The headline pretty much sums up the response I’ve been hearing to news today that the city of Fort Worth is moving forward with its prosecution of patrons arrested during the Rainbow Lounge raid, including two who were injured while in police custody.
In other words, the city is willing to throw away all the good will it’s worked so hard to build in the LGBT community since the raid — over a few $500 fines.
It’s just a matter of time before protests are organized to call attention to this decision. The only question is, has the city learned enough in the last eight months to recognize what a horrible idea these prosecutions are and drop the charges before it’s too late?
No, it’s their way of getting back at those uppity gays who didn’t just lie there and take it. Shortsighted, stupid, and yet another reason for me not to set foot in Forth Worth(less) again.
Unfortunately, a gay man will never get a fair trial in Fort Worth.
At the very least, we need to protest until the trials are moved out of Fort Worth to another Texas city with some diversity like Dallas or Austin.
But in a larger sense, at this point, I don’t think protests will be enough.
We need to organize a boycott of Fort Worth and try to get all LGBT, our allies, and companies that are LGBT friendly to spend as little money in Fort Worth as possible until we see justice for the victims of the Rainbow Lounge Raid.
Boycotts do and will work. A recent example would be the Dallas meeting where it was said that they had lost convention business due to the Rainbow Lounge Raid.
We need to organize pickets and flyers at major events like the van Cliburn Piano Competition so the whole world can learn the real truth that Fort Worth and it’s police department are run by a bunch of homophobic bigots.