The Castro District - Why Is San Francisco Home To Such A Large Gay Community?

Centered around the intersection of Castro Street and 18th Street, the Castro district was one of the first and remains one of the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) neighborhoods in America. This wasn't always the case and LGBT individuals had to go through many struggles in San Francisco, as anywhere, to win the respect and civil rights they hold today.

San Francisco has always had a more libertine view of sexuality than the rest of the country. The population of the city really grew around 1849, when gold was discovered in California and the gold rush began. Because almost all of the the gold miners were men, the female population of San Francisco was only around 1% of the total population. About two thirds of that were prostitutes. To compensate for the lack of women, many mining camps had dances where certain men were chosen to dress as women to be danced with. It was impossible to not tolerate certain sexual acts that the rest of the country's god-fearing men and women would have frowned upon.

The majority of individuals who moved to San Francisco during the gold rush were foreign born. The first miners to reach California when news of gold spread were from Chile and Peru followed by large numbers of Chinese and European immigrants. Between 1850 and 1860 the majority of San Francisco's citizens were born outside of the United States. Throughout its history, unlike many other American cities, San Francisco did not have a puritan protestant majority. Instead, the large amounts of culturally diverse immigrants led to more tolerance of different lifestyles.

Through the 1920s San Francisco was home to many houses of prostitution. A minority of these, such as the Dash, offered drag shows where women impersonators would entertain the crowd and homosexual sex could be bought. The large amount of drinking, gambling and prostitution found in San Francisco soon led to a vice tourism industry, where tourists would come to the city to witness and take part in these activities. Bars where cross-dressing was common were one of these highlights. The cities infamous reputation was seen as a point of pride by many citizens, and crimes such as homosexuality were tolerated much more so than in other cities.

World War II saw a large influx of gay men into San Francisco. Many soldiers going to fight in the Pacific came through San Francisco. If any of them were found to be gay they would be discharged and released into San Francisco. Instead of going home, where they would be ostracized by their communities, many chose to stay in the more tolerant and even welcoming communities of San Francisco.

After World War II many cities in the United States saw a decline in property prices due to families moving out to the suburbs. This also happened in San Francisco, with the result being that properties in the the city becoming affordable and appealing to many gay men and women. Until the 1960s the Castro area was largely a working class Irish catholic neighborhood. But with the changing demographics it slowly transformed into the center of gay life in San Francisco that it remains today.

The 1950s also saw an increase in LGBT activism. Both, in the bar scenes and in more political organizations such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. It was in the 50s and 60s that the LGBT communities started to unite into a social and political class. Before this time, instead of identifying with one large community, LGBT individuals identified with many smaller communities which often had little interaction with one another. Those who took part in the LGBT bar scenes were mostly interested in creating autonomous spaces where LGBT individuals could create and take part in their own culture. The political organizations of the 1950s were instead interested in integration of Gay and Lesbian individuals into hetero society. They focused largely on creating an image of respectable white middle class gay and lesbian individuals who should be treated the same as everyone else and the privacy of their bedrooms be respected. The bar scenes and the political scenes did interact and help each other out, but their goals and interests were different. By the 1960s legal and social victories were being won on both fronts and the LGBT communities were uniting and identifying as a single struggle with common interests and goals.

By the early 1970s the Castro was home to much of the city's bars and LGBT political activism, including being the base of politician Harvey Milk. The LGBT community united into a single voting bloc and voted Milk onto the board of supervisors making his the first openly gay man elected to office in the state of California. His assassination and the AIDS crisis which followed truly united the community. From that time onward the neighborhood has been the center of LGBT activity in the Bay Area and remains so to this day. Just like LGBT bars in San Francisco were tourists destinations in the past, the Castro has become a tourist attraction with people worldwide wanting to witness LGBT culture.