🏳️‍🌈🏺2-Gay in History🏺🏳️‍🌈

In 1991, a Richmond court case cracked open Virginia’s closet: French Quarter Café v. Virginia ABC. For decades, state rules let regulators yank a license if a bar “became a meeting place for … homosexuals.” When bar owner Murray Greenberg sued—joined by William & Mary Gay and Lesbian Alumni and activist Dale Barnhard—U.S. District Judge for Eastern Virginia struck the anti-gay regulations down. Overnight, the legal pretext for shutting down gay bars collapsed, clearing space for openly queer venues.

That legal shift was cause for celebration, but met a health emergency already well in motion. Through the 1980s and early ’90s, AIDS hit Richmond hard. The Fan Free Clinic (today Health Brigade) provided key HIV testing, hotlines, a buddy program, legal-aid nights, and grief support; RAIN(Richmond AIDS Information Network) spread safer-sex education when few doctors would. Community papers and flyers carried the newest guidance—and queer bars became epicenters.

Nightspots didn’t just offer escape—they raised money, shared information, and gave space for loss. Bars like Babe’s of Carytown and Cosmopolitan ran benefit shows and fundraisers, and stocked bathrooms with condoms and hotline numbers. Then came a new kind of anchor: Godfrey’s (308 E. Grace), opened in 1997 by Jeff Willis as a restaurant with a queer mission, that soon grew into an all-out nightlife hub. Its now-legendary Drag Brunch expanded to both Saturdays and Sundays, drawing crowds and touring performers, often doubling as a benefit stage for local HIV services. House talent like Alvion Davenport helped keep doors open and public-health messages loud.

By transforming a courtroom victory into community care, Richmond’s bars evolved from vulnerable targets into public-health partners and cultural institutions. They became places to mourn and to mobilize, to learn safer-sex and to celebrate survival. Bars helped us through and showed up for the health of our community—but as freedom grew, new spaces began to open, allowing us to be ourselves outside the usual happy hours.

This is post 5/6 on our Richmond Gay Spaces History. Next time, after hours and before dark