It’s a Pride sight as ubiquitous as glitter and spontaneous outbursts of dancing to Lady Gaga: logos for a variety of beer, wine, and liquor brands, plastered in rainbows and blown up to proportions that inspire social drinking. While these sponsors are often what make many queer-centric events possible in the first place, the Dionysian flow of alcohol raises concerns within a marginalized community facing an epidemic of substance use disorder.

Bars have always had their place in LGBTQ+ life. They have become the de facto star around which Houston’s queer scene orbits, largely due to oppressive social, economic, and political factors. The 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health noted that 21.8 percent of LGBTQ+ adults reported suffering from an alcohol use disorder within the past year, compared to 11 percent of the general population facing the same condition. Disconcerting numbers like this illustrate the necessity for spaces where the queer community can socialize and organize without alcohol. Unfortunately, there just aren’t many of them left in Houston.

LGBTQ+-affirming Conduit Coffee is the closest option. It recently shut down due to renovations, but plans to reopen June 29 as an appropriate coda to Pride Month. Nestled among the pine-lined neighborhoods of The Woodlands, the coffee shop is hardly an accessible drive. Inside Houston city limits, however, there may as well be West Texas tumbleweeds where the queer sober hangouts used to be.

Montrose queer-centric bookstore and café Lobo closed in 2004, leaving the Montrose Center as the sole remaining spot for alcohol-free queer hangouts. The Lambda Center, also located in Montrose, occasionally hosts events, but its mission is by and large about substance use recovery rather than providing a general community space.

“Montrose gentrified,” explains Kennedy Loftin, chief development officer at the Montrose Center. “It almost pushed out our bars, but—fortunately or unfortunately—there’s a lot of money to be made on things like alcohol. Having safer spaces and culturally competent organizations where you can go and hang out is the goal for sure. I don’t know how that’s going to happen unless Montrose suddenly just starts to depopulate. The price of the land here is too expensive.”

Loftin notes that a diminished number of sober queer spaces can take a major toll on queer youth, particularly teens whose parents or guardians have kicked them out of their homes. The stress of having nowhere safe to go, combined with the persistent challenges of life in a state where politicians raise their profiles (and donations) by legislating queer rights away, puts them at a heightened risk of substance use disorder. According to a Trevor Project survey, substance use is on the rise among LGBTQ+ youth, with 47 percent of respondents under the age of 21 reporting drinking alcohol within the last year, and the number even higher among those who have undergone conversion therapy.

Local organizations such as Hatch Youth, which calls the Montrose Center its headquarters, are trying to meet the demands for sober entertainment through programs such as proms, workshops on queer history and social justice, games, creative writing and art lessons, and other events. Helping queer kids and teens find a sense of acceptance and community reduces their risk of turning toward alcohol for comfort. Engaging younger LGBTQ+ people in compassionate, affirming, and age-appropriate ways is also essential when continuing the ongoing fight for queer and trans equality.

“Alcohol and queer movements don’t mix,” says Niles Zoschke, a PhD candidate in public health. “That’s not to say that culturally alcohol is not important or relevant. It’s good for some people in some circumstances… However, cultural movements should be as accessible as possible, meaning that kids have to be welcome. Without youth, there is no movement.”

Zoschke moved to Houston from St. Louis in 2020 and felt disappointed in the dearth of LGBTQ+ grassroots organizing at the hyperlocal level. They previously founded the Rainbow Workers’ Alliance while still living in Missouri to help bridge gaps between unions and the queer community. Such an undertaking is a challenge in a city like Houston, owing to both its unwieldy size as well as its less-than-stellar transportation infrastructure, including inadequate bus and train services. This overarching lack of accessibility only compounds feelings of alienation among LGBTQ+ people, including parents struggling to find an affirming community while also balancing child rearing.

“A dedicated space would be awesome, but even if we didn’t have [one], just events that were more geared towards families… there’s a lack there,” says Ashley D’Annunzio, owner of Best Nest Portraits, which specializes in birth and newborn photography. She mourns Houston Public Library’s jettisoning of Drag Queen Storytime, and would like to see additional events where kids can enjoy skating and other activities alongside the colorful, theatrical queens and kings. Rainbow on the Green, which happens every Pride Month at Discovery Green, does fulfill some of this need, but it only occurs once a year.

It’s a sentiment shared by history professor and deacon of education at St. Peter United, Shane Puryear. His child loves RuPaul’s Drag Race and actively wants to socialize with drag performers in family-friendly environments. “If someone has a problem with it, they can take it up with me,” he says. “We actually understand drag.”

Outside of queer-centric family spaces, Puryear also sees the potential for gyms catering to LGBTQ+ clientele, with sliding scale memberships to accommodate different budgets. As a self-identified “Christ follower,” Puryear also finds community and healing in his queer-affirming church, but admits that such a solution won’t always be accessible to LGBTQ+ individuals with religious trauma. He looks to places like his former employer—Dirk’s Coffee in Montrose, which closed in 2014—as a model for what Houston’s queerer, more sober future can look like. “It was one of those few spaces out there where you could truly be your authentic self,” Puryear says. “I’m very OK with my sexuality, I just never really had a chance to express it. I felt that I could express it there.”

Along with coffee shops, Ezra Barajas, a school counselor and Houston native, would like to see the resurgence of local bookstores like Lobo to help LGBTQ+ kids and teens have “happy, thriving queer adult[s]” to look up to as role models. “There’s a bookshop [in North Carolina] that literally the first time I visited there, I cried. Every display was ‘Check out these queer nonfiction books! Check out these queer graphic novels!’ That is what I want,” they say.  

Both Loftin and Zoschke point out that heterosexual and cisgender allies should also feel welcome and accommodated in these sober environments with LGBTQ+ competency. The ultimate goal of civil rights movements is to render themselves obsolete someday, after all. That someday has yet to come for the queer and trans communities. But when it does, it can only be thanks to the availability of spaces where everyone feels safe, welcome, and included—glitter and Lady Gaga still on tap, of course.