A Q&A with James Sears about Queering Rehoboth Beach (Part 2)

This week in North Philly Notes, the second half of our Q&A with James Sears about his new book, Queering Rehoboth Beach.

What surprised you in your research of Rehoboth?

First, I was astonished at the parallels between the struggles during the early years of Rehoboth as a Methodist meeting camp and those a century later when the town struggled with its “homosexual problem.”

Also, I was not prepared for the degree of animosity and vitriol that accompanied the queering of Rehoboth. These ranged from college-age men masking themselves when guarding Poodle Beach and gay men “rioting” when one of the guards summoned police to more serious events such the champagne bottle incident, when a roving band of local youth seriously injured gay tourists on the Boardwalk one late night. It also includes the mundane workings of institutional heterodoxy, from the Homeowner’s Association distribution of “Keep Rehoboth a Family Town” bumper stickers to the Association-controlled town council enacting ordinances designed to lessen queer visibility. Heated public meetings, voters’ referenda, suits and counter-suits, and police raids were all part of this toxic cocktail of small-town insularity mixed with virulent homophobia and other deep-seated prejudices, garnished with gaslit ambiguities and served up by a phalanx of Rehoboth’s intransigent Old Guard cloaked in deception and schooled in the guileful art of obfuscation.

And certainly, I hadn’t anticipated the intricacies of how and why this long-running, manifold conflict reached a resolution—which I will allow the reader to discover.

These surprises return us to the concept of “queering history” wherein conventional understanding about historical events is challenged, resulting in a much more complicated conversation revolving around race, gender, social class, gender identities, as well as sexualities.

How did race factor into “queering” Rehoboth Beach?

Frankly, it didn’t. Undeniably, race, race relations, and racism contoured the character of Rehoboth, but it did so in its absent presence. It was invisible to those—queer and straight—whose skin color was the same. This southern Delaware town was not unusual in this respect. Here, a Black community was (and largely remains) literally sequestered across a canal completed in 1916, whose very families labored in now shuttered canneries which lined the waters connecting the Chesapeake and Delaware bays.

While racial discrimination in where one ate, shopped, or swam has long passed, its sinewy insidiousness remains. From the 1980s to 2000s, queer life revolved around Poodle Beach and North Shore, upscale restaurants such as the Blue Moon, and dance clubs, most notably The Renegade. There were few People of Color and, at least for those whom I interviewed, that underscored the undercurrent of prejudice they experienced. Similarly, like other queer communities of that era, there were also divisions of social class (A-List gays), gender (few lesbian-welcoming bars, male-controlled organizations), and gender identities, such as trans folks unrepresented in groups.

What makes your history of a small beach town—albeit one where President Biden enjoys a vacation home—have universal appeal?

The particulars of Rehoboth may allow the reader to reframe responses to our current national malaise and gloom. For instance, how do we engage with “the Other” within the public square? How can we hold particular views on moral and social issues yet seek common ground with those whose perspectives radically differ? It also raises the interesting question of whether a transformation within a community can even occur in today’s toxic environment. Ultimately, the “Battle for Rehoboth” was not over a New York-styled nightclub plunked down in the town’s center or the refusal of queers to remain closeted behind smoked-glass bars and distant beaches. It was a battle for hearts and minds.

What do you see as the future of a queered Rehoboth?

Well, the book ends in the first decade of this century. But I would like to quote Ivo Dominguez, Jr., one of the queer pioneering leaders in Delaware, “Until the gay movement is in Dagsboro, Blades, and Duck Creek, people are not to going to recognize that we’re a part of every American community.”

James Sears will present Queering Rehoboth Beach at:

May 25 at 3:00 pm at Browseabout Books, 133 Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth, DE

June 2 at 5:00 pm at CAMP Rehoboth 37 Baltimore Avenue in Rehoboth, DE

June 8 at 5:00 pm at Huxley & Hiro 419 N. Market Street in Wilmington, DE

June 13 at 7:00 pm at Red Emma’s 3128 Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore, MD

June 27 at 7:00 pm at The Ivy Bookshop 5928 Falls Road in Baltimore, MD

June 29 at 5:00 pm at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC

July 19 at 6:00 pm at Giovanni’s Room, 345 S. 12th Street in Philadelphia, PA