The YMCA was a gay hookup spot way before the Village People song

If you’re gay, the acronym YMCA means one thing and one thing only: The Village People. While the popular gym franchise has come a long way from its Evangelical Christian roots, you might be surprised to learn just how quickly the Young Men’s Christian Association became the Young Men’s Horny Hookup Association.

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♬ HOT TO GO! – Chappell Roan

“I saw someone say [Chappell Roan’s] ‘HOT TO GO!‘ is this generation’s YMCA,” explained the user Jesus Freakin Congress in a TikTok early last month, before launching into a full-blown gay history of the YMCA.

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Because even before the 1978 Village People song—the same one that Trump uses at his rallies—the YMCA was offering a special service to men who were in town for a good time, not a long time.

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YMCA founder George Williams created the recreation center and boarding house as a resource for young men moving to big cities in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. But while Williams—a proponent of an incredibly queer-coded subset of the religion called “Muscular Christianity”—may have wanted to protect young men from sin, he ended up making it deliciously easy to hang out in bathhouses cruising for other hotties with bodies.

As early as the 1880s, the Y started to advertise to young men using homoerotic imagery. The Y’s first phys ed program director even coined the term “bodybuilding”, and used his own well-developed body on ads for the Y.

Pretty gay, right? It gets gayer. As one of the first spaces in the country to house indoor pools, it was common for men to swim naked together. And to room together in the boarding facilities. Just guys having fun and getting fit!

By the 1940s, San Francisco became a new gay hub due to the preponderance of so many Navy men returning from the war. These sailors loved the promise of short-term fun and lodging that the Y offered.

So yeah, by the time the Village People came along, the Y was already quite the hook-up spot. The song that celebrates the iconic gay mainstay somehow isn’t even the gayest thing about it.

But will any of this knowledge stop sports fans, Trump supporters, and other variations of weird straight people from claiming this banger as their own? Of course not.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to learn more about Muscular Christianity.