“We can not let Denver become known as a haven for homosexuals,”[1] said a Denver city councilman in 1965, according to The Denver Post. [1]

Denver City Officials and the Denver Morals Bureau (DMB) had been fighting an all out war against “sexual immorality” since World War II. Prostitution, venereal disease, gambling, and homosexuality were targeted by the DMB as incidences continued to rise, despite their best efforts to change laws, run prostitutes underground, and eliminate any trace of a homosexual subculture.

Throughout the postwar era, Denver, Colorado experienced confrontations between city officials and members of gay culture regarding public displays of sexual activity. Denver officials used religion and notions of morality to guide public policy, leading to tensions with the city’s burgeoning gay culture.

Earlier in Denver’s history, as in other gay communities, sexual acts between men routinely took place in city parks or bathrooms. In 1960 the homosexual bar scene was just beginning to develop. Having no separate or safe spaces in Denver, individuals who shared houses, or could not afford private rooms, used the areas around the state capitol building for sexual contacts. The areas around Civic Center Park, the Capitol, and the historic Broadway Avenue were notorious as Denver’s red-light district.

In response to men’s sexual acts with men in public spaces, middle and upper class gay white men began to advocate for sexual encounters in private or semi-private spaces. They aimed to disconnect homosexuality from notions of perversion and prostitution. They wanted to present homosexuality as a normal relationship between consenting adults. Denver’s elite gay men hoped to move the national conversation on homosexuality away from sexual acts alone.

The “privatizing” of sexual acts—moving them away from free, outdoor spaces—made it more difficult for law enforcement agents to successfully entrap and harass homosexual men. But it did not alleviate the hostility. The Denver Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) became one of the first sites of conflict. Men continued to use the “Y” as a meeting place for sexual relationships.

In 1971, gay journalist Terry Mangan, interviewed a young man with the initials A.J.R., who moved to Denver following his graduation from Colorado College in 1969. “R” as Mangan referred to him, was no stranger to Denver’s burgeoning gay subculture. “R” had made frequent visits to the city’s gay sex spots throughout his college career, and stayed at the YMCA. Bars were just beginning to open to an exclusively gay clientele and the YMCA was known as a meeting place for homosexuals visiting and living in the “Mile High City.”

As Mangan writes: “Three years ago ‘R’ went to the central YMCA in Denver. He had heard vaguely of sex there. In the third floor men’s restroom, he found a hole cut between the last two toilet stalls. Since that time he has made it a practice to frequent this restroom.”^[1]

Homosexual activity within semi-private meet up places such as the Denver Y was common knowledge among members of Denver’s gay culture. But such activity did not go unnoticed by the Y’s operators or the local police. As some Y patrons increasingly complained about homosexual acts the operators felt they had to act.

A new Y director “was given a double-barreled assignment: —Put the Y on a sound financial footing. —‘Get rid of the queers,’”[2] according to The Denver Post. Rollen N. Brousard came to Denver in 1962. Over six feet tall, the 37-year-old stern and stocky ex-marine from Chicago, was sent by the Washington YMCA to take over as executive secretary of the Denver Y.

Transients, hoboes, and homosexuals used the YMCA as a meeting place for sexual intimacy throughout the twentieth century.[3] Denver’s YMCA eventually ousted the majority of transients, but incidence of homosexual acts persisted. Brousard was quoted: “‘Our residence hall has an average of 200 guests a night,’ he said. ‘At one time, we were moving out four or five men a week. It’s tapered off now to two or three, usually its transients who are killing us. We’ve got a list of 35 or 40 guys to whom we won’t rent rooms because of what we know about them.”[4]

At one point, Brousard closed the dormitories to all but servicemen or supervised groups, such as athletic teams, to avoid any occurrence of gay sex, but that did not solve the problem.[5]

The operators of the YMCA were aware of homosexual acts, but not its extent. “Much of the problem at the [Denver] Y centered around activity in the two dormitories, one with 8 beds, the other with 10,” according to Brousard.

“R” remembered staying at the Y one night: “There was group sex in the YMCA men’s room; as many as five men at a time engaged in mutual sex. The usual age is 25 to 35 but some much older men attend. Very few men under 20 seem to know about this place.”[6]

Another man “went to the central YMCA five times before he figured out how to achieve the desired result. His fear of being caught was so great that he was extremely careful,”[7] remembers Mangan.

