Los Angeles Times:
Todd Camp and some friends had just marked the 40th anniversary of the police raid on New York's Stonewall Inn by screening a documentary on the historic gay riots and then heading for drinks at the Rainbow Lounge.
Camp remembered looking across the bar, packed with gay and some straight couples, and marveling how much times had changed since Stonewall -- the spark that ignited the gay rights movement.
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It seems more than likely the raid was justified.
Didn't take long for the closet case to show up.
Bigotry is never justified.
Based upon what exactly?
Your disdain for gays and lesbians?
tr24 is nothing but a t H-u-G.
Can we just let Texas Secede, please!
Time to start mobilizing the troops, so to speak, and start having sit ins and protests at all gay bars across the country. We can not stand by and do nothing. This is now a life and death situation for us. We must do what we can, including civil disobedience to make sure this is an isolated incident and not the beginnning of a trend
We will now see if the new generations of gays are a superficial as they look.
And if they are, the older generations will have to come in and teach them a few things about how to act and react in the midst of a cultural shift in psyche
"The incident began about 12:30 a.m., when police officers and ABC agents arrived for a routine check to ensure the bar wasn't serving underage patrons and to stop potential drunk drivers. Officers had already checked two nearby bars and arrested nine people. Neither of the other bars had a gay clientele.
How often are these "routine" checks scheduled "to ensure bars aren't serving underage patrons and stop drunk drivers", and did they pay more bars a visit THAT night after they made their "underage" and "drunk driver" arrests at the Rainbow?
Those officers were WITHOUT A DOUBT on a power trip to bully and bludgeon our GLBT Community ... but THANKFULLY our police force CANNOT get away with biblically brainwashed bigotry as easily as they could 40 years ago!
TABC...tha
George Bush is from Texas (when he's not from Connecticut). There are no "gays" in Texas. Must be an exclusive club for tourists from NY and Cali.
Bush is not "from" Texas" he merely lives here. As the late Molly Ivins said "He [Bush} is an interloper of the worst kind (paraphrasing here).
I lived in Dallas for 10 years and there is a very large gay population. Gay friends told me that they chose to live there specifically because of access to and support from the gay community.
I don't know anything about the gay community in Ft. Worth, but Ft. Worth was always considered to be more liberal than Dallas- more like Austin (where I live now, thank God). Guess not.
This is a terrible shame and TABC is awful. They should be abolished as they do nothing but bully and impeded business. And now, something far worse.
Stop crying! During the Stonewall RIOT, drag queens dragged the cops into the street and beat the crap out of them, they didn't cry in a corner. Wake up, people hate us! They will not GIVE us our rights, we have to fight for them.
We need cops rights!
Why didn't they fight back?
No more Mr. Nice Gay.
We cannot expect people to honor our inalienable rights.
We have to take them and stand up for them.
I agree, this surely wasn't Stonewall. With practically a 30:1 patron:officer ratio, if there had been a riot, the police would have been at a severe disadvantage. Perhaps I missed it--were there any witnesses interviewed who saw what went down with the man who got his head rammed into a door?
Yes, there were plenty of them - and I wish people would read their accounts before forming opinions. (See http://www
The LA Times story goes very easy on the police. In reality, it was the same old homophobic routine: assault a gay person and then say they made a sexual move on you. Yeah, right. Who could resist putting their hands all over a bunch of fat guys - in uniiforms and carrying guns - who are hauling off everyone in sight?
The law enforcement people had to be aware it was the Stonewall anniversary. It was all over the news that day because President Obama had marked the occasion by inviting gay leaders to the White House.
I have yet to go through all the 145 or so comments on this page, but have any Texans actually commented on how poorly written this article was? It is the TABC, not the ABC - if you are going to publish a story please proof. Also, Ft. Worth has very few gay bars, and this one had only been open a week so most people feel like it was a little early for a raid. However, this has been going on since 2006 under the SIPS ordinance - it happens at every bar in Texas - and it seems once a month or so it goes bad and someone gets injured and/or sent to the hospital. As for the Texas bashing - please get over it - just because we have some whack jobs doesn't mean the entire state is bad. Texas brought you Ann Richards, and LBJ. Also, Austin is a very liberal city (and so the argument that "this should be expected in Texas" is asinine). Considering the DNC is making a strong push to turn Texas blue again - which they can if they can tap into the Lation voting community - I might reconsider the "let 'em go" mentality.
Doesn't this sound like a perverse interpretation of the slogan, "Don't Mess with Texas?"
Is that Chief Halsted in the picture? He looks like a gay porn star to me.
Did anyone else notice the Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead used the gay panic defense twice: They were taunted by patrons with "sexually explicit movements"? A man was beaten on the head after he grabbed the crotch of an ABC agent?
The police in Forth Worth have earned zero credibility.
"grabbed the crotch of an ABC agent"....
If a straight male did that to a female agent, would they be excused? NOT LIKELY!
Oh yeah....de
The notion that a guy would fondle a cop in a bar is beyond preposterous. Unless of course they were drunk off their rocker. But the fact that multiple cops said the same thing is beyond suspicious. Let alone the fact that 20 people were initially detained face down on the sidewalk.
