Stories of Pride: Before Pulse, There Was The UpStairs Lounge

Forty-six years ago today, four years after Stonewall, the 24th of June, 1973 was a Sunday in New Orleans and the last day of that city’s Pride Weekend. Of course, even in those days after Stonewall, you couldn’t really have an open celebration of Pride because there was still an ignorance of the LGBTQ community and it wasn’t safe, sometimes, even in New Orleans, to be openly gay. Still, there were places to gather and party and celebrate and be gay, like the second-floor bar on the corner of Iberville and Chartres Street; the UpStairs Lounge.

That day, members of the Metropolitan Community Church [MCC], the nation’s first gay church, founded in Los Angeles in 1969, gathered at the UpStairs for drinks and conversation. It seems to have been a welcoming, accepting, open, group; two attendees, gay brothers, Eddie and Jim Warren, even brought their mom, Inez, and proudly introduced her to the other patrons.

It was a party until … just before 8PM, the doorbell rang insistently. To answer it, you had to unlock a steel door that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to the ground floor. Buddy Rasmussen, an UpStairs bartender, was expecting a taxi driver and asked his friend Luther Boggs to let the driver in.

But it wasn’t a taxi driver at the door; it was an attacker, who had sprayed lighter fluid on the stairs and set ablaze as Boggs opened the door. A fireball pushed into the stairwell, and up towards the bar, engulfing the room and those gathered in flames.

MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped, but came back in hopes of rescuing his boyfriend, Louis Broussard. Both men died in the fire, their bodies clinging together in death. The metal bars on the windows, meant to keep people from falling out, were just 14 inches apart, and most men and women were unable to squeeze through. That’s how MCC pastor, Bill Larson, died that night, screaming “Oh, God, no!”  After the fire, when police and firefighters surveyed the damage and began clearing the scene, they left Larson fused to the window frame until the next morning.

Thirty-two people lost their lives that Sunday 40 years ago—Luther Boggs, Inez Warren and her two sons, among them. And yet, even more sad, and disgusting, was that homophobia was so rampant in those days, families of some of those who died that night refused to claim the bodies, and local churches would not perform burials for the dead, or allow memorials to take place within their walls. Three victims were never identified or claimed, and were interred at the local potter’s field.

Three people considered unworthy of even a burial or a marker or recognition that they had ever lived, or died, at all.

When the Reverend William Richardson, of St. George’s Episcopal Church, held a small prayer service for the dead, about 80 people attended; but many more complained about Richardson to Iveson Noland, the Episcopalian bishop of New Orleans, who rebuked Richardson for his kindness.

Until Pulse nightclub, the UpStairs Lounge arson was the largest massacre of LGBTQ people ever in this country and yet it wasn’t even considered newsworthy; after all, it was just queers who died, so who really cared? And the few news organizations that covered the fire barely mentioned that those who died were gay, and this being in the decades and decades before Hate Crimes, it was never treated as such. A local radio DJ, when asked where they would bury the dead suggested “fruit” jars to his listeners.

And while other, smaller disasters resulted in City Hall press conferences or statements of condolence from the governor, not one civil authority spoke out about the fire or those murdered. In addition, the New Orleans police department wasn’t so interested about investigating the fire, of finding the culprit, or culprits. Detectives wouldn’t even acknowledge that it was an arson case, saying the cause of the fire was of “undetermined origin.”

No one was ever charged with the UpStairs Lounge fire, and the murders, though a local man with known mental problems, Rogder Dale Nunez, claimed responsibility multiple times. Nunez, a sometime visitor to the UpStairs Lounge, committed suicide in 1974.

Times have changed since 1973, but not by much … I'd never heard this story and now like Pulse, and others, I will never forget.

The Friendly Atheist

We Have 99 Problems and These B*tches Shouldn't Be One Of Them

I mean, sure, we won the right to legally marry the person we love, but we can still be fired for being gay, we can still be denied housing for being gay, we can still be refused service for being gay, and these women are not helping the cause.

Lesbian couple, Carol Ann and Laura Jean Stutte [above], actually spray-painted the word “queers” on their garage door, and then set their own Tennessee home on fire, burning it and all of their belongings to the ground, and then accused their next door neighbor of arson as a hate Crime in order to collect nearly $300,000 in insurance money.

