forty years since stonewall and some things never change

A gay bar opened two weeks ago is raided by police who arrest 7 patrons for public intoxication (in a bar? duh!) and when one of those arrested ends up in the hospital with a brain injury the Cheif of police says the 4 officers involved in the violent take down of the 26 year old, 160 pound patron were justified because the patron flirted with them? Wait, what?

The doorman describes his experience of the scene at the time:

Justin McCarty said he was working security for the Rainbow Lounge at the time of the raid early Sunday morning. He said an officer approached him and asked how much he had had to drink.

“I told him I was working and hadn’t had anything to drink, and that’s when he told me, ‘Then you need to make yourself scarce.’ So I did. I went to the back out of the way. I took that as a threat that if I didn’t, I would be arrested, too,” McCarty said. McCarty said that he saw officers throw Chad Gibson to the floor, adding that, “There were people standing there watching it happen and crying. They were scared. It was just brutal.”

To get a full sense of the irony involved in all of this taking place now and for the background on what happened exactly 40 years ago at the Stonewall riots in NYC and why June is now "Gay Pride" month all around the world as a result see wikipedia here.