody”) and
rejected (“just like everybody else”). Just as his description transitions from difference- to
similarity-based, many interviewees’ comments transition from assimilation to separateness.
Rumors DJ and Alicia’s partner, Geoff explains, “I don’t think my life is any different from any
other. I mean, I go to work every day. I don’t try to hide my sexuality, but I don’t flaunt it…I
mean, I grew up in a small town—population probably not even 1,000. And if you want to come
out of the closet, you need to trust yourself, be careful who you talk to; your best friend could be
your worst enemy. I’ve had to learn that the hard way and it’s the only advice I can give.” At
first, Geoff appeals to a sense of similarity, but by the end of his comment, sexual- and placeidentities intersect and reveal the separateness emergent in interpersonal relationships (“best
friend could be your worst enemy”). Stabilitas loci claims public memories require a stable place
to anchor. The patrons of this bar consistently rearticulate the memory and ideology associated

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 22

with the place—the sign remains stable while the signified is in flux. The constant changes in
perspective and memory point to an irony inherent in the use of the term itself.33
The separateness ideology is clearest when patrons describe Rumors in relation to the
safety dialectic analyzed previously. In a place rhetorically saturated by homosexual panic,
heteronormativity, and impending violence, safety is a trope informing much of the
documentary’s collective authorship. According to one interviewee, “It’s basically like a
cubbyhole, you escape here, but you’re free to let down your hair and you’re free to be whatever
you want and then Monday through Thursday or Friday, you go back to your regular job, work at
a factory, uh, associate with straight men and say, ‘yeah, yeah, I’m cool, that’s a funny joke
about the women.’ But on the weekend, the weekend belongs to us here.” The idea of
separateness is linked not only to safety, but is steeped in a place metaphor: a cubbyhole. In this
place safety and invisibility appear to merge as separateness is embraced. Debbie’s home—only
locatable through smoke signals—is a concrete representation of separateness and place that she
authors for Rumors as well: “This is my first time to be here. And it’s ok, ya’know it’s a small
town bar, but it’s a place to go. It’s just nice to get out where you don’t have to deal with
terrified heterosexuals.”
As Debbie’s description of alternative places and Rick’s primary motto when opening
Rumors indicate, the articulation of both separatist and assimilationist ideologies are shaped by
their connection to heterosexuality as well. This interrelatedness is utilized by Ingram as he
interviews Fred Phelps, members of Westboro Baptist Church, Tim Wildmon of AFA, and
patrons of a straight bar down the road from Rumors. While there was the explicit separatist
comment from the man exhibiting homosexual panic when asked about the bar, we also heard
heterosexual patrons express an assimilationist perspective. One woman proclaims, “Ya’ know,

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 23

e’rybody’s welcome here. And e’rybody that comes here, they feel like they’re a part of their
family ‘cuz that’s the way we want it to be. ‘Cuz like, there’s other bars around here that don’t
make you feel welcome at all.” However, just as Geoff’s comment shifts ideologies, this
assimilationist statement transitions into a separatist statement as homosexual panic sets in for
this woman: “I don’t judge anybody. E’rybody’s got their own thing, ya’know. As long as they
don’t push it on me, that’s fine.” Ingram presents interviews with three other patrons of
Marilyn’s Place who similarly state that as long as there is distance between the heterosexual and
the homosexual, there will not be a problem—they can “be long,” but only to a limited extent.
The separatist and assimilationist ideologies reach a crescendo at the height of the
transition from Crossroads to Different Seasons. Ingram uses his splicing technique again to
amplify the dialectical tension and to create a discussion between the previous owner and the
new owners as the public memory of this place is negotiated. Charles “Butch” Graham, owner of
Crossroads describes his bar:
I never judged anybody who came through my doors. Whatever you were into—I would
help you and go out of my way to find you what you were lookin’ for… now, see there
was 17 buses like a stagecoach…we had a boxing ring in the center of all those buses.
We had professional boxin’—we had kickfights, kung fu, we had redneck versus drag
queen…We had the Choktaw Indians out there sellin’ tacos during’ this wrestlin’
match…It was one of the most fantastic place for anybody of any tastebud
whatsoever…It stretches from one extreme to the other, just like heterosexuals. Um, my
place is to try to be friendly to everyone that’s here—to accept everybody as they are and
not for who you want ‘em to be, but for who they are…But, how do you judge what was
there—we just allowed them to be themselves.

