FT WORTH GAY BAR RAIDED ON STONEWALL ANNIVERSARY

At approximately 1:00 am on June 28th, the Ft Worth Police department along with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) entered the Rainbow Lounge, a new gay bar open only a few weeks, to supposedly conduct a "routine" alcohol beverage code inspection.

These inspections have been done before but they were always handled in a low-key manor. A couple of police would come in, look around and then ask the owner or bartender a few questions before filling out their forms. If there was no overly loud music and no fights or loud arguments going on and no one was making out in the bathrooms, they simply left without incident. This one however, turned out to be anything but routine.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Witnesses say that police arrived at the nightclub about 1 a.m. Sunday and arrested seven people and that one of those arrested suffered a fractured skull during the takedown and is at a Fort Worth hospital.

That person is Chad Gibson who was knocked unconscious and is in serious condition with an injury that has caused bleeding on his brain. This may very well require delicate and dangerous brain surgery to alleviate.

In their written report, the police claimed that Gibson was "resisting arrest" and had to be “placed on the ground to control and apprehend him.” But The general manager of the Rainbow Lounge and several patrons disputed the police account, saying officers used excessive force to make arrests.

Chris Hightower of Fort Worth, a friend of Gibson who was with him that night, said:

"He was just walking to the bathroom when an officer grabbed him and shoved him against a wall and pulled his head back. He was then thrown to the ground and three other officers were on him."

The police report also claimed that many of the patrons verbally harrassed them and one patron even assaulted a TABC agent by grabbing his groin while another made “sexually explicit movements towards another officer.”

To counter those claims, the GLBT publication Dallas Voice reported:

Rainbow Lounge owner J.R. Schrock said claims that patrons made sexual advances to the officers and that one patron groped an officer were lies.

“The groping of the police officer — really? We’re gay, but we’re not dumb,” Schrock said to the crowd that gathered at the bar Sunday afternoon [for a demonstration against the incident]. “That is a lie, and I am appalled by it."

Other eyewitness accounts said that the police were very loud and abrasive as they moved through the lounge, clearly trying to intimidate the patrons.

Having lived through the era of having only mafia owned gay bars to go to and then having to deal with indiscriminate police raids, I find this incident to be doubly appalling. First, because it even happened at all and second, because they chose to do it on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots which, I'm absolutely sure, could not have been an "accident" or "coincidence."

I'm hoping that the officers and supervisors involved in this overtly homophobic raid don't just get a slap-on-the-wrist reprimand but are suspended without pay and/or outright fired. This is not something that should be happening in a large metropolitan city, or anywhere else for that matter, in 2009.

UPDATE...
Unfortunately I just learned that the Dallas Voice just published a report that said:

Senior Editor Tammye Nash is just now leaving the hospital in Fort Worth where she spoke with Chad Gibson’s family. Gibson is in intensive care after reportedly suffering head trauma when he was thrown to the ground by police early Sunday during a raid of the Rainbow Lounge. Nash said she visited with Gibson’s mother and his sister this morning, and they told her that his condition has worsened. Gibson reportedly has a brain bleed — also known as intracerebral hemorraghing — and the clot inside his skull has gotten larger and shifted, which is a bad sign. Gibson is scheduled for another CT scan at 10 a.m. today. After that, doctors will decide whether the clot can be shrunk with medication or whether they need to perform surgery. Stay tuned, and keep Gibson in your thoughts and prayers.

I now amend my last comment to say that I hope that the subhuman, homophobic police who are responsible for Chad's injuries be given the maximum penalties possible under the law. They could not have been operating under any kind of "approved" police procedures and should be held criminally responsible!

POSTED IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE
STONEWALL RIOTS
JUNE 28TH, 1969
AND OF ALL THE PIONEERING SOULS WHO WERE BRAVE ENOUGH TO STAND UP TO THE POLICE, THE INSTITUTIONS AND ALL OF SOCIETY TO FOUND TODAY'S GAY ACTIVIST MOVEMENT AND FOREVER ESTABLISH THE LEGITIMATE AND VERY REAL EXISTENCE OF ALL OF US.

WE, AND ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS
WILL BE FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT.

THANK YOU!

NO PLACE LEFT FOR OBAMA TO HIDE

President Obama has run out of excuses for not taking action on DADT himself by simply exercising his own authority.

As most of my regular readers know, I've written numerous articles about Obama's inaction on DADT. Well since then, the steam over this issue has steadily increased the pressure for him to do something.

In addition to the USA Today/Gallup poll taken in May showing that over two-thirds of the country supports repealing DADT and the University of California's Palm Center Think Tank's report on what actions Obama can legally take on his own authority, this past Monday, 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the Present urging him to stop the unwarranted discharges of gay service members.

In the letter they called on him to use his executive powers to order a halt to military discharges under DADT and to work aggressively with Congress to pass new legislation to overturn what they describe as a discriminatory policy that harms national security. The letter said, in part:

"We urge you to exercise the maximum discretion legally possible in administering Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until Congress repeals the law. To this end, we ask that you direct the Armed Services not to initiate any investigation of service personnel to determine their sexual orientation, and that you instruct them to disregard third party accusations that do not allege violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

To metaphorically swing the congressional closet door that Obama has been hiding behind wide open - David Corn, writing for the publication Mother Jones, reported today that when questioned about DADT and DOMA, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs usually gives a version of the same reply - we're waiting for the Pentagon and/or Congress. He essentially has been suggesting that Obama cannot do much on his own. Corn went on to write:

Well, the Center for American Progress--the policy shop run by John Podesta, who oversaw Obama's presidential transition, says that's not so. This week, CAP released a report proposing a rather simple 5-step program for dumping DADT.

1. Signing an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and sending a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress.
2. Forming a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal
3. Repealing DADT in Congress and changing the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, or UCMS
4. Changing other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy
5. Following-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes

Obama cannot do all of this on his say-so. But he sure could get the ball rolling by inking an executive order and creating a presidential panel.

If Obama were to at least issue that Executive Order stopping the discharges immediately, it would go a long way in restoring the GLBT community's faith in the promises he made to us before being elected.

One thing for sure - he's run out of time and excuses. And he can be sure that the GLBT community and the press in general is not going to stop hammering away until he does something.

Mr. President, I still really do want to believe that you honestly do want to live up to the ideals of equality you so passionately preached about before you became President.

Please don't let us down. The country needs and deserves to have at least one politician, one president actually be what he and/or she wants us to believe they are.