Gay Guide to Atlanta
On 3 August 1982 an Atlanta officer serving a warrant over a missed court date for public drinking walked through an unlocked door, into a bedroom, and arrested Michael Hardwick for having sex with another man. The district attorney dropped the charge. Hardwick sued anyway, and in 1986 the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's sodomy law five to four in Bowers v. Hardwick, a ruling that then sat over every gay person in the country for seventeen years. Georgia's own Supreme Court struck the law down in 1998, and Lawrence v. Texas finally overturned Bowers in 2003. The case that set the movement back a generation began in a bedroom in this city.
Midtown carries the scene now, most of it within a few blocks of Piedmont Park. The stretch of Piedmont Avenue holds the Atlanta Eagle, Mixx, Oscar's, Felix's and X Midtown, with Blake's on the Park over on 10th Street. Bulldogs on Peachtree is a long-standing cornerstone of Black gay Atlanta.
Cheshire Bridge Road, a few miles northeast, is the older and rougher-edged half: The Heretic and BJ Roosters anchor it, and it is a drive rather than a walk, which is true of a great deal of Atlanta.
The rest is scattered by design. East Atlanta has Mary's and My Sisters Room, and the second of those matters nationally, since lesbian bars have nearly vanished from the country. Friends on Ponce covers Poncey-Highland, Lore sits on Edgewood, and out in Decatur, Charis Books has been running since 1974 as one of the oldest feminist bookstores in the South.
Atlanta Pride moved out of the summer after a drought hit the park in the late 2000s and stayed in October, which lines it up with National Coming Out Day. Atlanta Black Pride takes Labor Day weekend and is among the largest gatherings of its kind anywhere, and it is central to what this city actually is rather than a side event.