Gay in Lubbock, Texas? (Entry updated 11/18/20) In August of 1997, I started the online newsletter Rainbow: Lubbock (originally as Hub Triangle). It filled a void for gay Lubbock information on the Web. Much more capable Web page designers later filled that void, so I stopped writing R:L in July of 2007. Please turn to the following pages for finding or promoting information of specific interest to Lubbock LGBTs. If you notice mistakes, omissions, or outdated material, please contact the sites with those problems and/or the people who would have submitted that material. Keeping community-based Web sites up-to-date demands a lot of work and a lot of community input. Dallas Voice Equality Texas Lubbock PRIDE Metropolitan Community Church-Lubbock Facebook Page OUTwest Lubbock PFLAG-Lubbock This Week In Texas (twit) For more resources, please click on the labels that appear just after this entry. Share buttons also appear there.

“Rent” – Review by Lauren Estlinbaum

Lubbock, Texas: As expected, I loved the local production of Rent. I also came across a review that captures it well.

I would recommend this production to anyone.--Lauren Estlinbaum

Read her review at The HUB @ TTU.

Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University’s Department of Theatre & Dance presents RENT

"October 10th through 13th and 17th through 20th on the Maedgen Mainstage, located at 2812 18th Street between Boston and Flint Avenues. Curtain times for the 2013-2014 Mainstage Theatre season are 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sundays.

"A pop cultural phenomenon with songs that rock and a story that resonates with audiences, with book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson and directed by Dr. Linda Donahue, RENT is loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme and follows a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York’s Lower East Side under the shadow of the HIV/AIDS crisis."

Read more from TTU.

Above All Things: The Journey of an Evangelical Christian Mother and Her Gay Daughter

Author to speak at St. John's Methodist Church about Accepting Gay Daughter. Shari Johnson appearing at PFLAG-Lubbock meeting.

The Laramie Project continues this weekend at The Lubbock Community Theatre. It's a great production! Please tell others in the West Texas area about it.

gay hate crimes homophobia bigotry

Lubbock, Texas: February 17-19, 24-26, March 2-4, 2012: The Lubbock Community Theatre will stage The Laramie Project.

Their description of the play:

In October 1998 a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. He died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was assaulted because he was gay. Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater members have constructed a deeply moving theatrical experience from over 200 interviews of people from Laramie and their own experiences after the beating and death. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

I previously saw The Laramie Project performed at Texas Tech University, and saw the HBO movie version. Both were good.

I updated my main Rainbow: Lubbock/Gay in Lubbock, Texas entry, updating the links and adding the following link to search results.

You Tube: It Gets Better Lubbock

Lubbock’s Texas Tech University will be one of numerous institutions around the country to present Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays.

Lubbock Online: Tech to participate in worldwide simultaneous performance.

Tech Announce: Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays.

Dallas Voice: Lubbock Pride Festival On. It's today.

More information:
http://www.outwestlubbock.org/

Updated FaceBook wall posts:
http://www.facebook.com/lubbockpride2011?sk=wall

Lubbock, Texas, the week of October 5: homeComing OUT Week at Texas Tech University will include activist Shelby Knox, musical duo Jason & deMarco, a discussion about outing people, an epilogue to The Laramie Project, and various other events. The life of former Lubbock resident Shelby Knox provided the basis for the documentaries The Education of Shelby Knox and Shelby Knox Redux.

Articles About Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church visiting Lubbock in Jan. 2004.

Some of the best and earliest coverage came from Fox 34, but their website is under reconstruction.

KCBD.Com: Kansas Church Brings Protest to Lubbock

Lubbock Online: Picketers Only Want to Provoke

ABC 28: Tech Radio Station To Ask For Donations Amidst Protests (Note: that event was cancelled, due to possible FCC problems.)

ABC 28: Controversial Minister To Demonstrate In Lubbock

The Austin Chronicle: Beyond City Limits

HubStuff: Hate is NOT a Family Value (In PDF file of Volume 2, No.3: January 9, 2004. May require free download of Adobe Acrobat. A follow-up article appears in Volume 2, No.4, January 16, 2004.)

