HAPPY PRIDE! Gay Bar Raided On Stonewall Anniversary

Fort Worth's Rainbow Lounge was raided by police on the EXACT 40th anniversary of the initial raid on the Stonewall Inn in NYC (June 28). Many of the Rainbow Lounge Patrons were rounded up and charged with "public intoxication" - and some experienced excessive force from police. From Daily Kos, a dancer from the bar recalls:

I was one of the dance entertainers last night at Rainbow Lounge. I was dancing on a box in the VIP lounge and was looking right at the first guy that was arrested. The male patron was standing at the bar doing nothing but having a having a drink and a fun time (like people do in bars) when an officer entered that section of the club and made a beeline straight towards him. The officer forcefully spun the man around, shoved him against the bar and placed plastic restraints on his wrists. The officer then marched the man out the club. The guy was stunned and obviously really scared.

I then noticed another officer in the VIP section and several other officers filtering into the club. I made the decision at that point to go ahead and get dressed in case they were going to start arresting everyone in the entire place.

When I got inside the dressing room there were other dancers already in there getting dressed. They were panicking and saying that this is not something they have ever had to deal dancing in Dallas. I got dressed and walked out the door and saw that several more officers had made their way into the club. I went into sort of a surreal haze at that moment. I was so disturbed and saddened because it occurred to me in that moment that being after midnight, it was actually the exact same day as the Stonewall Riots. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.

I was still standing near the entrance to the VIP lounge with a friend when an officer approached a man standing there. The man had water in his hand. The officer asked him how much he had had to drink and the man said that he didn’t have to answer that. The officer then said that he was going to arrest him for public intoxication. The man said,"You can’t do that I am just standing here right now drinking water." At the time the officer shoved the man over towards the wall near the dressing room and then back to the rear wall near the men’s restroom, then down onto the floor. Several other officers, made their way back there to hold that ONE MAN down on the ground as they placed restraints on him. At the time I noticed that all of them did not have FWPD uniforms on. Some of them were actually State Police.

There is now a Facebook Group dedicated to discussing the raid. Here is their group summary:

Last night around 1 a.m., on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the Fort Worth Police Department raided the Rainbow Lounge and began randomly handcuffing and arresting patrons and shoving anyone who dared to ask why. It was a sobering reminder that on this pinnacle date in the history of gay rights, we still have a very long way to go. I created this group to give folks a chance to discuss it, share stories, pictures, etc.

Apparently eighteen people were arrested and one was actually hospitalized. It's things like this that remind us that we still have a long ways to go toward equality.

The Stonewall Riots: Eyewitness Accounts

Some eyewitnesses to history:

Edmund White is the author of A Boy's Own Story (1982) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), among other books and essays. He wrote a letter just a few days after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 to his friends, poet Alfred Corn and his wife Ann. Here is an excerpt:

As the Mafia owners were dragged out one by one and shoved into the wagon, the crowd would let out Bronx cheers and jeers and clapping. Someone shouted "Gay Power," others took up the cry--and then it dissolved into giggles. A few more gay prisoners--bartenders, hatcheck boys--a few more cheers, someone starts singing "We Shall Overcome"--and then they started camping on it. A drag queen is shoved into the wagon; she hits the cop over the head with her purse. The cop clubs her. Angry stirring in the crow. The cops, used to the cringing and disorganization of the gay crowds, snort off. But the crowd doesn't disperse. Everyone is restless, angry and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something's brewing.

Read the entire letter, courtesy of OutHistory.Org HERE.


Lucien Truscott covered the Riots for The Village Voice (his coverage gets a snide critique in Edmund White's letter). Truscott asserts that "the gay community" didn't fight back on those hot summer nights back in 1969:

A prominent Stonewall myth holds that the riots were an uprising by the gay community against decades of oppression. This would be true if the “gay community” consisted of Stonewall patrons. The bar’s regulars, though, were mostly teenagers from Queens, Long Island and New Jersey, with a few young drag queens and homeless youths who squatted in abandoned tenements on the Lower East Side.

Read the entire New York Times article HERE.


