They had their sense of community here.” Over the years the club has seen a number of celebrities walk through its doors, including Tiffany Haddish and Ed Sheeran. “People have created memories here,” Belle says. Over the decades, Swinging Richards has been much more than a den of debauchery, says Cameron Belle, the club’s social media director: It was “a pillar of the LGBTQ+ community from its onset,” hosting benefits for organizations like Atlanta Pride and the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus. Swinging Richards’ 26-year life has coincided with a sea change in LGBTQ rights: In 2003, the Supreme Court struck down antisodomy laws Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fell in 2011 and in 2015, the Supreme Court extended the right to marry to same-sex couples. In 1996, President Bill Clinton-who had already banned openly gay people from serving in the military-signed the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman only. When it opened, gay sex was still illegal in some states. Swinging Richards, which opened in 1996 on Northside Drive, was one of the few remaining strip clubs in the country that catered to gay men, and the first club in Atlanta to allow full-frontal male nudity.
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