It was a place of assured discretion and warm, easy brotherhood. To those who loved the Up Stairs Lounge, it was a kind of paradise.Ī gay club that doubled as a church, it was a sanctuary in 1970s New Orleans at a time when homosexuality was considered sufficient grounds for deportation, in a city where assaulting gay people was sport for college fraternities and local ordinances made it unlawful to rent or sell homes to “sex perverts.”
