Colorado’s queer history thrives with each new generation. Both are now threatened by a growing divide.
The queer community has run strong in Colorado’s veins since before the very concept of “queer community” came to be. Indigenous nations have long understood and welcomed gender identities beyond the male-female binary, art and literature from LGBTQ+ creatives were circulated even in the face of the 19th and 20th centuries’ intense persecution, and members of the community have been gathering in Northern Colorado for celebration and solidarity since the 1960s. Indeed, the history of Colorado’s LGBTQ+ community is an extensive one that deserves to be known and shared.
So where do we go to learn of these valuable stories? Many young queer folk would ask the same.
With so many asking, one would think there would be more answers.
For as long as LGBTQ+ people have made themselves known, they have faced discrimination and censorship. In spite of this, queer gatherings have thrived in Northern Colorado’s past. The first of Denver’s annual PrideFest celebrations took place in 1974, and the resulting activism led to the boom in queer-centric publications, bars, churches, apartment complexes, and more. Since then, pride celebrations and organizations have sprouted up across the state, reaching out to a variety of audiences to provide resources, education, and friendship to those in need.
Yet somehow, this knowledge has evaporated from the collective minds of Colorado’s queer folk over the generations. A look around the Pride Resource Center at Colorado State University reflects the extent of queer knowledge that students and faculty, already grown into adulthood, would likely be learning for the very first time upon visiting. Even the spaces themselves are often scarcely known without a persistent search.
Ash Brinker, a CSU student and regular visitor of the PRC, recounted learning of CSU’s queer resources only vaguely before they arrived at CSU. “I only heard about it through a scholarship for queer students,” they recalled, “and it still didn’t explain what the PRC was. I eventually investigated queer resources on campus, and that was when I found out.”
“We sadly do have to really look for these things if we want to find them,” Brinker continued. “A lot of people don’t know where to start looking. People who are closeted might purposely not associate with it. Some just don’t have the time to commit to engaging with these things.”
Brinker’s experiences convey a number of factors that often prevent young queer people from accessing spaces where they can befriend and learn about others like themselves. Whether it is a matter of safety, distance, time constraints, or simply a lack of available information, keeping queer history and culture alive only grows more difficult as the places in which they thrive the most become less accessible.
Even more frustrating is that expanding access to LGBTQ+ support is largely left up to the LGBTQ+ community itself — and finding the means to do it isn’t easy. For instance, the Denver chapter of national LGBTQ+ support organization PFLAG relies almost entirely on membership dues, grants, and community donations in order to operate its political activism, education programs, support groups, and scholarships. Even the University of Boulder’s LGBTQ Studies program and its related scholarships depend in part on donations from outside of the university. To put this into perspective, CU Boulder was named the 13th most LGBTQ-friendly college in the country in 2021, and its total budget in the 2021–2022 school year was $5.2 billion.
In some cases, policymakers have even made active efforts to prevent LGBTQ+ support resources from reaching the children who need them. Since being voted into office in 2020, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert has introduced several anti-LGBTQ+ bills, particularly targeting transgender people. While none of the bills have gone forward, the ideas proposed in them — the exclusion of trans people from athletics, and unrestricted discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, to name a few — would set a precedent in Colorado schools similar to Florida’s incendiary “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and other state-level bills that threaten the safety of queer children in public schools.
Ultimately, this whirlwind of barriers to LGBTQ+ education and support can cause serious problems for queer youth who are left to confront their social, emotional, and physical struggles alone. The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 45 percent of LGBTQ youth considered attempting suicide during the past year, and fewer than one third of transgender and nonbinary respondents did not find gender-affirming environments at home or in school. Additionally, 60 percent of LGBTQ youth who wanted mental health support were unable to obtain it. All of these risk factors decreased significantly among respondents who felt high support from their families and lived in LGBTQ-affirming communities.
When asked about similar dangers that arise from lack of access to queer youth community resources, Brinker did not limit the possible threats to the health of the individual. Also in jeopardy, as Brinker explained, is LGBTQ+ culture as a whole.
“A lot of adults have very strict ideas about gender and sexuality that they don’t want to change,” Brinker asserted. “If you’re kid in that environment, and you’re denied the opportunity to explore your identity, queer spaces are like a home away from home. That’s where you learn about yourself and other people like you, and that’s what the queer community is made of.”
“When queer kids and teenagers can’t find that community,” Brinker went on, “that foundation gets shaky. We’re able to express ourselves so openly today because in the past, we found ways to express ourselves privately to each other, and things built up from there. But those kids who can’t express themselves anywhere don’t get to be a part of it until they’re adults, and by then, a lot of them might feel too scared or too distant to get into it. The cycle just keeps going.”
Brinker’s take on the issue highlights its impact on queer culture, perspective, and power. With every curious questioning child whose growth into a proud queer adult is squandered by isolation and insecurity, another voice in LGBTQ+ history is silenced, and the beautiful, defiant heart of the LGBTQ+ community is left less than whole.
The suppression of spaces and resources for LGBTQ+ youth is an issue that encompasses both social systemic discrimination, and it cannot be overcome solely through the efforts of non-profit organizations and local resource centers. To empower LGBTQ+ children and teenagers, the resources to do so must be supported through larger, more diverse networks that include schools, families, experts in relevant fields, and policymakers who will advocate for the protection and affirmation of LGBTQ+ rights. To bring Colorado’s queer history into public knowledge is not just deserved; it is an essential justice, and it is long overdue.
