REPOSTED FROM QUEERTY.COM -- While Kansas Governor Sam Brownback joined Texas Governor Rick Perry at the American Family Association’s prayer rally in Houston this weekend, the Kansas National Organization for Women and the Kansas Equality Coalition held a free speech rally on the the south steps of the Kansas state capitol building.
You see, even though Governor Brownback allowed the Knights of Columbus to march on the capitol with drawn swords on January 21st, he blocked the KEC from carrying flagpoles with the American, Kansas and rainbow flags onto capitol grounds on June 24th, saying that all flagpoles (including tiny flags on wooden sticks) are “dangerous weapons.” So to celebrate their first-amendment rights, KNOW and KEC returned with two huge flags (sans flagpoles) to combat Brownback’s denial of free-speech rights to his political dissenters.
A Catholic, Brownback opposes marriage equality, civil unions, gay adoption, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime laws. (He also supports Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.) But he’s totally okay with hanging out at a prayer event with a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group that thinks the Holocaust and Hurricane Katrina were caused by gays.
I pride myself on my knowledge of gay history, but I was unaware of this terrible incident until I saw an article on another gay website, QUEERTY.com. Judging from the comments in the comment section, I'm not alone in this ignorance. Indeed, it's rather boggling, even shameful, that we've apparently allowed ourselves to forget what happened on Sunday evening, June 24, 1973 at the Upstairs Lounge on the corner of Rue Chartres and Iberville in the "Gay Triangle" of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
In fact, with a total nod to QUEERTY's work on this story and acknowledging their copyright, I'm going to repost as much of it as I can here. These details must be preserved, these moments and other like them, never allowed to be forgotten.
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June 24, 1973 marked a lively summer day at The UpStairs Lounge, a second floor gay bar in New Orleans’ Gay Triangle. The Lounge had just hosted its regular services for the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church, then the bar held a free beer and all you can eat special for 125 people in the afternoon. Now that evening had come, about 60 patrons enjoyed David Gary’s piano playing and discussed the bar’s upcoming MCC fundraiser to help the Crippled Children’s Hospital.
Then, at 7:56PM the bartender Buddy Rasmussen heard the downstairs buzzer and asked Luther Boggs to go check the door. Normally cabbies would ring the buzzer to tell people that they had arrived, but when Boggs went to answer the door, he found no cab driver. Instead he found the flames of a molotov cocktail engulfing the wooden staircase and climbing towards the bar.
Rasmussen led about twenty or thirty people out through an unmarked exit behind the bar where they emerged onto the roof and hopped from roof to roof until they found a way down.
But the thirty others remaining in the lounge ran confusedly to the barred windows where they tried to escape. One man managed to squeeze through the fourteen-inch gap between the bars and the sill—he jumped onto the street, his entire body in flames, and died there. The Reverend Bill Larson clung to the bars and slowly melted into the window frame where his charred body stayed visible for hours afterwards.
MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped but when he realized that his boyfriend Louis Broussard was still in the bar, he went back to save him—workers would later find their charred bodies holding each other among the charred wreckage.
The fire only lasted 16-minutes. It killed 29 people and three more who later died from their burns, including Boggs the man who had answered the door. New Orleans had never seen a larger death toll by fire up to that time nor had the United States seen such a large mass murder of gays and lesbians. It remains the largest GL massacre ever to occur in our country—and now even as then, few people ever talk about it.
Initial newspaper reports left out any mention of homosexuality and delighted in grisly details about the fire workers “knee-deep in bodies” “stacked up like pancakes” and “literally cooked together.” One paper quoted a cab driver who said, “I hope the fire burned their dress off,” while radio talk show hosts joked, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” National TV stations covered the fire for one night and then never mentioned it again.
Four of the victims’ bodies were never identified; some thought their families felt too embarrassed to come forward to claim them. Their remains now rest in a paupers graves. Of the city’s public officials not one made a public statement about the fire. Of the city’s numerous churches only one clergy member, Episcopalian Reverend William Richardson agreed to hold a memorial service at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.
Sometime during the investigation, police picked up a gay hustler named Roger Nunez. Nunez had been tossed out of The Upstairs Lounge earlier that day for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. Rumors say that after being ejected from the bar, Nunez went to Walgreen’s, purchased some lighter fluid, doused the bar’s wooden stairs with it, and then set the bar aflame. The cops questioned him for arson but immediately Nunez went into convulsions. They took him to Charity hospital where he disappeared and never got picked up again, despite his repeatedly appearances in the French Quarter afterwards.
One year later, Nunez killed himself. Five days after, a friend told an investigator that Nunez had drunkly admitted on four occasions, that he had started the fire.
