13. Fire Island, New York in the 1950s
The United States in the 1950s was not a safe or pleasant time to be a homosexual. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was busy leading his “McCarthyism” witch hunts for communists, homosexuals, and other perceived malcontents and enemies of the nation. Ironically, the reason homosexuals were viewed as a threat to the US was due to the nation’s own laws prohibiting homosexuality which the US government believed made homosexuals more liable to blackmail by hostile foreign countries. However, there was one bright spot for the targeted minority: Fire Island, New York.
The island began to be popular with Manhattan elites in the 1940s, and by the 1950s numerous celebrities had vacation homes on the small island. Greta Garbo, herself a closeted bisexual or lesbian, began to frequent the island with other stars like W. H. Auden and Xavier Cugat. Former model John B. Whyte bought a hotel on the island and started openly appealing to gay tourists. Playboy wrote an expose on the island’s gay culture in the 1960s, which caused it to become even more of a gay Mecca with LGBTQIA+ tourists from around the world flocking to the island. It also became a place of mourning and togetherness as the American gay community was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic.