San Antonio will continue to be a happy place to live, but it will no longer be gay.
1200 WOAI news reports that on Thursday, City Council is expected to approve changing the name of Gay Street to Second Baptist Way.
Gay Street runs for four blocks from East Commerce south to Fargo Street on the city’s east side,
City officials are going out of their way to stress that the renaming of Gay Street has nothing to do with the current usage of the word ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘homosexual.’ Officials say the goal is to boost the profile of Second Baptist Church, a formerly all-Black congregation which has been at the location since the 1890s.
City officials concede that there has been some opposition to the renaming of Gay Street, but they feel the name change is in the best interests of the city, and of Second Baptist. Second Baptist Park is near the corner of Commerce and Gay Streets.
The city says Gay Street has ‘no significant historical connection’ to San Antonio or to the growth of the east side. In fact, nobody is really sure how Gay Street got its name, and it does not figure in any anthology on the origins of place names in the city.
“Gay” was a common woman’s name in the latter part of the 19th Century, when the area around Gay Street was being developed.