"How beneficial to the queer community are reject-on-sight policies designed to keep out straight people?"
Queer club nights face an awkward dilemma. On one hand, organisers don’t want them to be overrun with straight people who’ve come to gawk at the spectacle of girls kissing. On the other hand, they don’t want to be so cautious in their admission that they end up turning away gay people because they ‘look straight’ – whatever that means.
Clubs in Edinburgh have chosen to tackle this problem in various ways. Up until recently, Velvet laid out a very specific policy on its flyers and signs, advising that gay men were welcome if accompanied by a ‘gay girlie guest’. A spokesperson for Velvet, however, asserted that these were intended only as guidelines to inform clientele of what to expect, and that they had no policy of refusing entry to straight people. Nobody I spoke to reported difficulties gaining admission, and more recently, the club has rewritten its publicity material to say that it’s a night for ‘gay girlies and their LGBT & S friends’; new club Zeus, aimed primarily at men, does likewise. "Velvet does not discriminate or exclude," said the spokesperson, "it’s moving towards a more tolerant, open-minded world."
Few bars and clubs make their entrance policies quite so clear, however; a shining example being CC Bloom’s. The scene is rife with tales of the establishment’s choosiness over who to admit: many have been told it’s "regulars only" when they try to enter. One woman said, "Despite my assertion that I was a regular and had been in the night before, they only let me in after deliberating for several minutes over my BLOGS [Edinburgh University's LGBT society] card."
Nobody at CC’s was available to elaborate on their policy, but certainly no membership scheme exists there and if you’ve ever had to fight your way to the bar in CC’s on a Friday night, you will appreciate the unlikelihood of the bouncers identifying all the regulars by sight.
