Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 7, Ed. 1 Friday, June 27, 2014 Page: 8 of 36
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■ coverstory
Rainbow Lounge raid: Five years later
ROUGH HANDLING | Witnesses said TABC agents and Fort Worth PD officers injured Chad Gibson when
they threw him to the floor inside the bar and handcuffed him. (Courtesy photo)
Impact of the raid on a Cowtown
gay bar in 2009 continues to be
felt in Fort Worth and beyond
TAMMYENASH I Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
It was just after midnight on July 29,2009 — of-
ficially, the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots
in New York, the 40th birthday of the modem gay
rights movement — when a team of agents with
the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and of-
ficers with the Fort Worth Police Department went
into the newly opened Rainbow Lounge.
What ostensibly started as a bar check quickly
became a bar raid. More than a dozen patrons
were detained and taken outside the dub for ques-
tioning. Seven were handcuffed and arrested for
public intoxication and other charges. And as hor-
rified patrons looked on, a young man named
Chad Gibson was thrown to the floor and hand-
cuffed.
Witnesses inside the bar — including activist
and Q Cinema founder Todd Camp and an ac-
countant named Tom Anable who was there
checking receipts for the bar's owners — said that
TABC agents' assault on Gibson was unprovoked.
They said the agents grabbed the intoxicated man
and slammed him facedown on the floor, banging
his head on the edge of a raised platform near the
back of the bar, before handcuffing him and taking
him outside. Agents said that Gibson stumbled
and fell of his own accord outside the bar, hitting
his head on the concrete sidewalk.
Either way, Gibson ended up hospitalized with
a head injury, including bleeding in his brain. And
the city of Fort Worth and the TABC ended up at
the middle of an international uproar within
hours, thanks to the power of the Internet and so-
cial media.
The initial responses by city and state officials
sparked even more outrage: In his first statement
to the press regarding the incident, Fort Worth Po-
lice Chief Jeff Halstead suggested Rainbow
Lounge's gay patrons had provoked the response
by groping officers and making sexual advances.
Those same leaders soon began working to mend
fences.
Within days, a group of LGBT community lead-
ers — including Camp, Anable, attorney Jon Nel-
son and church leader the Rev. Carol West — had
formed Fairness Fort Worth. Initially intended to
coordinate community response to the raid and
resources for those who were arrested, FFW soon
morphed into the city's first LGBT activist/educa-
tional organization, using connections with city
leaders such as gay Councilman Joel Burns and
lesbian Human Relations Commission member
Lisa Thomas to reach out to Halstead and other
city officials.
With an astounding speed to those used to
8 dallasvoice.com 06.27.14
working for years for progress, Halstead had ap-
pointed his department's first-ever LGBT liaison
officer, Sara Straten. The City Council approved a
wide-ranging nondiscrimination ordinance that
surpassed Dallas' similar ordinance by including
protections for transgenders. Policies and proce-
dures were changed. The FWPD officers involved
in the raid were reprimanded for failing to follow
procedures; the TABC fired three agents and rep-
rimanded two others for their parts in the affair.
Carolyn Beck, spokeswoman for TABC, said
this week that the impact of that night in Fort
Worth continues to be felt at the agency — and
that's a good thing.
"I think we have more direct and open lines of
communication with the LGBT community, espe-
cially in the Dallas/Fort Worth/ Arlington area,"
she said. "I am still in touch with some folks I met
as a result of the Rainbow Lounge incident and
value those relationships for personal and profes-
sional reasons. We are a better organization than
we were five years ago, and I expect that we will
continue to evolve and improve as we find better
ways to work with the people we regulate and
keep all communities safe."
The Fort Worth City Council also initiated sen-
sitivity training not just for its police officers, but
for all its employees, as did TABC.
It all happened very fast. But five years later, the
question is, has it lasted? Has even more progress
been made? Current Fairness Fort Worth President
David Mack Henderson said this week, the an-
swer is yes.
"Not everything we have asked for has come to
fruition," Henderson said. But yes, it is better now,
because there is an organization in place here that
builds bridges. As long as there is an open dialog
continuing, we will make progress.
"When Fairness Fort Worth started out, we
were doing what I call brush fire work. But we
were also laying the groundwork for something
more lasting. That was our biggest success — our
ability to create dialog and keep it going."
In those initial hectic months, LGBT activists led
by FFW presented city officials with a list of 20
items they wanted to see accomplished. These
days, Henderson said, "some of those items have
cobwebs on them."
He pointed specifically to the demand that city
officials include support for LGBT rights in its leg-
islative agendas at the state and federal levels. For
the first couple of years after the raid, Henderson
said, the city followed through. "But recently, that
language has disappeared. We want to get it back
in there. Some of these things, like the legislative
agendas, require maintenance. We as a community
have to be vigilant to make sure the city keeps its
commitments."
Another area in which there has been progress
made, but there is still progress needed involves
health insurance benefits for the city's transgender
employees. Henderson said city officials have just
recently clarified where those benefits stand.
"We have yet to get full health insurance cover-
age for the city's trans employees. The actual gen-
der reassignment surgery is not covered," he said.
"But we have been able to clarity what coverage is
offered. This was a matter of equity and current
medical need. The city did its homework and they
have confirmed that the health plan covers services
for transgender employees that would be available
to employees of either gender and that are med-
ically necessary"
That means that trans employees who need hor-
mone treatments can get those treatments. It also
includes preventative screenings, such as prostate
cancer screenings for male-to-female trans employ-
ees.
Sensitivity training for city officials has continued
and even expanded to Arlington, Henderson con-
firmed this week. He said FFW recently began
LGBT awareness training for all of the Arlington
Police Department's employees — sworn officers
and civilians. The response so far, he said, has been
"very very good."
"Fairness Fort Worth has been contracted to pro-
vide the training and we are actually being com-
pensated for that work," Henderson said. "The
corporate world has long known that there is real
value in this kind of work and has been willing to
compensate those that provide it. It is nice to know
that government agencies and others are beginning
to recognize that value, too."
There's more. Henderson said that FFW is now
able to work directly with Fort Worth Independent
School District schools to deal with situations in-
volving bullying. "People know to call us now Be-
cause of our reputation, we can get in the door and
we can help these students in crisis situations," he
said.
FFW also has access to make sure that FWISD
students trying to form gay-straight alliances in
their school are allowed to do so, and that they have
access to all the same resources as other school
groups. The number of GSAs, he said, "is growing
exponentially" in Tarrant County even in the junior
high and middle schools.
And FFA has recently undertaken a new project
to "provide comprehensive information to all areas
high school principals. Not everyone has gotten the
memo that the times and the laws have changed.
We are here to make sure they know, that they read
the laws and that they follow them."
Fairness Fort Worth is moving in new directions,
too. The organization has invited experts from
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Nash, Tammye. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 7, Ed. 1 Friday, June 27, 2014, newspaper, June 27, 2014; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth706843/m1/8/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.