The answering service sent alerts to an on-call 'operator' through a pager. It consisted of a phone number patched to an answering service. The Community Referral Service of Indianapolis was a simple thing. Related: Some of America's best gay Pride celebrationsīut the gay pride festival began cautiously, with a dinner at a hotel in 1981 where many of the guests wore masks 'so as not to be seen,' according to the group's official history.
Such reticence seems quaint today, and especially this week when 50,000 people are expected to line the downtown streets Saturday to watch Indianapolis' annual Circle City IN Pride Parade that will include hundreds of participants, including Mayor Joe Hogsett. 'We were very, very cautious and rightly so,' said Geoff Lapin, who with five friends hatched the idea while sitting around his living room at Christmastime 1980.
It incorporated, in early 1981, not as the Gay Switchboard but as the Community Referral Service of Indianapolis. INDIANAPOLIS - Being gay in Indianapolis once meant living covertly.Įven the city's 'gay switchboard' - a one-stop information clearinghouse run by and for gay men - didn't officially use the word gay.
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