Luckily, a federal jury realized these two idiots were behind the arson and, well, their own Straight Hate Crime, after they filed a lawsuit against their neighbor Janice Millsaps blaming her for the fire and submitting an insurance claim of  $276,000 to American National Property and Casualty. In the suit, Millsaps was accused of having ‘repeatedly threatened the lives of the Stutte's and ‘specifically and repeatedly threatened to burn the Stuttes’ house’ and having told the couple:

‘Do you know what is better than one dead queer? Two dead queers.’

Fire and insurance investigations have shown that Millsaps was not involved in the blaze and she has never been charged.

Now, if Janice Millsaps said those things, she’s an awful person. No one … no one … deserves to be spoken to like that, but to have Carol Ann and Laura Jean Stutte burn their own house down and then blame Millsaps is far worse.

Luckily, the insurance company, after investigating the suspicious fire, determined that the Stutte’s started the blaze themselves and denied the claim, and then sued the couple for fraud.

We’ve fought  along battle to simple be respected and treated as equal, and sure we’ve had more than our share of discrimination and hate and intolerance thrown at us, but to have these two women attempt to cash in on a hate Crime that never occurred just feeds into the stereotype about gay people.

I hope Janice Millsaps files charges against the Stuttes for making a false report and I hope the insurance company wins their case for fraud.

And I hope Carol Ann and Laura Jean Stutte learn that there are still people out there who hate us just for being gay and that the last thing we need is fuel for that fire.

Gay Star News
Photo Source: Knox News

Minute Rave: Muslims Raise Money To Rebuild Burned Churches

Muslims are terrorists. We all know that. Muslims flew plans into the Twin Towers; Muslims crashed into the Pentagon. Muslims, Muslims, Muslims. Okay, I kid, because I know that Muslims aren’t terrorists — terrorists are terrorists — and Muslims are just people of a different faith than maybe yours, or mine, or whomever.

But one thing Muslims, some Muslims, are doing that maybe some other people, some other faiths, some other churches, might want to try is raising money to help rebuild the eight black churches that have mysteriously burned since the Charleston shootings.

So far Muslim charities, using LaunchGood, have raised over $20,000 for the repair and rebuilding of those churches:

“All houses of worship are sanctuaries, a place where all should feel safe, a place we can seek refuge when the world is too much to bear.

We are calling on you to help add our support to faith communities across the country pooling their resources to rebuild these churches.

As Muslims we know the importance of protecting the vulnerable and respecting people who call on God in their various tongues.

We must always keep in mind that the Muslim community and the black community are not different communities.

We are profoundly integrated in many ways, in our overlapping identities and in our relationship to this great and complicated country.”

This makes me happy, because I remember those days after 9/11 when people who were assumed to be Muslim were attacked; Muslim–owned business were torched; Muslims were the new ‘them,’ people to fear, people to hate. People of the Muslim faith could have just sat by, watching these churches burn and done nothing, remembering how people of other faiths attacked them 14 years ago, but they didn’t. They stood up and gave because it was the right thing to do.

Where was the charity back then? Perhaps we should have thought more like Muslims and been more open and willing to help and understanding of the fact that one’s faith does not automatically make you a criminal.

Being a criminal makes you a criminal. 

i100

It Isn't Hate? Really? UPDATED

A couple bought a home in North Carolina. Soon after, a nasty note was left in the mailbox. Then an offensive remark was written on the house. Then, the tires of a car, parked in the garage, were slashed.

And, lastly, the home was deliberately set on fire and burned to the ground. The couple--who wish to remain anonymous--are now living in a motel.

Oh, yeah, the couple is a gay couple. The note called them sinners and told them to move. It was an anti-gay slur that was written on their home.

But this is not a hate crime because North Carolina Hate Crimes statutes don't include sexual orientation. If the couple had been black, or Latino, or Baptist, it would have qualified, but a year of systematic torture against a gay couple is not considered hate.

Something is very wrong here.

The neighbor who reported the fire is also seeking anonymity because she fears a backlash simply for reporting a fire.

To be fair, there have been a recent string of suspicious fires in the area, but Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said this fire, being investigated as arson, does not appear to be related to those other blazes. And, while Bizzell says the sheriff's office is aware of at least two of the incidents of harassment against the gay couple, he cannot call this a hate crime.

Really?

North Carolina needs to get its act together. Systematically harassing a couple simply because they're gay is hate; and burning down their house is the pinnacle of hate.

UPDATE
In North Carolina, hate crime statutes do not include sexual orientation--the North Carolina General Statute § 14-401.14, which covers damaging another person's property, covers only "race, color, religion, nationality, or country of origin"--so unless the feds get involved this is "just arson."


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