Even though a gay man may have started the blaze and killed those of his own kind, the city’s response further dishonored the victims by keeping them closeted and unacknowledged for fear of their sexual identity.
In 1998, New Orleans Councilman Troy Carter lead a jazz funeral to the site of the blaze where mourners laid a memorial plaque at the foot of the building and placed flowers commemorating each of the 32 dead. May God rest their souls.
Thanks to Jim Hlavac for the story idea. Story pieced together via The Daily Mush, Gay World, Out And About, David Mixner, Soul Force, NOLA.com, HuffPo, and Motherboard TV
You can read the QUEERTY.com article at their site at http://www.queerty.com/not-to-ruin-your-pride-but-today-marks-the-deadliest-gay-massacre-in-us-history-20110624/, and there are some photos along with it. They are strong stuff. This story has bothered me since I read it yesterday.
NYC POLICE RAID NEW YORK EAGLE BAR JUST MINUTES AFTER HISTORIC EQUALITY VOTE
Just minutes after the historic vote legalizing gay marriage in the state of New York, NYC police launched an operation that can only be viewed as an act of harrassment and intimidation against a major New York gay leather bar, the Eagle.
Police officers and agents from the New York Police Department and three other agencies, including the State Liquor Authority, arrived shortly after the state Senate's vote as patrons were celebrating the results of the hard-fought battle in Albany. Police reportedly turned off the bar’s lights. They then shined flashlights in patron’s faces and demanded that some of patrons empty their pockets.
According to police, the inspection was one of four previously planned operations carried out as part of a program called MARCH (multiagency response to community hot spots), but Manhattan borough president Scott M. Stringer said what went on at this particular bar on West 28th Street was akin to a raid.
Stringer acknowledged that such inspections weren’t unusual, but said “I think this one was ill-conceived and ill-timed given the circumstances surrounding the marriage equality celebration, on Pride week.”
The visit reportedly led to six violations being issued. One of the charges, unbelievably, was for "Unnecessary noise." What the fuck? It's a big bar, and bars play loud music, and crowds were celebrating both as part of the annual Gay Pride Weekend and as a result of the vote.
“I definitely lost money last night because they made patrons wait outside in a line down the block,” the bar’s owner, Robert Berk, 50, told The New York Times. “I don’t know how much I have to pay, but it’s enough to matter.”
Christopher J. Borras, 46, who was among those waiting to get in when the officers arrived, called the inspection “a blatant sign of intimidation and harassment. I mean, 42 years after the Stonewall riots and we still have to live in fear of the police disturbing our quiet enjoyment of life? I just don’t understand. We are very peaceful.”
Police defended the action, saying that it had been planned "for weeks," and that they couldn't be held responsible for the timing of the Albany vote. But one wonders exactly how dumb New York Police have to be to schedule such a raid on Gay Pride weekend and think that it wouldn't be interpreted as "harrassment and intimidation." Nor was the timing of the Albany vote any unforeseeable secret. It was clear through Thursday and Friday, indeed most of the week, that the vote would go down to the wire. Any intelligent administrator in the police department might have considered the bad-timing of the raid action, especially given the very minor nature of the charges used to justify it: checking ice machines for cleanliness, checking licenses of the bar's security personnel, and the ridiculous "unnecesssary noise."
Frankly, the police department should count themselves fortunate that they didn't have another "Stonewall Rebellion" on their hands. But then, I'm not sure the NY leather community has done itself any honor here, either.
What an amazing and historic night. The New York Senate, following the lead of the New York Assembly, has passed an historic marriage equality bill, extending the right to marry to GLBT New Yorkers. New York becomes the sixth and largest state in the union to recognize marriage or civil unions. After first passing a compromise bill specifically exempting churges and religious organizations from provisions of the marriage equality bill, four Republican senators joined twenty-nine democrats to pass the bill.
Large crowds and protesters on both sides of the issue had gathered in the halls of the Albany capitol. When the final vote was announced, supporters broke into loud cheers and chants of "USA! USA!"
(Photo by Spenser Platts)
Large crowds also gathered outside the Stonewall Bar in the West Village to await the outcome. This is Gay Pride Weekend in New York, and tomorrow is the NY Gay Pride Parade. The Empire State Building, which usually is lit with lavender lights during Pride Weekend, ignited tonight with this beautiful rainbow lighting.
Normally, I try to be in New York for the last week in June, flying out for Leather Pride, staying the week, and taking part the next weekend for Gay Pride. The parade is the best in the world. I decided to postpone my trip this time until later in the year, and boy, am I kicking myself for that decision.
To all my many New York friends and colleagues, and to all the hard-working activists, congratulations on this monumental victory. Hopefully, this moment in New York represents a tipping point.
