How Rehoboth Beach, Delaware became a haven for the LGBTQ+ community

By Ryan Hughes

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    REHOBOTH BEACH, Delaware (KYW) — Rehoboth Beach is known for its extraordinary entertainment, dancing and drag dinner theater, and its mile-long boardwalk that’s bursting with eclectic shops and restaurants overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The Sussex County, Delaware beach resort is not only a popular getaway for families, but it’s long been a booming mecca for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I can’t imagine that most people wouldn’t include Rehoboth in somewhere on that list of the gay meccas in the United States,” said Tim Ragan, who owns the Blue Moon in Rehoboth.

The Rehoboth of today is far from how the town first started. The city was founded in the 1870s as a Methodist Meeting Camp.

“About the ’60s, a bunch of gay people started drifting into this area,” said Fay Jacobs, a historian and gay rights activist.

Jacobs says early on, a popular meeting place was the Pink Pony, and Rehoboth became a gay enclave during a time when homosexuality wasn’t legal.

“So there were dinner parties in homes with the shades drawn and they didn’t call attention to themselves, and it was really like that until the late ’70s,” Jacobs said.

Then, the Blue Moon opened on Baltimore Avenue in 1981 as a gay bar and safe haven.

“The town was getting gayer and gayer by the moment. I mean, there were people coming from all over. We had, at that time, we had two big dance clubs and lots of restaurants,” said Murray Archibald, co-founder of CAMP Rehoboth.

By the 1990s, many long-time residents felt the quaint beach town was being taken over by the influx of gay people. That tension led Archibald to co-found Create A More Positive (CAMP) Rehoboth with his late husband, which became a resource center for the gay community.

“That’s sort of been our goal all along, that we are all welcome here,” Archibald said.

Rehoboth has always been a getaway for beachgoers from Washington D.C., Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Today, visitors come from all over the country to what is now known as the Nation’s Summer Capital.

“We just are all absolutely integrated and in the community of diversity. There’s so many different people here,” Jacobs said.

Today, there are scores of gay-owned businesses, and it’s a place to feel comfortable in your skin.

According to CAMP Rehoboth, the small resort town is still a family town, but for all kinds of families.

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