Stevens said she has a good relationship with her parents now. She married Ashlee Stevens Lawson in late 2018. “Being a Southern Baptist, I thought that was a big sin and that I was going to go to hell for it,” Stevens said. Recent slayings of LGBT people, he said, namely the shooting death of 28-year-old Ronald Peters in Decatur earlier this month, prompted this weekend’s Pride event in Macon. “We decided that we can’t go another year without showing visibility here in Middle Georgia,” Scott Mitchell, who organized the event, said. It marks the first such celebration on record here since 2003.
Other gay bars would open in the early 2000s but none remain.Įven so, LGBT people and allies will gather downtown Saturday to watch Tangerine as part of a Pride Month celebration in the city. Up until the mid 1990s, there were several gay bars downtown, including We Three on Cotton Avenue, The Red Wood, Topaz and Pegasus Lounge. “It is in the best interest of the community to control people from masking their identity, period.” “There is a concern that these people could be involved in homosexual activities or criminal activities,” Macon Police Chief Jim Brooks told The Telegraph in a 1985 article about the arrest of a drag queen.