Ever since the joint TABC/FWPD raid on the Rainbow Lounge on June 28, people in the LGBT community have been outraged over the police reports indicating that patrons in the bar made “sexually suggestive movements” toward officers and that Chad Gibson — the guy who ended up in ICU with a brain hemorrhage — groped an officer.
We in the LGBT community know the “gay panic” or “trans panic” defense when we see it. And we know it’s B.S. Which is one reason the LGBT community has been so angry over this whole thing.
But the non-LGBT community, at least in this instance, just doesn’t seem to get it. Except for Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd.
In a column on the DMN site posted today, Floyd says: “there’s something odd and disturbing about the official version of events submitted by the Fort Worth police officers at the scene. Yes, I mean the creepy “groping” allegation.”
She also writes: “There’s an ugly and unprofessional whiff of ‘gay panic’ about the police report, which seems to say, ‘We didn’t use excessive force. But if we did, how can you blame us? We were groped by gay men!’ Even if the groping tale were true, would it excuse breaking somebody’s head? If women got a pass for cracking the skull of any man who made an unwelcome pass in a bar, there would be an alarming rise in the incidence of head injuries.”
Yes, it’s been more than a month since the Rainbow Lounge raid occurred. And yes, we would have liked to see someone in the mainstream press point out the “gay panic” thing a little earlier. But Ms. Floyd has done it now, and I, for one, am glad she did.
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Yeah, the TABC/FWPD heterosexual panic defense (why ‘gay’ panic? it’s the heteros who panic) doesn’t pass the smell test, for several reasons.
1) Weren’t there something like three separate allegations of groping or crotch touching? It’s as if they all said beforehand (or had been trained) that if anything went wrong, or if anyone was injured, just say the gays started coming on to you and you get a free pass.
2) Wasn’t the lone woman arrested for doing something like dancing up against a cop? Woman gropes cop–nothing. Man gropes cop–brain injury. So even if the allegations were true (and I don’t belive them), why the disparate response?
3) Agent Aller of the TABC had been to the Rainbow Lounge a few nights before (yeah, yeah…..doing ‘reconnassiance’), but couldn’t do an inspection because he couldn’t enter the bar alone, and the police officer he was with had to have a supervisor with him to enter the bar. So Aller furtively leers through the back fence into the patio area of the bar, and sees male dancers (gasp!) performing in (gasp!) underwear and (gasp!) thongs! (Another indication that Aller was willing to skirt policy.) All of which leads him to conclude that there were lewd and/or illicit activities going on–his own conclusion as per the 32-page TABC report. This admission on Aller’s part alone suggests an anti-gay attitude, and suggests that he returned a couple of nights later to follow up on what he had disapprovingly observed a few nights before.
4) Also, if you read (the other TABC) Agent Chapman’s account in the report, he mentions being approached from behind by someone who put his hands on him to which he replied “Hey, man!” Turns out the guy was working security at the club and had approached the officers to introduce himself. Sounds like these TABC boys were a little bit jumpy from the get-go in a gay bar, nervous as whores in church, hair-triggered to over-respond.
5) Finally, those same officers had just spent at least 4.5 hours at an event where the crowd was estimated at 45,000, on a hot, summer night where alcohol was being served and to which they had been dispatched to look for minors in possession, furnishing alcohol to minors, public intoxication, and disorderly conduct. 4.5 hours, 45,000 people, zero arrests. 45 minutes at a gay bar, 150 people, 7 arrests, 1 brain injury. No gay bias? Do the math.
They can lie until last call about not targeting this bar because it was a gay bar, or not having homophobic attitudes. But their own testimony strongly suggests otherwise, and the results speak for themselves. And it doesn’t take a person in the GLBT community to see it either.
Tammye, thanks for writing this article pointing out that Jacquielynn Floyd is one of the few in the local mainstream media that is willing to write about the whole “gay panic” card that law enforcement uses to get out of types of things.
The other thing that bothers me is that the media is giving the Police Chief a free pass on a similar issue. If quoted correctly, the Police Chief’s comments were totally inappropriate and basically a verbal extension of the “gay panic” card.
The Police Chief has stated that he was misquoted and that he had transcripts that would prove it. If that is the case, then no pass is needed, and the misquoting journalist needs to apologize.
But not publically releasing the transcripts showing he was misquoted leads people to believe his quotes were accurate.
When are we going to see those transcripts? When is the media going to push for them to be made publically available?
I read that article in the DMN and promptly got up and wrote her a thank-you email. I think if mainstream journalists break out of the pack and give us some relevant and thoughtful coverage, we should give them some positive feedback. I really appreciated her talking about the elephant in the room. Finally. Jacquielynn wrote back within a few minutes thanking me for my note.