The Roanoke Times

Printed Oct. 1, 2000

The easy assumption, of course, was that Roanoke's gays and lesbians would be driven deeper into the proverbial closet after the shooting death of Danny Lee Overstreet.

Why would they be inclined otherwise, after a gunman reportedly sought out a gay bar, walked into the Backstreet Cafe, killed Overstreet -- a gay man -- and wounded six other people?

Something unexpected is happening here, though, something the most venerable gays in town struggle to comprehend.

Overstreet's death nine days ago has brought the greatest surge of gay courage and heterosexual empathy the region has ever seen.

It has led untold numbers of gays to reveal their orientation publicly for the first time, produced Roanoke's first gay political action committee in years, persuaded two lawmakers to reconsider their opposition to adding sexual orientation to hate crime laws, and brought international attention to Roanoke's heretofore barely visible gay citizenry.

Until now, average straight Roanokers probably didn't think they knew any gay people, said the Rev. Catherine Houchins, a lesbian minister. "Now they're finding out we're their neighbors, their customers . . . their employers, their employees."

Roy Mitchell came to work heavy of heart Monday morning. He's a customer service worker at First Union National Bank's operations center on Plantation Road. He had brought some of the first flowers to the growing shrine at the Backstreet Cafe the morning after the shootings, and had attended vigils there the first two nights.

Before he could reach his desk Monday, people were hugging him and asking for snippets of white ribbon to wear in sympathy for the dead and wounded. His boss had been out of town all weekend, and she'd worried about him.

At 59, Mitchell makes no secret of being gay, but he rarely talks about it with his mostly straight co-workers.

"All of this outpouring of love," Mitchell said late in the week. "I still have not ceased to be amazed. I've seen things from people that I never thought would happen here."

Gays and lesbians from throughout Western Virginia have long sought refuge in Roanoke, the region's largest city. Its close-knit homosexual society has offered a privacy and acceptance impossible for gays in smaller towns. The Roanoke Valley, with a population of about 225,000, has at least 10,000 gays and lesbians, activists say.

Most of Roanoke's gay life proceeded quietly in people's homes. In general, straight Roanokers were able to glimpse it only on visits to a succession of predominantly gay bars near downtown.

But it hasn't been entirely undercover or trouble-free. Controversies have arisen over police arrests of gay men charged with soliciting sex in Wasena Park; over an advertising firm's refusal to allow a "Diversity Enriches" message on its local billboards; and over the yanking of the National Public Radio show "Fresh Air" from WVTF for its supposedly "hidden agenda to promote homosexuality." This year, the show was returned to the air.

Roy Mitchell settled down in Roanoke about 1980. He grew up in Newport News, where he feared even saying the word "homosexual." He attended Virginia Tech and came back to the Blacksburg area after working at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He later moved to Roanoke.

He had marched and been arrested in Southern civil rights rallies as a teen-ager. In more recent years, he demonstrated for AIDS support and against the Rev. Jerry Falwell's anti-gay statements. In Roanoke, Mitchell tried for two decades to inspire political action within the homosexual population.

There were high moments -- such as a night in 1990 when Roanoke activist and lawyer Sam Garrison and 200 other gays and lesbians confronted City Council about anti-gay bigotry. But Mitchell eventually realized that the same 10 people were doing all the behind-the-scenes work of activism. Begrudgingly, he came to accept Roanoke's apathy.

The morning of Sept. 23, he woke up to hear on CBS national news about the shootings at the Backstreet Cafe. Every day since, his life as a gay man in Roanoke has been different.

Mitchell, a liberal Democrat, has seen Roanoke's conservative Republican mayor, Ralph Smith, vow that he will tolerate no more hate crimes on his watch. He's seen Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton, and U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., rethink their opposition to including sexual orientation in state and federal hate crime legislation.

Mitchell has seen downtown merchants call for greater tolerance and understanding for gays and lesbians. He has seen more than 1,000 people come out for Thursday's downtown vigil, one of the largest rallies of gays and straights in the city's history.

Mitchell has stood outside the candlelit door of the cafe late at night this week and watched cars quietly glide by on Salem Avenue. Gays? Straights? He doesn't know. Drivers nod their heads solemnly, and he senses their understanding.

"Perfect strangers," he said, "will come up and give you a big hug like they've known you forever." It's a shame, he says, that somebody had to die to wake people up.

Cigarette smoke and the sound of sizzling hash browns surrounded the Friday regulars at the Waffle House on Franklin Road. It was lunchtime -- time enough for a short-order grilled sandwich with lots of cheese.

Nobody was talking about the Backstreet Cafe shooting until a reporter asked. Even then, few wanted to give their names.

Three men -- one named John, one named Lee, and a 67-year-old man dressed in business-casual black -- said they didn't want their co-workers or customers to see their full names in print. Not because they are gay, but because they don't agree with being gay.

"I don't mind speaking my mind, but I don't want to get people mad," Lee said. Truth is, he said, homosexuality is immoral and unnatural.

"It says so in the Bible," he said. He said gay people "need to get their mind straightened out."

John, in a work shirt from an automotive repair shop, said his family and friends haven't spent much time talking about the shootings, and he wonders why others still are.

"It's done," he said. "It needs to be a public issue, but not when it's forced down people's throats."

