When Public Displays of Affection Get Gay People Detained

by Michael Jones · 2009-07-11 07:40:00 UTC
Topics:

Kissing

What the hell is happening with law enforcement officials and LGBT rights lately?  First you had the seemingly unbelievable raid on a gay bar on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Texas; then you had San Diego police officers raid a political fundraiser at a lesbian household, pepper spraying the mostly middle-aged crowd; and now we've got two more stories - one out of Texas, and one out of Utah - where gay couples have been roughed up by police and security guards for simply doing one thing: kissing.

Is kissing now an invitation for police and security guards to handcuff LGBT couples and threaten them with arrest?

The Texas story comes out of a restaurant in El Paso, Texas, named Chico's, where five gay men were thrown out of the restaurant simply because two of the men kissed each other. Police, in throwing the men out of the restaurant, cited laws in Texas that were thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court more than five years ago.  I gues that's reason #511 why the El Paso police department needs some diversity training when it comes to the issue of LGBT rights.

Trying to out-top the intolerance in El Paso, two men in Salt Lake City where handcuffed by police after kissing each other while walking across a plaza in town that happens to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Here's the gist of this story from On Top Magazine:

In the altercation, Matt Aune, 28, and his partner Derek Jones, 25, were detained by church security guards, and cited by city police for trespassing.

The pair crossed the Main Street Plaza, which belongs to the church, Thursday night holding hands as they walked home from a concert. Near the edge of the plaza, Aune says he stopped, hugged Jones and kissed him on the cheek.

The couple was cuffed and detained when they protested against requests by the guards that they leave. Guards told them public displays of affection are not allowed on the plaza.

“They targeted us,” Aune told the paper. “We weren't doing anything inappropriate or illegal, or anything most people would consider inappropriate for any other couple.”

Is it possible to think that police and security guards have no other crime to worry about in cities like El Paso and Salt Lake City that they have to spend their time monitoring LGBT people to see if they're kissing?

That's totally bogus.  But unfortunately, these past three weeks have shown that when it comes to the way law enforcement officials interact with LGBT people, we're a lot closer to 1960s America than 2009.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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