The Daily Agenda for Friday, October 2

Jim Burroway

October 2nd, 2015

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Asheville, NC; Centreville (Bull Run), VA; Dallas, TX (Black Pride); Darwin, NT; Ft. Worth, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Miami Beach, FL (Hispanic Pride).

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Gay Days Disneyland, Anaheim, CA; Out on Film, Atlanta, GA; MIX Copenhagen Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark; AIDS Walk, Dallas, TX; Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Tampa, FL.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From Michael’s Thing (New York, NY), February 2, 1976, page 70.

Condado is an oceanfront enclave just to the east of the colonial district of Old San Juan. Developed at the turn of the previous century as a haven for wealthy Americans (the Vanderbilts’ summer home is now a hotel), the district got its second wind in the 1950s as a tourist destination. By the 1970s, there were several bars, restaurants and guest houses catering to the gay tourist trade, like these two clubs on Ashford Avenue.

Interior of the Pepper Hill Club, two weeks after the raid (Source).

Interior of the Pepper Hill Club, two weeks after the raid (Source).

TODAY IN HISTORY:
60 YEARS AGO: Baltimore Police Arrest 162 in Bar Raid: 1955. Quick — name the first gay bar raid that backfired and forced the local police department to abandon such tactics. I suspect most people would probably name the 1969 raid at the Stonewall Inn, but I’m sure you already know that’s the wrong answer. I can’t say that I can pinpoint the very first raid to leave a lasting positive effect, but the 1955 raid at 200 N. Gay Street in Baltimore — an appropriate address if there ever was one — is probably a good candidate.

That was the address of the Pepper Hill Club, a gay club on the fringe of what was called “The Block” in East Baltimore, an area that hosted a number of strip clubs and rough bars. Because of its reputation and its proximity to a nearby police station, the Pepper Hill Club quickly became a target for the city’s vice squad. At 11:00 p.m., Lt.Byrne and officer Edgar Kirby stopped in to check on the club, looked around, then left. Less than an hour later, police descended on the club and arrested all 162 patrons, employees and owners for “lewd behavior,” which consisted of male couples hugging, dancing and kissing. “We were met by a human wall,” Sgt. Hyman Goldstein later testified. “We found complete disorder, and in the rear of the place there was no light at all. Back there we found several couples.” He also testified that most of those arrested were from Washington. “We have received word that Washington police are conducting a drive on homosexuals; apparently some of them are coming to Baltimore for their entertainment.”

It took 24 trips in the paddy wagons to get all 162 patrons, employees and owners to the police station. The newspapers reported that the raid was “the largest night club raid ever conducted in Baltimore.” It was also against police policy. Just a few weeks earlier, police had conducted a mass raid at a straight nightclub, and public outrage over that night’s indiscriminate arrests led police commissioner James Hepbron to ban such mass raids. That outrage only grew this time when the courts acquitted nearly everyone in the Pepper Hill case — only four were convicted of disorderly conduct, and one woman was convicted of assaulting an officer when they tried to load her into the van. One man was fined $10 when he insisted on testifying even though his disorderly conduct charge was about to be dismissed. Charges were also dismissed against the club’s owners, Morton Cohen and Vincent Lance, who stood accused of operating a “disorderly house.”

Circuit Judge James K. Cullen sharply reprimanded the police department for the latest mass violations department policy. Commissioner Hepbron agreed with the judge and promised that it wouldn’t happen again, saying that the department’s policy against wholesale arrests would be “reiterated, re-emphasized and, if necessary, re-enforced.” He also disbanded the vice squad and reassigned its personnel to the rackets division. Those actions weren’t enough to satisfy Baltimoreans or state legislators. The following year, the Maryland legislature passed what became known as the “Pepper Hill Law” which formally outlawed mass arrests during bar raids.

Front cover of the Oct 2, 2010 edition of Rolling Stone. (Click to enlarge.)

5 YEARS AGO: Ugandan Tabloid Outs LGBT People Under the Headline, “Hang Them!”: 2010. Seemingly out of nowhere, an obscure Ugandan tabloid, Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. publication with the same name) published what they said would be the first part of a four part series exposing one hundred LGBT citizens in Uganda. The first installment included the call to “hang them” on the front cover and over the article itself, and featured the faces, addresses and employers of a number of LGBT Ugandans, including LGBT rights activist David Kato and retired Anglican bishop Christopher Senyonjo on the front cover.

