Scottsdale has no gay neighborhood, no civic Pride parade and, since January 2024, no long-running gay bar. Phoenix has all three, with the bars of its Melrose District about 15 minutes west. That makes Scottsdale’s LGBTQ history easy to overlook, but it is there, in two kinds of record. One is a nightclub on Fifth Avenue that lasted 35 years. The other is a stack of city council reports showing how long it took the city to make discrimination against gay and transgender people illegal. The bar is gone. The ordinance passed, unanimously, on April 20, 2021, and as of this writing (fall 2026) it is still in the city code.
BS West, 1988 to 2024
BS West opened in Old Town in 1988. It took up two floors on Fifth Avenue and was known for drag shows, trans nights and go-go dancers. The Los Angeles Blade called it one of the oldest LGBTQ+ bars in the Northeast Valley. The bar’s own website described it in 2019 as “a popular release for many in the Arizona LGBTQ+ community” and printed its house rule in capitals: a “NO HATE POLICY,” which it said it would not bend “for ANYONE who walks through OUR Doors.”
In the first days of January 2024 the owners announced on social media that the bar would close for good on Sunday, January 7. Co-owner Robb Salvato said, as Mouth By Southwest reported, that BS West could no longer keep up with rising rents, insurance and other costs. The farewell post thanked “the family of staff, show casts, partners and loyal patrons who helped us create a safe space.” The comments under it were what you’d expect from 35 years of Saturday nights: people who started going there after they came out, met their husbands there, or said it was the first bar they ever walked into.
What came before 1988 is not written down anywhere we found. A resort town with a large seasonal population since the 1950s probably had places where gay men and lesbians met, but no bar, ad or name from those decades appears in any published source. The place to look is the LGBTQ+ collections at Arizona State University Library, including the Bj Bud Memorial Archives, along with Phoenix’s gay press and oral histories. A Scottsdale address in a 1970s bar guide would be a real find.
The city’s first steps, 2007 to 2014
The city government moved in stages, and for years every stage stopped short of a law.
- 2007. The City Council added sexual orientation and gender identity to the protections for city employees, and to the city’s own anti-harassment policy. That year the Human Relations Commission also recommended a citywide ordinance covering private employers, housing and businesses open to the public. The council did not act on it. (The same commission questioned the city’s contract with the all-male Scottsdale Charros in 2007.)
- April 2014. The commission held a Civil Dialogue on “Understanding the LGBT Experience” at the Civic Center Library.
- June 2014. The commission recommended an ordinance a second time, unanimously. The same month the board of the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce voted unanimously to endorse the Unity Pledge and to support an ordinance.
- July 2014. The city manager and the police chief appointed LGBT liaisons.
- August 2014. The council voted 7–0 to adopt Resolution No. 9867, directing Mayor Jim Lane to sign the Unity Pledge. The pledge’s operative sentence reads: “It’s time for LGBT inclusive non-discrimination policies in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations including restaurants and hotels.”
A pledge is not a law. When city staff reviewed the books after the vote, they reported that Scottsdale had “no civil rights protections that specifically include sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression in the areas of private employment, public housing and public accommodations.” In plain terms: in Scottsdale a gay or transgender person could be fired, refused a hotel room or refused an apartment, and nothing in city law could stop it. Asked how often that happened, the staff answered honestly: “There are no records on how often such discrimination occurs, as it is currently not illegal.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s 2014 Municipal Equality Index scored Scottsdale 63 out of 100. Tempe scored 93, Phoenix and Tucson 90, Chandler 65, Mesa 54 and Gilbert 43. Scottsdale received zero of the 18 points available for nondiscrimination laws.
March 31, 2015: the vote that never came
The council took the question up at a work study session on March 31, 2015. Staff gave it three choices: take no further action, begin public outreach, or schedule an ordinance for adoption. Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff and Tempe already had such ordinances, and staff counted 225 cities and counties nationwide.
