Who are Hans Venable and David Stahl?
Their story provides a window into the changing campus climate for LGBTQ+ students from the days of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the 1980s to the present.
When Hans Venable and David Stahl recall a Pirates for Pride-sponsored Drag event they attended last year as both Georgetown locals and queer-identifying SU alumni, their response led me to contemplate its implications hours after our brief meeting had concluded.
The event was sold out and the support from both the Southwestern and the larger Georgetown community was palpable in both attendance and energy, and the couple was blown away by the overwhelming positive reception to the raucous, high-energy event spotlighting both Southwestern University and the local queer community. Their reactions cemented just how meaningful these events can be for LGBTQ+ alums who didn’t have anywhere near this level of public support from the student body and the school itself back when they attended Southwestern.
Stahl and Venable’s memories of the school are intricately intertwined with the campus environment of the 1980s, which gives us in the present day valuable insight into the way earlier generations of queer students at Southwestern created their own safe spaces at Southwestern, despite lacking them officially.
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Stahl and Venable are both members of Southwestern’s class of ‘84, but Stahl transferred here in 1983, while Venable attended SU for four years. They met working on productions in the Theatre department, where both were heavily involved and which both continue to support as alumni.
The couple lived off campus, but were on campus often for courses and Theatre obligations, placing them in the gray area off-campus students often experience, of a physical detachment giving way to a partial disconnect with campus life. This was exacerbated in the 1980’s by the politically divided campus population and the widespread heteronormative atmosphere, although exceptions existed in a few spaces, including the Theatre department.
Theatre was not just the link that brought the pair together, but both the Fine Arts Center space and the program acted in tandem as a hub for marginalized, especially queer, students. Queer students often flock to the arts as an informal safe space, and Southwestern University was, and still is, no exception.
This was certainly known unofficially among queer students, but the Theatre department made their stances on current issues clear through the types of plays chosen to be performed and guest playwrights they engaged. For example, in the 1980s, Edward Albee, a prominent gay American playwright, did an Artist-in-Residence at Southwestern in the early 1980s. A decade later, the production The Vagina Monologues, which was performed in the 1990s and expressed loud support for female autonomy and freedom, was received positively by the general public.
While other campus spaces like The Megaphone published op-eds on queer rights, establishing the newspaper as a platform for oft-marginalized groups, this varied according to the internal leadership at the time, and whether they were members of the queer community or allies. However, this attitude didn’t consistently translate to the general student body, who largely employed a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” when interacting with potentially queer-identifying students. Discussing LGBTQ+ rights in a removed manner was one thing, but personally coming out was another, especially to the broader SU community.
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During the summer of 1983, just before their senior year, David and Hans went to Chicago to get married. This was more than 30 years before same-sex marriage was legal. Reflecting on it in the present, Hans says that even he and David knew the deep significance of their nuptials: “it was pretty unheard of in the gay community to want to do that back then.”
Because it was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” world then at SU, only a few students knew what Hans and David were planning ahead of time. But Mouthwestern being Mouthwestern even back then, it seemed like everyone had already heard the news upon their arrival back to campus.
As Hans said recently, “There were a few students in the Theatre department that we knew were gay or lesbian. Before we went to Chicago, David told one of those students that we were getting married in Chicago. When we returned to SU Fall 1983, the entire Theatre department and much of the campus heard about our marriage. I can't say that we were ‘out,’ but it wasn't too hard to tell that we were a gay couple.”
These personal experiences highlight the stark difference between the campus climate queer students experienced prior to official, Southwestern-sponsored, queer organizations, and after. Organizations like GLSA and SOAL were founded in the early ‘90’s, creating institutional spaces for students to embrace personal authenticity and creating a launching pad for activism for queer rights, which resulted in positive change at Southwestern through steadfast publicity and widespread campus support from students, faculty, and staff alike. This helped to create a community that has become more welcoming to queer students, although the work is never truly over.
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These days, Pirates for Pride continues that work in the shape of events that showcase queer talent, like the Drag Show Stahl and Venable recently attended, and in more traditional fashion through group meetings and activities throughout the school year that provide a guaranteed safe space for queer students on campus.
After our meeting, I walked away with a clearer sense of the campus environment in the 1980s, a better appreciation of the seismic shift in the 1990s that furthered queer rights on campus, and a significantly greater appreciation for the work done by and experiences of alumni who have paved the way for increased inclusivity at not just Southwestern, but beyond Williamson County lines.
The couple remain incredibly active in the Southwestern community in a variety of ways, including being season ticket holders for the Theatre department, attending the annual Homecoming events, and attending an on-campus prayer vigil for Trans Visibility Day, which was attended by President Trombley, the current Southwestern President.
Both Stahl and Venable have been heavily involved in the University Baptist Church in Austin, as they have personally helped shape an inclusive and welcoming environment for queer people attending church. In the late 1990’s, when they were unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight--first over controversy surrounding Venable’s ordination as a queer-identifying deacon, then when UBC was disunited from the Texas Baptist Convention on those grounds--Stahl and Venable not only continued their involvement, but the entire church gained significant publicity from those events, showing that even in these environments, queer passion and queer joy can lift others and help collective healing over even the most harmful of actions.
This is the same common thread that thrums through the sold-out Drag Show at a campus that had formerly hid and misconstrued their queer community: that this brand of passion is unique to the queer community and yet vital for the collective, whether it be the Southwestern community, the Austin area, or the broader world.