"There are certain things in everyone's lifestyle that you keep to yourself," John said. "What goes on in your bedroom, you keep it to yourself."

"As long as they do their jobs and live their own lives, fine," the 67-year-old man added. "But, sure, seeing two guys sitting at that bar kissing, well, that's just not my cup of tea."

The shooting wasn't right, they say, but hatred and violence have been part of life for centuries.

Joe Hegarty, in a booth near the counter, said he was shocked by the shootings. But Ronald Edward Gay -- the man charged with killing Danny Overstreet -- is an outsider, Hegarty said, and his crime is not a reflection on Roanoke.

"Everybody's attitude that I've talked to is that he was out of his mind," Hegarty said. "One mental case is not a barometer for Roanoke."

Roanoke is very diverse when it comes to lifestyle choices, he said, but Roanoke is behind the times when it comes to accepting that diversity. "Around here you got the yeehaws -- the rednecks -- and they hang around together and don't look past that. Anything beyond them is different."

Occasionally, waitress Kimberly Moore rushed by, filling a coffee mug or slapping down a bill. It was hard to hear what she mumbled under her breath as she hurried past. Only later did she reveal that she and some friends planned to go to the Backstreet Cafe the night of the shootings, but changed their minds at the last minute.

"It hits home," she said. "Like they said, it could have been a redneck bar or a black bar, but it's going to hit home for someone somewhere."

Ann Sheehan, 40, wonders how any Roanoker can be untroubled by what happened at the Backstreet Cafe. She is straight and has two young sons. She became active in the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays after her uncle died of AIDS six years ago.

Sheehan was touched by the spiritual support gay people give one another, "despite having been told they were going to hell and that they were the lowlifes of society."

She sees enlightenment growing among heterosexuals here, but she's still not sure Roanoke gets it. It's a great place to raise a family if you're considered "normal," she said. But is it such a great place if you're different?

Freeda Cathcart is another straight woman who's been moved by the shootings. She plans to ask Roanoke City Council to turn the Mill Mountain Star the colors of the rainbow in honor of those who died and were wounded at the Backstreet Cafe. "I don't want my children to be around hate."

Renae Swain, 26, came to Overstreet's funeral Wednesday with her 27-year-old husband, Cliff. The Bedford County couple have gay friends and wanted to show their concern. The couple embraced outside the overcrowded funeral chapel.

At her office at Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield in Roanoke, Renae Swain said, female co-workers were feeling sympathy for Roanoke's gay population. "I'm hearing a lot about how people shouldn't judge the gay community, that they should leave it up to God."

But some of her friends' husbands don't feel that way. When one of her friends told her husband that God preaches love for all people, he said he couldn't help it, but he still has a problem with people being gay.

Houchins, the minister, is proud that straight Roanokers who never saw gays and lesbians out in force before have seen them at their best.

In other cities, she noted, violence has sometimes followed the assassinations of gay people. "What they have seen here are vigils," said Houchins, 49, pastor of the mostly gay Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge. "They've seen people speaking out, but they've not seen the gay community punish Roanoke for this tragedy."

Many gays, lesbians, bisexuals and other members of the homosexual community took vacation days or forfeited income so they could organize vigils and political action last week. Houchins hopes the leadership remains in place when emotions die down. She hopes the newly formed Hate Free Roanoke Task Force's political work will lead to tangible amenities sorely needed by gays, such as a community center so people who don't go to bars can have someplace to go after work Friday nights.

For all the good that's come from the shootings, the Rev. Ed Harris, a gay man and retired Baptist minister, has heard far too little from churches.

The region's Episcopal bishop spoke at Thursday night's vigil. St. John's Episcopal Church offered its building for the vigil in case of rain. St. Andrew Catholic Church is providing offices for free counseling for people affected by the shootings. And prayers for the victims have been said at Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church, Central Church of the Brethren and other churches.

But Harris says the Roanoke Valley's biggest churches have made few public statements. "Silence is abuse," Harris said. "It was abuse in the times of slavery. It was abuse in the times when women were struggling for their rights."

"I don't think homophobia as an evil in our society will be addressed until we as Christian people address the matter of sexuality."

It's impossible to know what will come of Danny Overstreet's death and the woundings of the other people at the Backstreet Cafe.

Gay leaders and others pushing for tolerance and nonviolence may tire, "but it'll be in their heads, and it won't go away," said Rhonda Chattin, 27, coordinator of Outright, a Roanoke support group for gay teens.

Jim Osborn, 25, was a friend of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was lured by two men from a campus hangout almost two years ago, beaten and left tied to a fence to die.

Just as in Roanoke, he said, gays felt so vulnerable, they united in unprecedented numbers and sought public support.

"It's absolutely mind-boggling, the changes we've had here," Osborn said by phone from Laramie, Wyo., where he advises the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Association at the university.

But there will be backlash in Roanoke, he warned. Straight people will say, “ ‘I’ve heard enough,’ ” he said, “and that’s very difficult to hear.”

On Oct. 12, the second anniversary of Shepard's death, Laramie will hold a night of poetry in memory of people everywhere murdered because they were gay. Names of the dead will be read aloud.

Because of what happened in Roanoke, they have added another name to the list -- Danny Lee Overstreet.

Mary Bishop can be reached at 981-3358 or maryb@roanoke.com
STAFF WRITERS LISA APPLEGATE AND KATHY LU CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.

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