Lavender sons of Zion: a history of gay men in Salt Lake City, 1950-79

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143 In addition, the continuing process of agricultural decline inevitably drew gay men from surrounding rural areas in search of work or a college education, although some moved to Salt Lake specifically to escape the isolation they experienced in smaller towns. Grant Rasmussen's 1937 thesis on "sexual inverts" alternately depicted Salt Lake as oppressive and liberating, parochial and worldly, consistent with its dual nature as both small town and big city. For example, Rasmussen described a gay adolescent who fled to New York after officials at his Salt Lake high school treated him as a delinquent. However, another case involved a young man commuting from a rural town to attend school in Salt Lake, where he found abundant opportunities to explore his homosexuality. 1 According to Evan Thompson, many of the gay men he encountered during the 1950s had grown up in rural Utah and considered Salt Lake "the big city" where they might find other gays.' Rural to urban migrants enjoyed sufficient breathing space in Salt Lake to pursue a gay lifestyle while remaining connected to the culture of their upbringing and biological families, albeit at a safe remove. On the other hand, for men who grew up in the city and still had relatives there, Salt Lake was more small town than metropolis. The nearness of relatives therefore made "passing" more critical in Salt Lake than in larger cities, and participating in its gay subculture called for greater discretion and skill at managing conflicting identities. While many men eventually relocated to larger cities renowned for tolerance and more sophisticated offerings, Salt Lake served as 1 Rasmus sen, Part Three, "A Detailed Case Study," unpaged. 2Thompson interview.