Retired NYPD Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine still contends that the initial raid on the Stonewall Inn was "right". Read the article from The Advocate HERE.



Finally, hot Papi Raymond Castro (above) - now retired and living in Florida with his partner of 30 years - tells his story to MSNBC HERE.

Never Forget...

We should never forget why we celebrate on the last Sunday of every June. From Wikipedia:

On Saturday morning, June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village where gay people frequently gathered to socialize on Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A number of factors differentiated the raid that took place on June 28 from other raids at the Stonewall Inn. Because raids had occurred at the Stonewall Inn in the past, managers usually knew what to expect when a raid was about to occur. Likewise, raids tended to occur earlier in the evening, which allowed the bar to continue with normal business for the busiest hours of the night.

On June 28th, however, an unexpected raid unfolded at the Inn. At approximately 1:20 am, eight police officers entered the bar with a warrant authorizing a search for illegal sales of alcohol. Of the eight policemen, only one was dressed in his uniform. The police questioned the customers and made many of them show identification. Many were escorted out of the bar, and some were even arrested. The escorted crowd became very angry and began to cause chaos outside of the Inn. While the police loaded arrested patrons into the police van, the existing crowd responded with catcalls and then, eventually erupted into violence. Transgender activist Sylvia Rivera claimed she "led the charge". They threw bottles at the officers, and even used a parking meter as a battering ram. The crowd’s attacks were unrelenting. Word quickly spread of the riot and many residents, as well as patrons of nearby bars, rushed to the scene. When the police officers went inside the bar, the angry clients blockaded the Inn and then torched it.


Eventually, the protesting crowd was so strong that each time the police would disperse the mob, a new group would re-form behind the police’s back, preventing them from actually breaking up the riot. Over the course of five days, the crowd of 400 protesters continued throwing bottles and lighting fires around the Inn. Police attempted to capture some of the violent rioters. If the rioters did not act fast enough, they were pushed and shoved and even clubbed to the ground by officers. Protesters in the crowd began to scream "Gay Power" and some activists dressed as drag queens started chanting:

We are the Stonewall Girls
We wear our hair in curls

We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees

The police sent additional forces in the form of the Tactical Patrol Force, a riot-control squad originally trained to counter Vietnam War protesters. The tactical patrol force arrived to disperse the crowd. However, they failed to break up the crowd, who sprayed them with rocks and other projectiles.

Eventually the scene quieted, but the crowd returned again the next night. While less violent than the first night, the crowd had the same energy as it had on the previous night. Skirmishes between the rioters and the police ensued until approximately 4:00 a.m. The third day of rioting fell five days after the raid on the Stonewall Inn. On that Wednesday, 1,000 people congregated at the bar and again caused extensive property damage.


The following year, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, the newly formed Gay Liberation Front organized a march from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Between 5,000 and 10,000 men and women attended the march. Many gay pride celebrations choose the month of June to hold their parades and events to celebrate “The Hairpin Drop Heard Round the World".

So to Sylvia Rivera, the Stonewall ‘Girls’, the dykes and the fags who started the fight for my rights as a gay person – I thank you. And I will NEVER forget…

This is a re-posting (with updates) of my Gay Pride/Stonewall post from last year.

Judy Garland's Birthday

Legendary singer/actress/performer/gay icon Judy Garland was born on this date in 1922. Please check out Dust Bunny Michael River's blog HERE for more information on this great lady.

Although today is the date her birth, it is the date of Judy Garland's death and burial which has become a part of gay history. After she died, over 20,000 mourners lined up outside NYC's Frank E. Campbell's Funeral Chapel to view her body - many of them her gay male fans. The legend goes that when the police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village later that night - the GLBT folks, still emotionally raw from Judy's sudden death, decided to fight back. And on that night, the Stonewall Riots and the fight for gay civil right began. Although the "Judy Garland" theory has been widely discredited as a primary cause of Stonewall, it has now moved into the realm of gay legend.

Personally, I always liked the idea of my gay forefathers and mothers kicking the shit out of the corrupt and homophobic NYPD because they had lost their Judy. There is just something epic and noble about the whole scenario...