Gay Bars and Gay Rights - JSTOR Daily

Contents:

• GAY BARS AND GAY RIGHTS
• LIQUOR LAWS ONCE TARGETED GAY BARS. NOW, ONE STATE IS APOLOGIZG.
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

GAY BARS AND GAY RIGHTS

Gay bars, one of the few public plac of ngregatn for LGBTQ+ people before the Stonewall rebelln of 1969, were flash pots for the crimalizatn of same-sex sexual nduct, acrdg to legal scholar Patricia A. Ca’s history of ligatn for lbian and gay rights.

Addnally, a broad terpretatn of “homosexual acts” the twentieth century ma “lbians and gay men thk of themselv as crimals jt for beg who they were, ” wr Ca. In what Ca lls the first “succsful Amerin ‘gay rights’ se, ” 1951, the California Supreme Court led Stoumen v. The state liquor thory had “acted arbrarily termg that the mere prence of homosexuals a public bar was a threat to public welfare and morals.

LIQUOR LAWS ONCE TARGETED GAY BARS. NOW, ONE STATE IS APOLOGIZG.

” The urt nclud that the state uldn’t nflate homosexual stat and homosexual nduct. ” Dpe Stoumen, the laws would be ed to harass and close gay bars until the laws were clared unnstutnal, 1959. Department of Alhol Beverage Control required “somethg more” than the mere prence of homosexuals a California bar for thori to revoke a liquor license.

” Such ambiguo wordg kept the door open to closg gay bars, even if g liquor licensg to do so beme ls and ls viable. In 1967, Miami prohibed issug liquor licens to tablishments that employed homosexuals, sold liquor to homosexuals, or allowed two or more homosexuals to ngregate on the premis. That same year, 1967, New York and New Jersey followed the California ia of a difference between homosexual stat and homosexual nduct.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

Homosexual nduct, that ambiguo phrase, uld still be the e of a police raid, however. The “Stonewall Rt” begng June 28, 1969, marked a turng pot the morn gay rights movement.