This latest development occurred just as it seemed that the tempest over Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill (also known as the “Kill the Gays” bill, thanks to its death penalty provision) was starting to quieten down. In the face of international outcry, the Ugandan government had been trying to figure out a way out of the mess, and by late 2010, it seemed that the bill had been safely sidelined in a Parliamentary committee until the Rolling Stone cover story threatened the uneasy peace. Uganda’s Media Council moved swiftly to order Rolling Stone to shut down after discovering that the tabloid had not properly registered with the authorities.

November 1, 2010 edition of the Ugandan tabloid "Rolling Stone"

November 1, 2010 edition of the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone. (Click to enlarge.)

The tabloid complied, but resumed publishing again on November 1 with a second installment of its outing series. This time, the publication was much more sinister, with reporters apparently obtaining photos and other information from profiles of LGBT Ugandans posted on dating web sites. With each publication, more evidence emerged that the tabloid, which carried virtually no advertising, was receiving support from anti-gay sources. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that anti-gay pastor Martin Ssempa was a driving force behind Rolling Stone’s activities. Sexual Minorities Uganda quickly obtained a temporary court order barring Rolling Stone from outing individual private persons in Uganda. Two months later, the court made that injunction permanent, and awarded each of the plaintiffs 1,500,000 Uganda Shillings (US$650) for damages, plus court costs.

But by then the damage was done. David Kato, the attorney and LGBT-rights activist whose image appeared on the front cover of that first Rolling Stone “Hang Them” issue and who led the court case against Rolling Stone, was found bludgeoned to death in his home in Kampala.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Annie Leibovitz: 1949. “My mother and father took photographs and made eight-millimeter home movies when I was growing up, but I didn’t start taking pictures myself until the late Sixties when I was studying at the San Francisco Art Institute,” she explained in her 2006 monograph, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005. She further developed her photography skills while on a kibbutz in Israel in 1969, When she returned to the U.S. in 1970, she became staff photographer for Rolling Stone, quickly rising to chief photographer from 1973 to 1983. While she is known as a portraiture artist, she took her favorite photos while doing reportage, particularly when she was concert-tour photographer for the Rolling Stones in 1975.

While she liked that work, her personal style of reportage was distinct from photo-journalism. “I’m not a journalist,” she wrote. “A journalist doesn’t take sides, and I don’t want to go through life like that.” Her point of view took her all over the world, including the Sarajevo siege in 1993 and the world’s capitals to photograph kings, queens and celebrities. It’s hard to pick one photo as a perfect example of her intimate style — the touching photos that she took of her lover Susan Sontag on her death bed are particularly poignant — but the most iconic photo perhaps is the 1980 portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. It turned out that Leibovitz would be the last person to professionally photograph John Lennon on that fateful December day: Lennon was murdered five hours later outside his apartment building in New York City.

In 2001, Leibovitz became a mother for the first time at the age of 52, but the years following would prove to be difficult for her. She spent most of 2004 taking care of Sontag, who was dying of myelodysplastic syndrome which evolved into leukemia. Sontag died the following December. Leibovitz’s father died six weeks later. Editing the photos for A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 was an important part of her grieving process. “I would go into (her workshop) every morning and cry for ten minutes or so and then start working, editing the pictures. I cried for a month. I didn’t realize until later how far the work on the book had taken me through the grieving process.”

Her grieving wasn’t over: her mother died in 2008, and in 2009 Leibovitz fell into serious financial difficulties. She borrowed $15.5 million, using the rights to all of her photographs as collateral. The New York Times tried to figure out how an artist of such renown could be in such financial trouble. It cited several personal issues, including the recent loss of her father, mother, and Sontag, who died in 2004, and a costly renovation of her townhouses in Greenwich Village. Eventually she was able to negotiate her way through her financial problems and retain control of her work.

In 2011, she published her latest book Pilgrimage, which probably represents her most personal work to date, even though there are no people in the book. She began photographing the pictures for it while dealing with her financial struggles in 2009. She decided to go to places where she had no agenda, no assignment, no requirements from clients. Instead, she chose locations and subjects that meant something to her: Emily Dickinson’s house, Niagara Falls, Sigmund Freud’s couch. “I have a bit of a feeling that I’ve had it with people,” she told The New York Times. “But you don’t ever get away from people, really. And these are pictures of people to me. It’s all we have left to represent them. I’m dealing with things that are going away, disappearing, crumbling. How do we hold on to stuff?”

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

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