- well not quite "Stonewall all over again," the gays in Ft. Worth didn't fight back. I don't mean that as a criticism, as I wasn't there, I don't know the exact circumstances (nor does anybody else who was not physically there), all the facts have not come to light etc., but this was not the beginning of an historic social movement, rather it seems to have been a poorly-conducted throwback of a raid on a gay bar by some cranked-up Good Ol' Boys with badges (wondering if the proper police authorities were not paid off before this bar opened its doors?). Perhaps some good will come of it as even the straight locals seem to be pretty pissed. I pray for the recovery of the patron whose skull was fractured.
If the Fort Worth police targeted homosexuals, then their behavior is reprehensible. I'm sorry but I don't see that in this story. The police were doing routine checks of other clubs. That's not something the police could lie about, because you could easily verify the claim by checking with patrons at the other two clubs. The customers at the Rainbow Club were well aware that the night marked the anniversary of Stonewall, and it's reasonable to think that they were reflecting on the riots. It seems to me that both sides overreacted. The Rainbow Club customers assumed that the police were there to cause trouble, and the police used excessive force to try to get control of the situation. It's sad that the incident occurred, but to paint this as a case of intolerance toward gays just doesn't ring true.
Only one side assaulted the other.
This wasn't just a dispute between two sides. It was the police, armed and with the authority of the state, harassing and beating citizens.
again
Well said. Agree 100%
only one side had weapons out and ready as soon as they entered. so sorry the piggies got offended, so offended they had to beat the living crap out of anyone around them...
So you know people in the gay community that you really think anyone except someone so wasted would come on to a cop???? A band of them were there to verify age and "driving ability due to drunkenness"? In these situations the first thing that goes on alert is the panic factor. Not many gay men will try to bump and grind a cop unless it's Halloween and it's his friend or another gay man.
We don't know how thorough the check-up was at the other bars. And if they were friend of the cops.But they were straight bars......
A simple spot check like this should end in 20 patrons laying out face down on the pavement. ANd one in the hospital with a concussion. More will come out. It was a new bar. There was no reason for any mishandling of the job by the police. Most of us straight and gay would clam up and just let the officers do their job if they were doing it respectfully.
The article doesn't state that the other clubs they visited were "straight.
The police "stated" they entered a hostile environment and were taunted by patrons." You will have to forgive me for not beliving what authorties say. The oppressors rarely tell the truth.
I do not have the numbers, but I am absolutely positively sure that this is not the only gay bar in the city of Ft. Worth, Texas. If the intent was specifically to harass the gay community then why didn't the cops make a night of it, and conduct raids in every single gay bar in Tarrant county? I don't believe that this bar was targeted solely because of its patrons sexual preferences. Were the two bars raided before this one that night, gay bars?
Funny thing that. I a lot of things don't add up. If an officer was grabbed why no assault charges? If the owner knew why was he surprised? Why didn't they follow the typical protocol and conduct the inspections with undercover officers?
Someone I used to know owned a strip club. The town they were in didn't want them there. So like several times a month they would sent in both uniformed officers and under cover. They would send them in to the other local bars so they couldn't be accused of harassment. They did also tell the other bar owners just not the strip club when the inspections where going to be, but they claimed they told my friend as well, but they never did.
Not all police forces are like that, but you can't always see what is going on from the surface.
I read somewhere else that owner was told it would be a routine check with one officer and one car; but instead, six times that showed up.
Intimidation can start with one victim. This was not supposed to be a raid, just a spot check on age of the clients and of drunken drivers. Maybe not all the police are as intent on doing this kind of check as the officers involved. How isolated are you? Use your brain. Maybe this was just a huge mistake but was there an apology made by the police for any kind of misunderstanding? You don't expect a bar full of drinking people to all be sober do you?????
What? You use your brain. I am not defending the cops. If this was a "mistake", as you put it, then it was an unacceptable one. The cops were wrong and out of control. Definitely allowed bias and prejudice to impede responsibly doing their jobs, I think. But I don't believe that they walked into the bar telling themselves beforehand that they were going to beat up a gay guy.
And the city of Ft. Worth has decided to stop working with the TABC because it was an agent from that state bureau, and not a officer from the FWPD, who got all aggressive. That's not an apology to the victim, but it is something positive.
According to Damron's Bar Guide of 2004, the latest edition I have, there are only two gay bars in Fort Worth, The Corral Club & Patio Bar and the Crossroads plus two nightclubs, 651 Club Fort Worth and Magnolia Station, so the Rainbow is a new one and I don't even know if the others are open any more.
It's Texas. Enough said.
exactly!!!!!
Agreed. If I were gay, I wouldn't live in Texas.
i am gay...and love living in Texas
We should encourage Tea Party Texas to secede. The state has become a national embarrassment.
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Los Angeles Times | P.J. Huffstutter
First Posted: 07- 6-09 08:33 AM | Updated: 07- 6-09 09:40 AM