Time for another Stonewall?

The September issue of The Guide, the magazine of gay travel, entertainment, politics and sex, featured an article, “Down a Slippery Slope?,” about anti-gay prosecution and persecution in the Age of Bush. According to The Guide, “arrests for homosexual sex among consenting adults happen every day in...almost every American city. The trend seems to be growing, with only occasionally a notice in the gay media and nary a peep from GLBT rights groups. The arrests include massive sweeps of hustlers, johns, and others in traditional cruising areas. Targeted as well is sex in parks, peep shows, and cinemas. The number of openly gay men held in urban US lock-ups is so high that several cities are considering special wings for homosexual prisoners.” If nothing is done about it, “we arrive back in the 1950s, with witch hunts and rampant scandals, media blitzes against homosex, and the inevitable suicides and murders of gay men....” The Guide points at the suicides of Louis D’Camara - whose closet was shattered when Baltimore cops arrested him for public sex - and Miami City Commissioner Arthur Teele as proof that police and media campaigns against gay sex often have fatal consequences.

Though The Guide is best-known for its fluffy travel articles, in politics it is to the left of most GLBT activists. Most activists do not share The Guide’s view that sexual freedom is the hallmark of gay liberation. They would rather work for more practical causes, such as same-sex marriage, gay adoption, service in the military or the right to show the video “We Are Family” in public schools. Unfortunately, most people still see us as sexual outlaws; and believe that our sex is singularly reprehensible. Two years after the United States Supreme Court abolished sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, most Americans continue to condemn homosexual sex; and theirs is a view shared by law enforcement officials.

Police crackdown against the gay community is not limited to cases of public sex or prostitution. Police use sex, drug, liquor and noise laws selectively against gay bars, clubs, and other venues. Nor is this practice limited to the “red states.” New York City, one of the most liberal places in the country, recently experienced a wave of police raids. More than 35 years after the Stonewall Riots, agents from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shut down a series of gay bar parties in the East Village. Though the Department claimed that it was enforcing the law against “risky” sex, it somehow ignored similarly “risky” straight venues. Activist Michael Warner said it well when he told a reporter that, “at a deeper level, the crackdowns reflect the standard assumption by politicians and police that anyone having sex ought to be married, straight and in a bedroom at home.”

If a police lures an individual into committing a crime, it’s called entrapment. State and federal agents in Orlando committed group entrapment when it raided the Parliament House, Florida’s leading gay entertainment complex, in the early morning of August 29. Following an anonymous “tip,” the state Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sent an underage “plant” to the P-House. According to published accounts of the raid, the plant did not show proper ID at the door and thus did not receive a wristband that would have told the bartending staff that he was of drinking age. This did not stop the plant from being served alcohol, not once but 12 times, according to state officials.

Obviously, the law was broken. But does this justify the use of a sizable task force of state and federal agents to raid the Parliament House? In fact, what were federal agents doing there? The officers deliberately planned the raid for early Monday morning, at a time when they knew that the place would be packed. The P-House bar was shut down, and 12 bar employees - virtually the entire bar staff - were sent to the pokey. One helpless staff member “resisted arrest” and was pepper sprayed, which landed him in the hospital. Though the Parliament House did not lose its liquor license, the unfortunate bartenders were charged with a misdemeanor count. In the meantime, we do not know how many people were traumatized by the raid, at a place that they thought would be “safe.”

At thirty years old, Orlando’s Parliament House is one of Florida’s oldest GLBT gathering spots. Since the late Bill Miller bought the place and turned it gay in 1975, “la Casa del Parlamento” - to quote the immortal Miss P - has been a target of Orlando’s religious extremists. More than once they have tried to shut down a place that to many of us is - like the Suncoast Resort in St. Petersburg and the Sawmill Campground in Dade City - an oasis of gay freedom in the middle of Florida’s Bible belt. I wouldn’t be surprised if these people provided the “tip” that led to the raid, which targeted the P-House because it was a GLBT venue. Straight clubs that serve minors often get away with it more.

Queer legend has it that the Stonewall Riots of June 27-30, 1969 ended a wave of police raids against gay bars in New York City. In fact, anti-gay police raids continue till this day, though law enforcement agents now have different excuses for their actions. In 1969, a police raid led to a singular act of GLBT resistance. Perhaps the time has come for another Stonewall. It might help stop the “slippery slope” that The Guide warns us about.