Owner Baker Rogers announced on social media in late February that Queer Haven Books would no longer be moving to a higher-profile space on Main Street.

They worried that customers of color could be caught up in efforts to crack down on illegal immigration because a nearby building is set to house federal administrative offices for ICE, whose agents’ violence has sown chaos when arresting people across the country. 

The store immediately was flooded with responses – both in support and in dismissal. 

“There’s ways to make this safer, and that’s all we’re trying to do,” Rogers said. “We’re being as transparent as possible in this process so that our customers, our supports and other people know what we stand for.” 

The business – South Carolina’s only dedicated queer bookstore – opened its brick-and-mortar doors in 2024 and is somewhat unused to the spotlight. Craft nights, open mics and author signings have made the Arcade Mall establishment a hub for connection beyond simple retail, focused on providing a safe environment for Columbia’s LGBTQ+ community.  

The bookstore’s current space was leased with the help of crowdfunding from a loyal customer base. But not all supporters initially understood Queer Haven’s decision. The announcement was met with critiques from supporters urging the bookstore to stand up to ICE rather than delay the move. The store is set on a quieter form of resistance – remaining accessible and safe for everyone, particularly people of color. 

“We can’t fight back against ICE, we can’t fight back against homophobia, if we don’t have some space to be ourselves and be together,” Rogers said. “There’s not one way to fight this.” 

The planned ICE office, located at 1441 Main St., is to house ICE’s Office of Legal Advisors. The Department of Homeland Security reached a 10-year lease agreement with the private owner of the building in October. But few knew about the deal until February – even city officials, they said. Queer Haven Books’ new location would have been a block away. The bookstore is on the hunt once again for an affordable location further away. 

Frank Knapp, CEO and co-founder of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, has seen the impacts of ICE’s presence on small businesses, mostly in the form of immigrant employees not coming to work out of fear. Though the ICE office is administrative, Knapp and business owners remains uncertain about the future. 

“We know that (DHS and ICE) don’t always keep their word,” Knapp said. “We hope that this presence of the legal office is not going to enable the enforcement efforts to take hold in South Carolina that we’ve seen in other places.” 

Queer Haven is now exploring other options in downtown and West Columbia. Rogers is considering temporarily sharing space with other businesses for a while as the search for an independent space continues. Several locations have blocked them as tenants due to “political reasons,” according to a March 19 post on the shop’s Instagram account.

Rogers, however, is working hard to keep the faith. 

“The people that need us want us here,” they said. “So, we’re doing our best.” 

A haven for Columbia’s LGBTQ+ 

It’s no secret that dedicated queer bookstores, especially in the South, are hard to find.

Rogers so far has been able to find 11 others scattered across the country in cities large and small.  

LGBTQ+ people across the city do not take the shop’s existence for granted.  

Russell, a Queer Haven employee who requested to be identified by only his first name for safety concerns, considers the shop to be critical for Columbia’s LGBTQ+ community. When he returned to South Carolina after living in cities such as Asheville and Portland, Oregon, Russell was pleasantly surprised to find a pocket of acceptance in his hometown. 

“It’s been an honor to be involved with it almost from the beginning and to have been able to shape it into the store that it is now,” Russell said. “This is the kind of space that I wish had existed when I was a kid.” 

He originally began working for the bookstore as a volunteer while working as a librarian but was able to become a full-time employee last year. Russell is now able to share his specialized knowledge on queer literature with others. 

“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s a way of using the knowledge that I’ve come to develop over the last few years in a way that I wasn’t at my last job, and that’s really rewarding.” 

Kat Hampton, a longtime friend of Rogers and co-director of 36Frames Art and Literary Co-op, often partners with businesses, including the bookstore, for “mini zine” workshop events. A “zine” is a small-circulation booklet with historical ties to grassroots political movements and artistic subcultures, including the queer liberation movement. 

Beyond retail

Hampton sees Queer Haven as a place where queer creativity and solidarity can thrive. 

“We need spaces where we can freely be ourselves and not having to worry about looking over our shoulders,” Hampton said. “That’s what Queer Haven does.” 

Catherine Trotter is the rising president of University of South Carolina’s Sappho Society, a student organization dedicated to women who are attracted to women. 

Trotter is convinced Columbia needs places like Queer Haven more than ever, considering recent efforts to ban LGBTQ+ literature.  

The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce advanced a bill on March 19 that would rescind federal funding from any public school which houses “sexually oriented materials” — a term opponents say could be applied to keep queer and trans narratives out of school libraries. 

Trotter emphasized the importance of having access to diverse physical media in the current political climate. 

“There’s kind of a risk of not having physical representations of diversity and people of color and queer people,” they said. “So having physical books is good to be able to have something more permanent.”