KCBD.Com: Anti-Gay Group Schedules Protest in Lubbock

My Announcement from Rainbow: Lubbock

Texas Triangle: Boise Rejects Phelps’ Monument of Hate, Lubbock Next (Scroll to bottom of page.)



My comments:

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church marched with anti-gay signs (God hates fags, etc.) or anti-American signs (God hates America, Thank God for September the 11th, etc.), with at least one member literally stepping all over an American flag while dragging it on the ground. Pastor Fred Phelps, who kept bragging about his plans for Lubbock, didn’t even show up with his followers.

Though the invaders made themselves look bad, Lubbock made itself look good. The Westboro Baptist Church invasion only brought more unity and visibility to the local gay community, as well as more unity between the local gay community and the larger Lubbock community. RAINBOW Project outnumbered WBC tenfold (about 150 to about 15), protesting peacefully and sanely.

Metropolitan Community Church, PFLAG, Queers & Allies, and various others raised money for charities such as South Plains AIDS Resource Center (SPARC), the South Plains Food Bank, and the United Way, transforming all the attention on WBC into attention on more important matters.

Hatred in West Texas.

I posted the following in Rainbow: Lubbock, the online newsletter I created for the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community in Lubbock, Texas. Visit DuaneSimolke.Com to find Rainbow: Lubbock and a variety of other resources, as well as information about my writing.

Monday, January 12, 7 AM. I hesitate about listing an anti-gay event here, especially since the organizer of the event constantly manipulates gays into giving him free publicity. And no, I won’t give a link to his website, driving more traffic there. Instead of depressing yourself by reading his site, please empower yourself with some of the resources at DuaneSimolke.Com.

However, I wanted to urge my readers to exercise restraint and wisdom at the arrival of Fred Phelps and his followers to Lubbock. They plan to protest the Buddy Holly Center's display of Elton John's eyeglasses, as well as the efforts of Lubbock’s Gay/Straight Alliance, GAP Youth. They also might target Texas Tech University and various gay-friendly churches. If gays and their allies arrive at the protests screaming and ranting at Phelps, he and much of Lubbock’s media will only succeed in making gays look like aggressors, lunatics, and threats to free speech.

Phelps is, of course, famous for picketing the funerals of gay-equality advocates and of people who died of AIDS-related complications, as well as for creating a monument that celebrates Matthew Sheperd’s supposed passage into Hell.

Some gay activists in other communities have responded to these protests in positive ways, such as telethons in which participants donate a set amount of money to gay causes for each protester Phelps brings. Some Lubbockites plan to make donations to SPARC (South Plains AIDS Resource Center) in Phelps’s name.
Other positive responses could include an informational meeting about gays or a prayer vigil; local media might cover such events, in relation to the Phelps protests.

Screaming and ranting at someone who lives to scream and rant will accomplish nothing. Letting him spew out his venom will push sensible people away from his anti-gay views, once they get a good listen.

Please also read about the PBS-sponsored programs Not in Our Town.

Angels in (Lubbock, Texas) America.

Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches upsets some people so much that they often work to shut down any theater that produces it. In one case, organizers even tried to block funding to an entire college, just because the theater department there had decided to perform Angels!

This play deals openly and bluntly with the early days of AIDS and the issues surrounding it, focusing largely on gay characters and religious themes. Many people find that unacceptable, but many theater departments see this winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as an important document of American culture that provokes relevant discussions.

In February of 2003, the Texas Tech University Theatre in Lubbock, Texas, will present a production of Angels. Appropriately enough, Tech’s theater department recently produced The Laramie Project, a play about interviews conducted in the town where Matthew Shepard was murdered. I say “appropriately” because references to a local production of Angels play an important part in that drama. I hope Texas Tech University Theatre does as good a job on Angels as The Laramie Project. From past experiences, I think they will.

I’ll have more about Angels, before and after the local production, both here and in Rainbow: Lubbock.