IF YOU GO* What: A Gay Night Out With Jerry Harvey and Friends, Valentine’s Edition.* When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.* Where: The Comedy Catch, 3224 Brainerd Road.* Admission: $15.* Phone: 629-2233.* Website: www.thecomedycatch.com
Local comedian Jerry Harvey is hoping audiences have a gay old time. And he thinks they can handle it.
“When I started doing gay-oriented comedy,” he said, “I was met with a little bit of criticism but a lot of positive words.”
His stand-up show, A Gay Night Out With Jerry Harvey and Friends, is presenting a Valentine’s edition at The Comedy Catch on Wednesday night.
The performers are both gay and straight, and the show includes male and female impersonators. But more importantly, he said, the audience also tends to be quite mixed.
“Being an out gay man in Chattanooga for 30 years now, I have never seen this. I have never seen the gay and straight communities come together for an event, so it’s a really meaningful thing to me personally.”
The separation, he said, is “not as bad as it used to be,” but Harvey, who is a paramedic and a hairdresser when he’s not onstage, still sees room for improvement. Simply going out to dinner with a partner can still draw stares. And please understand, Harvey emphasized, the gay community is not trying to recruit.
“We’re not offering discounts and toasters for joining up or anything like that,” he said, laughing.
The challenges of being gay aren’t different in the Bible Belt, he said; they’re just exacerbated.
“We have that extra bit of shame put on us because of religious beliefs,” he said.
But comedy, he said, can help facilitate understanding.
“Growing up as gay people, we are taught from an early age that we are not accepted and we are different, and we should be ashamed of ourselves,” he said. “But I think by making fun of ourselves, people can see just how ridiculous some of their ideas about us are.”
Ideas like the “hurtful” misconceptions that homosexuality is accordant with promiscuity.
“People, for some reason, assume that, but most of the people I know want to find someone to be in love with and spend their life with and create a family. There is promiscuity in every group of people on the planet.”
After each show, the performers line up to meet the audience. And there are those who go out of their way to eschew a kind word or handshake.
“We have people actually avoid us once they see the show,” he said, “I guess because of their personal beliefs, which is fine.”
But, Harvey said, there also are those whose minds are opened a bit more, like the men who have reluctantly attended with their wives. Many have shaken his hand after the show and congratulated him on a job well done.
“It gives them a whole different outlook,” he said.