FORT WORTH, TEXAS — In the photo to the left, about 150 to 200 people protest police brutality and old fashioned bigotry and harassment of gays by the manly Fort Worth Police Department. Police raided a gay bar and put one man in the intensive care unit. The raid was staged on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.
Seven people were arrested and one - Chad Gibson - "is in in the intensive care unit at Fort Worth’s JPS Hospital with bleeding in his brain after officers threw him to the ground and used zip-ties to handcuff him."
The Bilerico Project writes:
Witnesses say the police showed up with a paddy wagon and began to roughly arrest men, focusing mainly on "effeminate men."
One bar patron, Chad Gibson, is in a local hospital with a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage after being "choked, pulled back, then slammed into a wall" by police during the raid. Police say he was resisting arrest and made "sexual advances to officers", a claim witnesses dismiss as outright lies. They say Gibson, who weighed "maybe 160 pounds soaking wet", did not resist and merely stumbled when police grabbed him by the arm.
"After more than a generation of progress, this action shows that there is still much work to be done to ensure that all Americans enjoy 'equal protection under the law.' It is tragic that lesbian and gay taxpayers are still abused by the very people who are paid by our taxes."
Joel Burns, Fort Worth city councilman,
Tarrant County's first openly gay elected official
Tarrant County's first openly gay elected official
Gay/Lesbian Politics Gender News Texas Stonewall