Shortly after arriving at the Denver branch, Brousard posed as a resident and stayed in the group dormitory. He wanted to get a better idea of what was going on. As soon as he saw any indication of homosexual activity, he took immediate action.[8]

In an effort to decrease homosexual acts YMCA authorities locked bathroom doors, and patrolled the facility in the evenings. According to the Post: “Brousard…closed the restroom in the youth section—a trouble spot here just as it was in the Washington Y—and converted it into a laundry facility.”[9] But that bathroom only stayed closed for a short time, and men resumed using it as a meeting place for sexual relations

“R” first began to venture into the bathroom at the age of 21. He stated, “I have seen fellatio, sodomy, and analingus. The bathroom on the first floor was closed, but the bathroom on the third floor was more well-known.”[10]

Homosexual men became increasingly careful and cunning regarding their actions. Some began designating a guard to stand by the stall while sexual relations took place. Or they would make noises to alert occupants someone was entering.[11]

While some members of Denver’s gay culture enjoyed the thrill of public sex, other men found the increased hostility of the Y’s operators unpleasant. Many men worried about being publicly incriminated, resulting in more careful practices to protect their identities and lives.

The fear, stigma, and hostility that many men knew followed an arrest led many to avoid the possibility. A graduate student at the University of Colorado indicated, “‘I’m not the way I am by choice, but what am I supposed to do about it—shoot myself? I’ve never been in trouble in my life, and, I assure you, I don’t go around looking for it. I’d be afraid to even go into the Y here. I might give myself away, not intentionally, but one little incident could ruin my whole future,’” according to The Denver Post. [12]

Due to increasing violence associated with public sex, and the possibility of arrest or harassment at the Y, members of Denver’s gay male culture began to use gay bars more routinely as meeting places for sexual encounters.

The decrease in the number of men taking part in public sex acts fell drastically in the 1960s.  Local media reported less about public sexual acts, and more about the political battle for “morality.” This was due to increased policing by the Denver Morals Bureau—and men’s fear of being caught—but also to class stratification. Presumably, the majority of gay men who continued to use public areas for sexual encounters were those with less financial resources. As sexual privatization increased, the majority of men capable of using semi-private or private spaces for social and sexual interactions were middle or upper class.[13]

Members of the Mattachine Society, an activist group requiring membership fees, and other gay activist groups, required money to rent spaces for sexual encounters or to afford their own homes. Meetings for the Mattachine Society would generally be held in the private homes of fee-paying members. On more than one occasion, a private residence at 216 West Madison Street, in the affluent Cherry Creek neighborhood, hosted members of Denver’s Mattachine Chapter.[14]

As the stigma of homosexuality and policing increased, the threat of public shame encouraged wealthier men to move their sexual encounters away from free, public areas such as bathrooms and the parks, and into the Denver Y.

When the Denver YMCA sought to get rid of the queers, they did so with overt animosity.  The level of verbal animosity present within the law invited contempt and stigma for being gay, according to the Denver Post.

One homosexual told The Post he thinks that the law, by its strong denunciation of homosexual acts, perpetuates public scorn for inverts and perhaps even encourages hoodlums to prey on lone men they see in such places as Denver’s Civic Center. ‘Public cruising can be dangerous,’ one homosexual admits. ‘This is why you see so many fellows patronizing the gay bars. They’re safe there.’[15]

One man, a department store clerk, complained: “‘people like to blame every sex crime in the book on homosexuals.’”[15]

The Denver YMCA continued its policing of Denver’s homosexual populace well into in the 1970s. As Denver’s burgeoning community faced rising animosity, the development of gay bars offered homosexuals a haven away from the public eye.

The privatization of sexuality for Denver’s gay community came as disdain, stigma, and hostility toward the gay community increased on a national scale. The negative reaction to public sexual activity, and the animosity to homosexuals, encouraged gay men and women to create spaces specifically for themselves. Increased attention to homosexual cruising areas helped foster the creation of “gay-only” establishments in downtown Denver, and pushed many gay individuals back into the closet.

While gay bars are, in one sense, public institutions, by pushing the homosexual subculture into gay bars, Denver officials helped create Denver’s gay community. The politics of morality functioned to distance homosexual sex from the homosexual person. Once a unified minority of gay subjects, Denver’s gay community welcomed the sexual revolution and began fighting their way back out of the closet; proud of all facets of the community—sex and all.