It’s not just for events like the annual Key West Pride or Key West Womenfest that the southernmost city in the continental United States is known. For a long time, Key West has been considered a particularly open and tolerant year-round destination for gay and lesbian vacationers.
This was also appreciated by the openly gay writer Tennessee Williams, who visited the city for the first time in 1941 and subsequently settled here with his partner Frank Merlo. Other significant events in Key West include the founding of the Key West Business Guild in 1978, the oldest LGBTQ destination marketing organization in North America, and the election of Richard Heyman as the first openly gay mayor in the U.S. in 1983.
New Year’s Eve 1996 saw the first float of the red glitter stiletto with drag queen sushi aboard from the balcony of New Orleans House. The following year, the Key West AIDS Memorial was completed – bearing the names of more than 1,000 men and women who died of AIDS. In 2003, to mark its 25th anniversary, a two-kilometer rainbow flag sewn by Gilbert Baker lined Duval Street from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico at Key West Pride.
Getting off to a good start in 2015 on Jan. 6 were Aaron Huntsman and William Lee Jones, who said their first same-sex yes to each other in the Keys, shortly after marriage for all was introduced in the state of Florida.
Since that same year, four crosswalks in rainbow colors have adorned the heart of Key West’s LGBTQ walkout district at the intersection of Duval and Petronia streets, and in 2018, Key West elected Teri Johnston as the first openly lesbian woman mayor of a major Florida city. And this year, the Southernmost City comes full circle as it extensively celebrates its successful motto, “One Human Family.”