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 24

Graham’s characterization hinges on a blurring between assimilationist and separatist
perspectives: differentiation was something to be embraced while the extremes of behavior
reflected both homosexual and heterosexual behavior and thus pointed to similarity. For Graham,
both individual differences and the similarities in extremes represent grounds for assimilation.
Ingram also interviewed former patrons of Crossroads who presented a unified memory:
anybody was welcome and anything goes. The new owners of the building, Lori and Ruby,
author the public memory of Crossroads through a different interpretation. Ruby states,
I think that it, um, became desperate. That the people wanted somethin’, needed
somethin’, and then um, it just got tied in with a lot of desperation…and maybe more and
more people came out there, not so much to be there and mingle and have a good time,
but as an oddity. And that’s the environment that it became: a circus-like
environment…Every negative aspect that people are—are slurs or remarks people make
about homosexuals and being gay was depicted out there…It became not necessarily a
gay bar, but a very seedy, um, place to be. And it had a lot of trash, and a lot of underage,
and things goin’ on that, um, people would commonly associate with the homosexual
population.
Whereas the extreme behaviors became ground for claiming similarity for Graham, for Ruby
these behaviors became the foundation for heteronormativity and homosexual panic to gain
traction. From her perspective, the bar’s public memory pivoted not on similarity and
assimilation, but on stereotype-riddled difference and separatism. Ruby’s rejection of the
differentiation she ascribes to Crossroads does not mean however that she desires an
assimilationist approach—in fact, she sees in Different Seasons a clear separatist place. Different
Seasons according to Ruby is “about her [Lori] creatin’ a environment that we can go, we can

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 25

pick up at the drop of a hat and go and be ourselves and not have to think about where we’re
gonna go, where we’re gonna hide our cars, who we’re gonna hide from, if people are gonna see
us there.” Different Seasons is a safe-haven, a cubbyhole, an escape from the heteronormativity
and homosexual panic forcing them to experience danger, invisibility, and limited mobility.
Each perspective provides us with a different route for how this tension is managed using
both quare theory and the intersections of place with public memory. The last two critical
principles of quare theory are “voices that contest the (il)logic of heteronormativity”34 and “The
audiences addressed by quare rhetorics/rhetors or within quare circumstances include both
hegemonic and counterpublics.”35 These final principles draw our attention to the ways in which
interlocutors both (1) identify, critique, and resist the source(s) of their oppression
(heteronormativity, homophobia, hetero-/homo-sexual binaries) and (2) speak to oppressed
communities. For early patrons of Crossroads, the performances in the bar became framed in
public memory as similar to—not different from—the larger heterosexual community’s
proclivities and thus critiquing the stereotyping of the patrons. Lori and Ruby saw the public
memory instantiated in the bar as merely providing more fuel for the surrounding bias. They may
critique the techniques of the oppressed former patrons, but Lori and Ruby recognize the need
for a place with a public memory of resistance not only to heteronormativity but also
homophobia stereotypes—hence the bar’s new name: Different Seasons. The new name and the
new place communicate to GLBTQ community members Lori’s vision: “a brighter and happier
place and a nicer place. A nice, clean, and respectable place for people to go.”
Ingram’s splicing technique contributes to the final elements important to linking place
and public memory: (1) people gathering in a specific public place, experience each other’s
presence and participate in a discussion focused on a specific topic enacted through

Cubbyholes, Safe-havens, and Stabilitas Loci 26

commemoration, and (2) using commemorative discussion to respond to homosexual panic.36 As
public memories become linked with particular spaces and thus constitute a public place,
interlocutors should experience each other’s presence. While most interviewees were spoken to
individually, Ingram’s use