“I was so angry and upset” about the shooting, Manis said. But the pain remains just as raw for many of the bar’s regulars. Today at Backstreet, the bullet holes have been spackled over.
He faces up to four life terms plus 60 years in prison. Gay pleaded guilty in May to first-degree murder and six counts of malicious wounding. He later said in court that voices he thought came from God tormented him, ordering him to kill homosexuals. Gay, a 55-year-old Vietnam veteran who drifted among several VA hospitals, had been kidded about his last name in the Marine Corps. He then opened fire on the crowd, hitting five other people. He hit Overstreet in the chest and Collins in the stomach.
When the two bent to hug each other, Gay stood up and started shooting. Across from him, Overstreet was talking to a friend, John Collins. According to witnesses, Gay ordered a beer and sat down. 22, 2000, when Ronald Gay entered the Backstreet Cafe. In Roanoke, that event happened late on Sept. “Oftentimes, it takes some terrible and dramatic event to make people realize they should take some risks,” Hawes said. Gays typically keep a low profile in small towns, said David Hawes, a field organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force who came to Roanoke after the shooting. “You have a much better chance of getting gay-bashed there than here,” he said. While hate crimes are not uncommon in Roanoke, there is much less chance of getting roughed up or heckled here than in outlying communities that are not as tolerant, said Christopher Manis, 31, who grew up about 130 miles west of Roanoke in far southwest Virginia.
Lesbians hold private supper clubs and jockey for an exclusive invitation-only organization called SOUL: Slightly Older Unique Lesbians. A gay teen support group meets every week in Roanoke’s central library. There are gay country dancing groups and a bowling league. For years, alternative lifestyle groups have kept a strong - yet quiet - presence. “This is a fiercely religious area - people are relatively tolerant of your lifestyle, so long as it’s not in their face.” This is not to say that Roanoke has no gay life. “There are not a lot of places here where one can work and be out,”‘ said Ratliff, who never publicly discussed his homosexuality until a few months ago. The new sense of activism is a dramatic change to gay life in Roanoke, a blue-collar city of about 95,000 at the foot of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. “We felt that this was a real important part of the gay rights movement,” said Eddie Ratliff, a Web designer who regularly updates his Internet site with news of how each survivor is recovering. A prayer vigil in memory of 43-year-old Danny Lee Overstreet, who died in the shooting, drew 1,000 people. The gay community has held fund-raisers to help pay for their medical bills. A few local gay rights groups have been organized with the purpose of documenting what happened to the shooting victims. Ever since September’s shooting at the Backstreet Cafe, Houchins said, she has been swarmed with a new legion of gay activists who realize they aren’t gaining anything by staying quiet. Catherine Houchins, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, a predominantly gay and lesbian congregation in Roanoke. I was worried it would cause people to go further back in the closet,” said the Rev. Gay, who will be sentenced yesterday, has shocked many in the city’s typically hushed gay community out into the open. But times are changing in this small Southern city after a delusional man upset about his last name - Gay - killed a man and injured six other people in a downtown gay bar last year.