Letter from Atlanta: What’s happened since the gay bar raid
In the month since the Sept. 10 raid on the Eagle Atlanta, it is now clear the raid was not only homophobic in nature, but a violation of patrons’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Over 20 formal complaints have been filed with the Atlanta Police Department and an equal number are …
Tags: Atlanta Gay, Atlanta Police Department, Formal Complaints, Fourteenth Amendment Rights, Gay Bar, Patrons, RaidSydney gay bar closes
Sydney gay bar closes
Tags: Gay Bar, Gay Sydney, Sydney GayMontreal’s oldest gay bar closes
Montreal’s oldest gay bar closes
Tags: Bar Montreal, Gay Bar, Gay Montreal, Montreal GayTexas liquor board fires 3 over raid on gay bar
(Fort Worth, Texas) Texas’ liquor board fired two agents and a supervisor, disciplined two other supervisors and changed several policies in the wake of a raid at a gay bar that left a customer seriously injured and led to protests, officials announced Friday.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said agent Christopher …
Tags: Alcoholic Beverage Commission, Fires, Gay Bar, Gay Texas, Liquor Board, Protests, Raid, Supervisor, Texas Alcoholic Beverage, Texas Alcoholic Beverage CommissionLesbian turned away from gay bar
Lesbian turned away from gay bar
Tags: Bar Gay, Gay Bar, Gay Lesbian, Lesbian GayHomosexuals dispel myth of “progressive”
Each year in Germany, from the end of June through August, gay and lesbian rights’ activists celebrate the “Stonewall” uprising - named after a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York, where homosexuals fought back against police brutality in 1969.
Participants in the German parades known as “Christopher Street Day” join other activists around the world who take to the streets to demonstrate gay pride and demand greater freedoms.
Some of those freedoms would include expanded civil rights. In Germany, civil unions, for instance, have been permitted among same-sex couples since 2001, but full marriages are not. Homosexual couples therefore do not enjoy the same rights as married heterosexual couples when it comes to taxes, retirement, civil servant benefits, or adoption law.
For more on gay and lesbian rights and the community in Germany, click on the links below, or listen to this week’s “Living in Germany” program to hear a more personal account of a homosexual civil union.
DW-WORLD.DE
Audios and videos on the topic
See Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive” Germany Deutsche Welle
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Texas official admits mistakes in raid of gay bar
A raid on a Fort Worth gay bar by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission that left one man seriously injured was done in violation of several of the agency’s policies, according to TABC Administrator Alan Steen. “I don’t think you have to dig very deep to figure out that TABC has violated some of their policies,” Steen said. “We know that, and I apologize for that.” Meanwhile, the city is requesting that federal prosecutors take on additional oversight responsibilities for the investigation of what transpired at the Rainbow Lounge. Dallas Voice (7/16) , Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
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Fort Worth mayor says apology for injury, not raid
(Fort Worth, Texas) Fort Worth’s mayor says an apology he issued at a City Council meeting wasn’t for law enforcement’s raid on a Texas gay bar, but for the fact that a man was seriously injured.
Mayor Mike Moncrief (MAHN’-creef) made an impromptu apology during Tuesday night’s meeting where officials and …
Tags: Apology, Gay Bar, Law Enforcement, Mahn, Mayor Mike, Mike Moncrief, Raid, Tuesday NightA Texas gay raid and Stonewall
The Fort Worth police have “some explaining to do,” said Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News. On June 28, officers raided a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge, sending a patron to intensive care with a head injury. “In what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence,” it took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid, the gay-rights movement’s catalyst. The cops’ story—drunk gay men groped them—doesn’t add up.
Well, police chief Jeff Halstead is backing his men and their classic “Gay Panic Defense,” said Dan Savage in The Stranger, which goes: He made a pass at me, so I was justified in beating/killing him. That would still be illegal, but it’s also bunk. “I’ve been in a million gay bars” like the Rainbow Lounge, and “gay men don’t grope police officers when they enter gay bars.”
It is, “obviously, very sad” that one of the Rainbow Lounge patrons is in critical condition, said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet, but come on, the report that “cops who entered a gay bar were set upon by drunk, horny patrons who played grab-ass with them” is “hilarious,” and not at all far-fetched. Gay people, especially drunk gay people, can be “as stupid as the rest of us.”
Except that the hospitalized man was reportedly drinking bottled water, said Jeff Epperly in New England’s Bay Windows. But 40 years after Stonewall, this kind of gay harassment goes on all over the U.S., not just in Texas. The raid at Forth Worth’s Rainbow Lounge “was the work of a police department that wasn’t smart enough to hide its bigotry.” See A Texas gay raid and Stonewall The Week Magazine
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Fort Worth mayor wants federal review in raid of gay bar
Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief called on federal prosecutors Friday to ensure a thorough review of last week’s bar raid that resulted in a serious head injury to one patron. Parallel investigations — one by Fort Worth police and another within the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission — are already under way into what happened Sunday at the Rainbow Lounge. And, police chief Jeff Halstead has announced the indefinite suspension of bar checks conducted jointly by his department and TABC. Mon
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