The business lobby was on the ordinance’s side, and said so in writing. The Arizona Technology Council, writing for more than 750 member companies, called LGBT nondiscrimination measures “a top priority.” Rachel Sacco and Michael Surguine of the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau wrote that “no world-class destination can truly claim such a reputation without genuinely welcoming people from around the world.” The longest letter came from Rick Kidder, president of the Chamber. He asked the council to put an ordinance on the agenda “because it is the right thing to do,” and argued that businesses welcome a rule when it matches their values. Then he added a personal line: “I have chosen to live and work in a wonderful community where I still could be fired for who I am.”
The ordinance did not come back for a vote. Virginia Korte, then a councilmember, pushed for it and later told The Copper Courier that it “stalled out before coming to a vote.” Her explanation was blunt: “Unfortunately we had individuals on the council that were, shall we say, homophobic—either homophobic or either believed that discrimination doesn’t exist in Scottsdale or believed that it was harmful to business.” The study session’s minutes, held by the City Clerk, would show what direction the council actually gave staff that night. The published reporting doesn’t say.
April 20, 2021: Ordinance No. 4497
Six years later the politics had changed. Tucson had passed its ordinance in 1999, Flagstaff, Phoenix and Tempe in 2013 and 2014, Sedona in 2015 and Winslow in 2018. In the first half of 2021, Mesa, Glendale and Scottsdale all joined them. Angela Hughey of the advocacy group ONE Community credited the conversations with faith leaders and business groups that had followed the Unity Pledge across Arizona cities, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that federal law protects gay and transgender employees.
The Scottsdale council adopted Ordinance No. 4497 by a unanimous vote. The signed ordinance is dated April 20, 2021, over the signature of Mayor David Ortega, and the city announced it the same day. It took effect May 20, 2021. We confirmed the date from the adopted ordinance itself, which the city posted with its announcement, and from the city code, which cites “Ord. No. 4497, § 2, 4-20-21” under every section.
What the ordinance does:
- It rewrote Chapter 15, Human Rights, of the Scottsdale Revised Code. It bans discrimination “based on actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability” in employment, places of public accommodation, housing, and city services and contracts.
- A violation is a civil offense, with fines of $500 to $2,500 per violation imposed by the Scottsdale City Court. There is no private right to sue under it.
- Complaints go to the City Clerk, in writing, within 90 days of the incident.
- It exempts the federal and state governments and federally recognized tribes, religious organizations hiring people of their own faith, and tax-exempt private membership clubs when they serve only members and guests. City employees are covered by a separate section of the code.
- The city said it “does not address the issue of restrooms and locker rooms.”
When it announced the ordinance, the city said it had no statistics on discrimination because discrimination wasn’t illegal. It did list five reported incidents of assault, discrimination or harassment based on race, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity in Scottsdale between December 2018 and August 2020.
Since 2021
The ordinance is still on the books. The online Scottsdale Revised Code, codified through an ordinance adopted July 1, 2025, carries Chapter 15 as Ordinance 4497 wrote it.
Other parts of the city’s posture changed. In February 2025 the council voted 5–2 to dissolve the city’s diversity office. A March 7, 2025 staff memo then disbanded the city’s employee resource groups, including the one for LGBTQ+ employees. The Juneteenth page covers that decision in detail. Scottsdale still has no civic Pride event. The annual Old Town Pride Crawl is a discount bar crawl, and our quiet calendar has its dates.
What the record doesn’t show
- Everything before 1988. No published history names a Scottsdale gay bar, club or gathering place before BS West. ASU Library’s LGBTQ+ archives and Phoenix’s gay newspapers are where to look.
- The AIDS years. We found one data point. In 1997 Mayor Sam Campana gave Maxine Marshall, the former co-publisher of the Scottsdale Progress, a Body Positive LIFE Award, in part for her AIDS awareness work. How Scottsdale’s hospitals, churches and city government responded to the epidemic is unwritten.
- The 2015 session. What the council told staff on March 31, 2015, and who on the dais opposed the ordinance, is in the minutes and video of that session, not in any article we found.
- Enforcement. We could not find how many complaints have been filed under Chapter 15 since 2021, or whether anyone has been fined. The City Clerk receives the complaints. A public records request would answer it.
- BS West’s address and early owners. The reporting on its closing places it on Fifth Avenue but gives no street number, and no source we found names who opened it in 1988.
For the town’s older record on who was welcome, read Scottsdale and the Color Line.