'Queering Rehoboth Beach': New book explores beach town's LGBTQ+ history

When James T. Sears first began visiting Rehoboth Beach in 2016, he was struck by the gay-friendliness of the town: its pride flags dotting Baltimore Avenue, LGBTQ+ community center and its gay- and lesbian-owned shops and restaurants.

Even though he may be a retired professor these days ― the former Fulbright scholar has taught everywhere from Harvard University to Penn State University ― his still-kicking intellectual curiosity kicked in, wondering how this beach town became a major hub for coexisting straight families/vacationers and the LGBTQ+ community.

Soon Sears, also an author, was asking locals questions and researching at the Rehoboth Beach Library, searching to understand the history of how Rehoboth Beach has become one of the most popular LGBTQ+ spots in the country.

"Of course, there are a number of books about Rehoboth Beach, but there really wasn't anything that dealt in depth how Rehoboth became queer, basically, which was the question I had," Sears says.

Soon, his curiosity snowballed into his latest book, "Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk" (Temple University Press, $30), which took two years to research with more than 40 people interviewed and a year to write.

It's available online and at independent Delaware bookstores Browseabout Books (133 Rehoboth Ave., Rehoboth Beach) and Huxley & Hiro (419 N. Market St., Wilmington), among others.

The result is a vibrant, yet detailed 325-page deep-dive into the history of Rehoboth Beach going back to the late 1800s while detailing the history of the LGBTQ+ community in Delaware, focused mostly on how Rehoboth Beach became the state's unofficial home for the queer community.

The birth of queer Rehoboth

While researching his book, Sears was drawn to the role Louisa Carpenter played in the earliest years of Rehoboth Beach as a queer destination.

Carpenter, a lesbian socialite descendent of the du Ponts who dressed in tuxedos, hosted queer friends at her family's Rehoboth Beach residence from the 1930s to the 1940s. And while no one dared mention the "l-word" at the time, as Sears writes, her gatherings are some of the first well-documented evidence of an active LGBTQ community in town.

"So Rehoboth had a gay thread going back then," Sears says.

In the years since, the number of gay and lesbian visitors and residents steadily grew. At first, they would gather in private residences, mostly outside of the gaze of the beach town's more conservative straight crowd.

Sears, author of books such as "Growing Up Gay in the South" and "Lonely Hunters: An Oral History of Lesbian and Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968," says the queer community slowly grew more visible in the late 1970s as LGBTQ+-friendly bars and restaurants became more public gathering spots.

It wasn't always a smooth transition to the Rehoboth Beach of today, where the queer and straight communities live in town with little friction compared with the past.

Once the LGBTQ+ community became more public and grew in size, it did lead to some division, most explicitly in the late 1970s and 1980s, says Sears, an Indiana native. That's when homosexuals began running for City Council and gay gatherings became more public, sparking an ugly homophobic response from some.

A "huge inflection point," as Sears puts it, came in 1991 when Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald opened Rehoboth Beach's CAMP Rehoboth Community Center, reaching out to the straight community to work together on town issues where the two groups had common goals.

"Their philosophy was, 'Where's the center?' How can we connect with the town and that's what they did through churches, town council meetings and the sort," Sears says. "And if you look at Rehoboth now, there really is no separation between between the town and the queer community. And that's largely due to CAMP."

And while not everyone agreed with their strategy, including some LGBTQ+ people who celebrated having distinct communities, Sears believes it worked to build a better Rehoboth for all.

"There was a development of the notion if a common public square where we can disagree on some things, but we're a part of a larger community, something that is missing from our national politics today," Sears adds.

The role of Rehoboth Beach's gay nightlife scene

Sears points to the opening of the fine-dining destination Back Porch Café (59  Rehoboth Ave.) in mid-1970s with an ownership group that included a gay co-owner (Victor Pisapia) as a big moment when it came to the more forward presence of the queer community in town.

It wasn't a gay bar/restaurant per se, but it was open to all and stressed acceptance.

As co-owner Keith Fitzgerald told The Daily Times in 2016, "Most of our staff was gay anyway so there was never any judgment. Bottom line was, we just wanted people to eat our food. Sexual orientation didn't matter to us."

Before that, places like the Pink Pony helped crack the door open. The Pink Pony was one of the first gay-friendly bars in Rehoboth Beach, which was open 1950 to 1962, located on the Boardwalk where Victoria's Restaurant now stands in the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel on Olive Avenue.

By the time the full-blown dance club The Renegade opened in 1980, the town's queer community was as visible as it had ever been with the hot spot hosting partiers through 2003. A year later, Blue Moon (35 Baltimore Ave.) opened and changed everything, Sears said.

"Blue Moon is one of the most important places in this history because they had an outdoor porch patio by their second year," he said. "It was the first time you had that gay life spilling out into the streets of Rehoboth."

Along with Blue Moon, Rehoboth's queer-friendly gathering spots are still a centerpiece of the community whether its bars and restaurants such as Blue Moon, Purple Parrot Grill (134 Rehoboth Ave.), Aqua Bar & Grill (57 Baltimore Ave.), Diego's Bar & Nightclub (37298 Rehoboth Ave Extension), Freddie's Beach Bar and Restaurant (3 S. First St.), Rigby's Bar & Grill (404 Rehoboth Ave.) or other meeting places such as Poodle Beach, a popular part of the beach for the queer community just south of the Boardwalk.

The lively brunches, nightlife and drag volleyball games that happen at those locations are the culmination of years of growth for the LGBTQ+ community dating back decades.

"These spots really helped develop a sense of community," Sears says. "It wasn't just individual groups in private residences, back when there was no notion of community at all."

Similar crossroads: 1880s and 1980s Rehoboth Beach

One of the things that surprised Sears the most when he began to dig into the history of Rehoboth Beach was the similarities he found between the crossroads found in 1870s/1880s Rehoboth and also 1970s/1990s Rehoboth.

Even though the eras were a century apart, he was struck by what he saw as parallels as the town had to choose a path forward.

It was 1873 when the area was founded as the Rehoboth Beach Camp Meeting Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church by the Rev. Robert W. Todd of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church of Wilmington. It was to be the resort site for Methodist Episcopal Church camp meetings, governed by Methodist principles ― no dancing or drinking allowed.

But there were other more entrepreneurial-spirited upstate people also eyeing the area for investment as a place for vacationers, pushing for it to be more than just a quiet, reflective religious retreat.

"Basically, the Methodists eventually gave up," Sears says with Camp Meeting Association disbanding in 1881.

Out was the way of its founding, which included strict rules like no shaving allowed on Sundays. Instead, it opened up to the wider world, stripped of some of its more restrictive, conservative rules. On March 19, 1891, an act was passed incorporating the municipality as Cape Henlopen City. The name was formally changed to Rehoboth Beach in 1893.

"Fast-forward 100 years and you have a similar split between those who are progressive-minded mercantilists, which this time were individuals who were gay and lesbian, and individuals who saw Rehoboth Beach as they had always seen it: a small, 'morally upright' town," Sears says. "It was the same conflict between secularists and the sectarians."

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Retired professor's curiosity snowballs into 'Queering Rehoboth Beach'