Save our glory holes, say Atlanta’s LGBT+ activists
A group of LGBT campaigners in Atlanta are launching a fight to save the city’s most coveted glory holes.
The holes in question are situated in Tokyo Valentino, a sex shop that has been running since 1995.
“Tokyo Valentino at Cheshire Bridge Rd is being shut down by the City of Atlanta unless you help!” the petition reads. “If we lose our culture then we also lose our identity as gay Georgians.”
Gay Georgia, known as GAGA, is an LGBT group fighting to save the site from being shut down.
Now lawmakers are attempting to shut the site down as it is in a 500 metre radius of of a residential area, which is in violation of the city’s adult entertainment ordinance, reports Queerty.
“The city is still giving us a hard time about our permits even though we’re entitled to everything we’re proposing,” said Tokyo Valentino owner Michael Morrison.
“This should have been done within a week but we’ve been going on for three months now. We’ve got some low-level bureaucrats holding up the process. But we’re going to win.”
“The place you buy dildos and lacy panties is not a historic LGBT site. Saving Tokyo Valentino is not about saving our queer history. So don’t sell it to me that way. But, making room for Atlanta’s red-light district is important, because it’s safer when we can keep this activity under view of the community,” said writer Matt Terrell in an op-ed for The Georgia Voice.
For those not in the know, a glory hole features in gay culture as a mechanism for voyeurism or even sex.
The small hole in public arenas such as toilets can allow men to see each other as they perform sex acts, or indeed release the member in question for the other participant.
7634 people have signed the petition to save the shop to date.
