COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – When Icons opened their doors in 2020 in downtown Colorado Springs, there were few places considered to be created specifically for the LGBTQ+ community.

At the time, the only other LGBTQ+ bar was Club Q. Icons owners and husbands Joshua and John Franklin-Wolfe said opening a new LGBTQ+ bar, especially downtown, was a risk.

“I think it was a risk,” said Josh. “I mean, any business is going to have high risk, but for us in particular, we just didn’t know if the community was ready for us to be as loud and gay as we are.”

For Josh, though, this idea for an out-and-proud venue for his community held an extra special meaning.

Josh had grown up in Colorado Springs.

And when he was young, he navigated his coming out journey in a city that looked vastly different than the one he would return to decades later.

“I came out in the 90s, late 90s, which, if you remember, was a pretty terrifying time for a young, gay kid in Colorado Springs,” Josh said.

While he returned to a city that had a celebrated space for the LGBTQ+ community and a yearly Pride festival with large crowds of attendees, the environment he came out in was shaken by a hate crime.

Up north, at the University of Wyoming in 1998, Matthew Shepard was found brutally beaten by two young men and tied to a remote fence. He died at a hospital in Fort Collins soon after.

Shepard was a gay student and his death fueled a movement for LGBTQ+ rights; but for Josh, the idea of a gay man his age being killed for who he loved made the idea of coming out more terrifying.

“It was a scary time to come out,” Josh said, “but I’m also really bold and stubborn, so I came out in the 90s, but was afraid to be in Colorado Springs quite frankly.”

Despite the fear, though, Josh said living as someone other than his authentic self was unthinkable.

“I think being your authentic self is always the way to go,” he said. “All throughout my life, I’ve been faced with adversity and people wanting me to be something other than what I am and it just didn’t feel authentic to me.”

It’s a quality his husband, John, agreed with. John said he grew up Mormon, coming out while attending Brigham Young University, but finding common ground in authenticity and their shared love for musical theatre when he met Josh.

Josh’s coming out journey came at a transformative time for the fight for LGBTQ+ rights both in Colorado Springs and around the nation.

Carolyn Cathey, a participant in the LGBTQ+ Oral History Project at Colorado College, has been a long-time activist for rights for queer people. While Josh navigated his own journey, she said she had been continuing the fight she started a long time ago.

“The ‘90s was a decade of fluctuation and progressive movement,” Cathey explained.

During the early 1990s, Colorado had become known as the “Hate State,” largely due to the passage of Amendment 2 in 1992. This made it illegal to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“That night, election night, the gay community leadership were at Poor Richards, that was the hub,” Cathey recounted. “When the bill passed, it only passed because El Paso County tipped the scale.”

Cathey said this was just one example of a history of discrimination against people like her. In fact, she said when she was growing up, loving differently than others was criminalized.

While places like Icons serve as out-and-proud safe spaces now, Cathey said she, and those before her, had to rely on hidden spaces to find solace and community.

“We are very aware of the bars that have come and gone in Colorado Springs, and they served such an important purpose,” said Josh. “There’s no way we would be here without Club Q and Hide N Seek and The Underground.”

Hide N Seek, specifically, has a history of being a hidden haven for the LGBTQ+ community, according to Cathey.

“And we had to be underground because it was illegal,” she said. “Our community, we weren’t allies. We were accomplices in criminal activity.”

But eventually, laws criminalizing homosexuality were repealed.

“And to see those laws repealed… that’s freedom,” Cathey said.

But the fight wasn’t over, with Amendment 2 allowing discrimination against people like her. However, she said as she and others pushed back, that, too, was repealed. The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in 1996.

“For decades, we fought and demonstrated and protested and marched a million miles and called our electeds and begged for equality and we got it,” Cathey said. “We won the battle.”

And as things came to a head with the death of Matthew Shepard, Cathey said the fight for LGBTQ+ rights did, too.

“We were ground zero, that’s what we named ourselves, for the fight for gay rights, for queer rights,” Cathey said. “Everything queer across the nation resonated and began, originated from Colorado Springs.”

As time passed, the conversation around gay rights grew, paving the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage, at the state level and nationwide.

Soon, the city Josh had once been terrified to exist in was transformed.

After high school, Josh had become a performer for Broadway alongside his husband. The two found community in New York, performing with like-minded people and watching the culture around LGBTQ+ rights change from a unique hub. But Josh said it was eventually time to come home.

“What our mission was, was to provide a celebratory space that was sort of less hidden, less secretive, more bright, bold and unapologetic,” Josh said.

“I think for both of us, we’ve learned that people that have different views or opinions about the LGBTQIA+ community has a lot to do with lack of exposure or fear or misunderstanding,” John added. “I think that also inspired us to come back here.”

Icons opened to a community with open arms; one that, even after a hate-fueled shooting at Club Q, embraced their community, with even straight-owned businesses putting pride flags in their windows, declaring their space a safe one for a community that had once struggled to find sanctuary in the very same city decades ago.

“It is amazing to see rainbow flags in the walkways during pride month and flags posted everywhere, rainbow flags, and businesses saying everyone is welcome,” Cathey said. “That’s what we fought for.”

“That can save lives, just being kind and providing a space where you know that you are welcome to celebrate in,” said John.

The conversation was transformed and after years of existing in secret, Colorado had even elected the state’s first openly gay governor, Jared Polis.

“We thought it would never get here,” Cathey said. “To go from the Hate State to the great state of Colorado. We are the greatest state in the nation.”

But the battle, Cathey said, isn’t over.

And offering a safe space, the Franklin-Wolfes said, is the root of the ongoing battle for acceptance and equality.

“I would be remiss if we didn’t mention that the trans[gender] community is under attack, and I just want to see more support for that community,” said John.

The Franklin-Wolfes and Cathey agree: the conversation around the LGBTQ+ community has become more political, once more, and more hostile. But Cathey said she is confident the world will come around, just like it once had.

“So, the fight now is to not give up ground. Don’t let them take it from us,” Cathey said. “Tell the story, every one of us is nothing more than our story. Tell it. Tell it to everyone who will listen. Because when they know you, they can’t hate you.”

Her words were echoed by Josh, who said that sort of representation can save lives and will keep the conversation of equality in the mainstream.

“I think regardless, we just keep showing up. We keep offering space, we keep celebrating who we are and eventually the community gets behind us and themselves and wants to be part of it all,” Josh said.

Josh said he hopes he and his husband have created the safe space and sense of community that he needed when he first came out as a young, gay kid in Colorado Springs.

“I think like, daily, about this mural on the side of our building that’s a huge pride flag,” Josh said. “And I think about that kid that’s in high school who’s walking downtown and sees that on a building and sees that somebody, lots of people, are celebrating who they are. And that they don’t have to be afraid.

“I think that’s super impactful and I hope, especially, young people know that there’s a huge community here just ready to support them.”

You can watch the abridged story here:

Joshua Franklin-Wolfe came out in the 1990s, a wildly different time for people in the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado Springs.

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