Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

Mayor asks if bar policy is antigay

Seattle’s mayor is investigating complaints that gay bars are being targeted by police.

A 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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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/texas-gay-rai…

Bride ban: Gay bar says ‘I don’t’ to bachelorettes

CHICAGO – Bar owner Geno Zaharakis sat one busy evening at the window of his gay nightclub, watching as groups of straight women celebrating bachelorette parties made their way along a strip of bars in Chicago’s gay-friendly “Boystown” neighborhood. That’s when he made a decision now posted for all to see: “No Bachelorette Parties.” Though the small sign has been there for years, it’s suddenly making a big statement amid the national debate over gay marriage. While most gay bars continue to welcome the raucous brides to be, Zaharakis’s bar Cocktail is fighting for what he sees as a fundamental right, and his patrons — along with some peeved bachelorettes — are taking notice. “I’m totally losing money because of it, but I don’t want the money,” Zaharakis said. “I would rather not have the money than host an event I didn’t believe in.”

See Bride ban: Gay bar says ‘I don’t’ to bachelorettes Chicago Tribune – United States

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