There’s a saying among the LGBTQ+ community in Eureka Springs, Arkansas: “Not even the streets are straight.”
It’s barely hyperbole: Over 30 percent of the 2,000 residents in this Ozark mountain town identify as LGBTQ+. The winding roads are narrow and dizzying, with zero traffic lights; it’s not uncommon to see a confused out-of-towner driving the wrong way up a hill, to the ire of residents and all those that know the Eureka rule: Just park and walk.
In 2012, Eureka Springs became the first city in the red state of Arkansas to endorse same-sex marriage. When marriage equality passed in May of 2014, Jay Wilks the director of LGBTQ+ organization Out in Eureka and his husband Keith were second in line to tie the knot. They became the fourth same-sex couple ever married in the South, thanks to logistics: The measure passed on Friday night, and Eureka’s license office was one of the few opened on Saturday, with people driving in from all over to make their relationship