Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage: “They don’t know that if it takes crucifixion, we will stand in line before abandoning our faith and our belief in our Lord and savior.”īryant promised an “aggressive appeal” of the U.S. Phil Bryant (R), talking about his rejection of the U.S. No state in America has passed more restrictive legislation on gay life, more emphatically supported anti-gay referendums, or featured such blistering condemnation from the pulpit or the political podium. The true number is much higher, almost everyone agrees, but many choose not to come out. Two-thirds of those identifying as LGBT are women. Most of the couples live in the larger cities and along the Gulf Coast. The 3,484 same-sex couples here represent just 3.14 of every 1,000 households, a ratio that ranks 49th in the nation, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law that tracks gay life. The crueler irony for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is that two of the cultural comforts against the age-old poverty and discrimination have been the church and family - both of which are often denied to them. It is staunchly conservative, evangelical Christian, rural, and it forever seems to bounce between its bipolar social features: hate and hospitality. Mississippi has long been the poorest and most religious state in America. Late at night, standing in the parking lot of chipped and broken asphalt, listening to crickets in the trees, the actual Vegas Strip seems a million miles away. The Piggly Wiggly, the Dollar Tree and the Dollar General are just up the street. It is flanked by two empty lots and faces another. WonderLust is an unmarked, one-story concrete-block building on a side street in the north end of town, now open four nights a week, up from two. “You have to live kind of an edited version of your life.” “It’s kind of a time warp,” says Jesse Pandolfo, the bar’s owner, sitting in the back office, eyeing a monitor that displays security-camera feeds. There is no ironic disco ball of happiness on this auspicious evening, no party, no rocking celebration. A couple of guys chat at the bar, so modest that it stocks only six brands of booze. Inside the spacious, purple-lit club are maybe 30 patrons. Now the clock was ticking toward midnight inside WonderLust, locally designated as the hottest and most “Vegas” gay bar in perhaps the most homophobic state in America.
Mike Pence (R), now Donald Trump’s running mate, that let businesses refuse service to any group they considered heretical to their religion. It was the first state legislation to mimic an Indiana bill signed into law last year by Gov. House Bill 1523, the legislature’s attempt to establish a sort of Southern-fried sharia over the state’s LGBT population, had been demolished by a federal judge just hours earlier. It was a big night for gay Mississippi. Malaysia Ravor-Black, 38, before her performance at WonderLust, in Jackson, Miss.