Last month brought the depressing news that San Francisco's long-established gay bookstore, A DIFFERENT LIGHT, located right in the heart of the Castro district, was closing its doors. A DIFFERENT LIGHT is just the latest in a long list of closings that include the OSCAR WILDE BOOKSTORE in New York's West Village and many others.
I said it before, and I'll keep saying it: the loss of these bookstores represents major damage to the Gay community. They are important, and they deserve our support.
An item that has just appeared on the Yaoi News website demonstrates exactly why gay bookstores are important and why we make a huge mistake by allowing them to fade. What is "Yaoi?" Simply, it's a Japanese term for "beautiful boys," and "Yaoi stories" are especially popular in manga form. Now, I'm not specifically interested in manga, but as literature, it has a huge audience.
But as of this past week, Amazon.com has removed scores of Yaoi titles from its Kindle platform and will no longer make them eligible. Here's part of the story from the Yaoi News website.
"It appears the Amazon KINDLE has changed its Terms and Conditions to ban explicit images from being published on the KINDLE (See EDIT below for exact terminology). This issue started last month when Yaoi Press had a few of their titles, both manga and prose, pulled from the KINDLE with no explanation other than they were in direct violation of their Terms and Conditions. Yaoi Press's founder Yamila Abraham has stated they will now have to change their explicit images on their prose titles to more 'romantic' images that will be acceptable to KINDLE.
"Today Digital Manga has announced they too have had some of their 801 Media titles pulled, including Weekend Lovers and King of Debt. However, it appears this will also affect June Manga as KINDLE has rejected The Selfish Demon King and has banned The Color of Love. Unfortunately since these are manga and not prose like Yaoi Press's titles, there is no way to alter the images to meet KINDLE's Terms and Conditions.
"I took a peek at Libre's direct from Japan KINDLE releases but have not noticed any titles that are missing as of yet. That being said, I expect with some of the explicit Ayano Yamane and Youka Nitta titles they have that it is only a matter of time. My recommendation is to grab what you can get now before it is gone. The good thing with the KINDLE is that once you own it, it's yours to keep. You also do not need to own a KINDLE to read their titles. You can use any number of their software apps to read them including KINDLE Desktop for both the PC and Mac.
"I guess now we will just need to wait and see if Borders' KOBO or Barnes & Noble's NOOK will follow suit."
This is not the first time Amazon.com has removed gay titles from its inventory. Last year, in what Amazon later called a "glitch," hundreds of gay books were removed from its list. A loud outcry resulted, and most of the titles were eventually restored. But now, Amazon.com is once again attempting to control what books the gay community can access. We're not talking about graphic pornography here. Manga has long ago moved into mainstream acceptability.
Too many times I've heard people claim that gay bookstores are no longer necessary, that we can walk into any Barnes & Noble or Borders and find gay books. That is only true in a very limited fashion. Yes, you can usually find a "gay section" in some back corner of one of the big box stores, but it seldom contains more than a handful of individual titles, and most of those from the larger, best-known publishers. At the Oscar Wilde Bookstore or at A Different Light a buyer could browse thoussands of different titles from major presses and from smaller publishers side by side, often along with magazines, pamplets, chapbooks, and much else. I have never seen an issue of THE JAMES WHITE REVIEW, one of the Gay community's most important publications, in a Barnes & Noble or Borders.
Maybe you'll save a dollar or two at Big Bookstores that can sometimes offer discounts on major titles. But what do you give up for that dollar? You risk losing important parts Gay culture. You risk losing potentially important gay writers. Literature frames and preserves our experiences, documents who we are and who we hope to be. You risk losing those publishers and presses that find, nurture, and showcase important gay artists and writers. If we surrender our culture into the hands of others, we risk losing our culture and our identity.
We see that at work as Amazon.com once again censors these "Beautiful Boy" titles.
Our gay bookstores are vanishing. Our gay literature will suffer for that. And we will be poorer.
A 22 year-old man is listed in critical condition today, May 8 2011, after being beaten by a group of men with a baseball bat outside the Old Plantation, a popular El Paso nightclub. Media reports are light with details so far, but police said the man was waiting for a ride outside the Old Plantation Night Club, 301 S. Ochoa, when a verbal confrontation began between the victim and six other males. The verbal confrontation became physical and the six suspects allegedly began punching, kicking the victim. The group allegedly also used a bat to hit the victim. One of the victim's friends, a woman, tried to help and had her vehicle damaged as she tried to do so. A suspect struck her 2003 Jeep Liberty windshield with a bat to stop her from helping the victim. The suspects then fled the area in what appeared to be a van.
