Nancy Meyer works at a combination framing store and art gallery,
Row House Gallery, in Milford Ohio. It's a nice place, a well preserved and tasteful long standing business on recently renovated Main Street.
Milford has traditionally been known to many as a small historic, if well worn, town on the little Miami, twenty miles East of downtown. Of late, efforts by the chamber of commerce and local merchants have renovated the city into a small and increasingly upscale dinning and shopping destination. Media outlets commonly now refer to the town as "historic and quaint."
From her perch at Row House Gallery, Meyer has noted a change not only in who's coming to visit, but who's coming to stay. Gays, normally a rarity in these parts- and in other suburbs throughout the city- are increasingly calling neighborhoods like Milford, home.
Meyer has been open about her sexuality for many years, (upon my meeting her, she immediately jokes, "Yep that's me, I'm gay. I came out of the closet at ten,") welcomes this migratory trend.
Meyer has been in Milford for a while, coming here via Madisonville and Loveland. She initially came to Milford "expecting to find a cold and closed minded place; instead I found nothing but love, warmth and affection." She further says that despite living as an openly gay woman and, "a conservative liberal to boot,"- in what can be a very conservative area (Jean Schmidt is her Congresswoman)- that she's never had a single conflict while living in Milford. In fact, while Meyer works in Milford, she actually lives with her partner of five years ten miles up the road in bucolic and sleepy Goshen. Moreover, not only do Meyer and her partner live in Goshen, peacefully, they soon plan on tying the knot in a civil ceremony at their home. The Mayor of Milford will preside.
I try and imagine a gay wedding in Goshen, Ohio and cannot. Meyer, however, enlightens me by explaining what other gays, in prior interviews, have stated: That the sexual orientation of people living in a given community is no longer the primary deciding factor for where many gays and lesbians now choose to live. Or, in other words, gays are sufficiently comfortable with Cincinnati, as a whole, that they now feel free to live anywhere in the city and don't feel the need to live in gay enclaves to ensure safety or acceptance.
"We're like anyone," Meyer says, "we want land, we want our homes and our towns to match our lifestyles. When I first moved to Madisonville," she explains, "there were six homes owned by gays and/or gay couples in a four block area. That was nice," she said, "but that wasn't why I moved there. I moved there because it was nice neighborhood and because I could walk to Mariemont Square, and could shop local businesses and listen to the live music on the square in the summer."
These days, Meyer notes that Goshen fits her needs because living there allows her to own land for her gardens and animals. Land she couldn't find in the traditional intercity gay enclaves of Northside or downtown Cincinnati. Meyer states that she knows many gays who have moved into neighborhoods throughout the Cincinnati region. "Some," she says, "are in Westwood and some are in Hyde Park." Other gays, she observes, are couples with children who have the same concerns as any other family unit: the need to find a safe neighborhood, the need for quality schools. Others, she says, have simply chosen, like other city dwellers, to trade in life in the city with its myriad social problems and crime for greener pastures.
David White, 33, who works as a Community Investment Director at
Stop Aids, provides a very different point of view. In the last nine years he's lived in three separate residences throughout Pendleton, part of Over-the-Rhine and adjacent to Broadway Commons. White notes that, "a lot of people complain about crime, but very few rarely ever experience it." While he agrees that crime is a fact of life and that gays have migrated from the city perhaps as a result, he states that, "I feel there are just as many gays living in the city now as ever." "Life downtown provides cultural opportunities which simply don't exist elsewhere in the city," he adds.
For White and others, movement of gays outside the city is more likely tied to lifestyle choices than any dissatisfaction with the current state of the city. He notes that avoiding crime is primarily a matter of common sense- walking in crowds, avoiding alleys and other know dangerous locations after dark.
No matter the scope and/or the reason for the migration, the movement is good news for the recipient neighborhoods, according to David Purcell, a Professor of Sociology at Kent State and Newport, Kentucky native. Purcell notes that the movement of gays into traditionally monocultural areas provides a number of benefits for the community.
"Diverse neighborhoods promote an environment of tolerance which, in turn, can drive economic growth....[C]reative, well-educated professionals often seek out tolerant communities to live and work in. These individuals bring important assets - their education, wealth, and social capital - to their neighborhoods. The stronger a neighborhood is in these terms, the better off the neighborhood will be, particularly in terms of their youth. Diversity drives innovation," he says.
An even more interesting question is does this migration into areas not traditionally chosen by gays indicate a growing acceptance of gays within the Cincinnati region?
Leslie S. Evelo believes so. She lives in the heart of Westwood with Jill, with her partner of 14 years. Since arriving in Cincinnati in 1987 she has also lived in College Hill and North College Hill. Evelo, who is a psychologist, just retired from private practice while Jill works doing contract research as a nurse, developing international drug trials. Leslie describes her neighborhood as being, "right in the middle of Westwood," and comprised of people "of mixed political makeup." She's noted over the years that Westwood, as a whole, "is becoming more Latino, African American and gay." Evelo views this as a positive change, and it is one of many reasons she and Jill chose to live in Westwood
While Westwood has traditionally enjoyed a reputation as a conservative and hardly gay friendly-neighborhood, both she and Jill are content living in Westwood as liberals. They also love its small-town feel, the friendliness and care that Westsiders extend to one another, and the way in which their neighbors help each other and take care of each other, regardless of political views or sexual orientation.
Evelo believes that any hostility encountered by gays in the past was, and is, predicated upon ignorance. Gay assimilation, she feels, permits the population to get to know gays on a personal level. After a while she says, "people learn that we're just like them. They learn that we're not monsters."
Both Meyer and White indicate that the acceptance of the gay community is hampered because this assimilation is simply ignored by overly conservative local media outlets in favor of more strident and contentious stories. Meyer attributes frequent anti-gay stories, or at least stories about gays presented in a polemic manner- such as opposition to gay marriage- to be the product of a shrill minority receiving disproportionate attention from conservative media sources that seem intent on ignoring the nuanced realities of life within the gay community.
Arguably, full acceptance or complete assimilation of the gay community will only occur when those charged with distributing the news and/or those charged with disseminating portrayals of the gay community (i.e. television and Hollywood) care more about accuracy than pandering conflict and stereotypes in the name of making a quick buck. And that could be a long wait.
Yet, at the end of the day maybe it's not such a difficult thing to accomplish. Nancy Meyer, in closing our conversation in Milford says, "I always tell people, I'm just like you, the only difference is who I chose to fall in love with."
Photography by Scott Beseler Nancy M
eyer
David White
Jill and Leslie