YMCA
by Caryn E. Neumann
Encyclopedia Copyright © 2015, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 2004, glbtq, inc. A typical mid-twentieth
century room in the
Reprinted from http://www.glbtq.com
YMCA at 180 West One-
hundred-thirty-fifth Street
The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), founded in London in 1844 and brought in New York City.
to the United States in 1851, began as an effort to protect vulnerable men from the
dangers of the city. By the early twentieth century, YMCAs had become popular havens for men who sought
sex with other men.
The middle-class Protestant founders of the YMCA sought to provide a buffer between young men away
from home for the first time and the dangers of the city. Emphasizing the triangle of mind, body, and spirit,
they aimed to build a Christian superman who would be sober, morally clean, and physically fit to face the
perils of the modern age.
Accordingly, the YMCA built dormitories where men could find sanctuary. By the 1880s, the YMCA had
embarked on an ambitious physical education program to accompany its lectures on health and Christianity.
It built gyms, locker rooms, and swimming pools (where men swam nude in the custom of the era) to be
located in the same building as the rooms for rent.
Men who did not realize that a gay subculture existed discovered one at the YMCA when they stopped to
take rooms upon their arrival in the city. Other men discovered the YMCA through friends or through
scandals that received heavy newspaper coverage.
In 1912, the Portland, Oregon YMCA, with the ninth largest membership in North America, became the
center of a sex scandal. This first public account of a homosexual underworld in the Northwest appeared
when a Portland newspaper charged many of the city's most prominent men with sodomy and contributing
to the delinquency of minors. A few of the implicated men lived at the YMCA and others used the sports
facilities.
The Portland scandal, as well as a subsequent one in 1919 at the Newport, Rhode Island Naval Training
Station, prompted the leaders of the YMCA to enact strict rules against homosexuals. Suspicion of
homosexuality or the solicitation of homosexual activity became grounds for immediate eviction. However,
many of the desk clerks charged with enforcement were gay men who worked at the YMCA because they
liked the gay-friendly environment. These men looked the other way as homosexual behavior abounded.
Cruising at the YMCA offered men a number of denial strategies. The physical facilities offered evidence
that a man desired self-improvement but not proof that he accepted a homosexual identity. Yet it remained
easy for a man to place himself in a situation where sex might occur. Many who participated in the thriving
cruising scene in the YMCA remained closeted or self-identified as heterosexual outside of the building.
The 1940s through the 1960s witnessed the heyday of cruising at the YMCA. As the YMCA became associated
in the public mind with virility, it attracted muscle men and lovers of muscle men. Members of the armed
services and the working class were pulled into the YMCA by outreach programs that unintentionally also
brought men who desired soldiers, sailors, and construction workers. It is this image of the YMCA as a
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sexual paradise that became immortalized in song by the gay-themed disco group The Village People in
1978. The double entendre-filled "YMCA" featured a chorus of "They have everything for you men to enjoy,
you can hang out with all the boys."
The emergence of a public, militant gay rights movement in the 1960s spelled the end of the YMCA as a gay
playground. Participation in gay community centers, such as bars, became more attractive to men than
heading over to the YMCA. The rise of AIDS in the 1980s dampened the public cruising scene and further
reduced the popularity of the organization among gay men. Now known chiefly as a family athletic center,
the YMCA has moved away from its sole focus upon young men.
In the decades when homosexuality remained underground, the YMCA provided a safe meeting place for gay
men. It helped men to discover that they were not the only ones in the world with same-sex desires, and it
gave them the opportunity to act upon these feelings without fear of arrest or public humiliation.
Bibliography
Boag, Peter. "Sex and Politics in Progressive Era Portland and Eugene: The 1912 Same-Sex Vice Scandal."
Oregon Historical Quarterly 100. 2 (Summer 1999): 158-81.
Chauncey, George Jr. "Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion?: Homosexual Identities and the
Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War I Era." Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and
Lesbian Past. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr., eds. New York: Penguin, 1989.
294-317.
Gustav-Wrathall, John Donald. Take the Young Stranger By The Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
About the Author
Caryn E. Neumann is a doctoral candidate in Women's History at Ohio State University. A past managing
editor of the Journal of Women's History, her essays have appeared in the Dictionary of American History and
Notable American Women, among other places.
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