Jack Campbell opened the Miami branch of Club Baths in 1974. The 1972 Democratic National Convention was held in Miami, featuring, for the first time, a public speech about the rights of gay men and lesbians by openly gay San Francisco political activist Jim Foster. Also in 1970, Florida State UNiversity students in Tallahassee founded the first Gay Liberation Front in the southern United States. Though gay life in Miami was intensely closeted, and bars were subject to frequent raids, Christ Metropolitan Community Church-a congregation for gay and lesbian Christians in Miami-was founded in 1970 as a religious outlet, attracting hundreds of parishioners. In 1969, the Stonewall riots occurred in New York City, marking the start of the gay rights movement. The public image of homosexuals changed with liberalized social attitudes of the late 1960s. The court retained the state's prohibition on sodomy by ruling that anal and oral sex could still be prosecuted under the lesser charge of "lewd and lascivious" conduct. In 1971, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the "crime against nature" statute as unconstitutionally vague. 1960–2000 įlorida courts interpreted the 1868 law to prohibit all sexual activity between two men or two women. In the 1960s The Miami Herald ran several stories implying the life of area homosexuals as synonymous with pimps and child molesters, and WTVJ, a television station, aired a documentary titled "The Homosexual" in 1966 warning viewers that young boys were in danger from predatory men.
From 1956 to 1966, the Johns Committee of the Florida Legislature actively sought to root out homosexuals in state employment and in public universities across the state, publishing the inflammatory " Purple Pamphlet", which portrayed all homosexuals as predators and a dire threat to the children of Florida.
Though gay nightlife in the city had enjoyed the same boisterous existence as other forms of entertainment in the 1930s, by the 1950s, the city government worked to shut down as many gay bars as possible and enacted laws making homosexuality and cross-dressing illegal. The general attitude about homosexuality in Miami mirrored many other cities' across the country. After Florida became a territory of the United States in 1821, the Territorial Legislature enacted laws against fornication, adultery, bigamy, and incest, as well as against "open lewdness, or.any notorious act of public indecency, tending to debauch the morals of society." įlorida's first specific sodomy law, which was enacted in 1868 and made sodomy a felony, read: "Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with beast, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding twenty years." In 1917, the Florida Legislature added a lesser crime, a second-degree misdemeanor: "Whoever commits any unnatural and lascivious act with another person shall be punished by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding six months." Homosexuality was not addressed specifically in the 1917 law.