Daniel Villarreal

C.J.*, a volunteer with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Auxiliary Officer program, says fellow officers and supervisors subjected him to homophobic harassment, including an off-duty assault, vandalism of his departmental locker, and retaliation for complaining about how he was being treated.

Officers in the NYPD’s auxiliary program supplement the regular police force and perform limited duties like foot patrolling, traffic, and parade control. Auxiliary officers get a uniform and a modified badge and aren’t given a gun, pepper spray, or allowed to arrest anyone. Auxiliary officers can also join “special units” that patrol specific transport areas like the subways, highways, or ports.

C.J. moved from Dallas, Texas to New York City in 2012. He worked a full-time job and began volunteering for the NYPD’s auxiliary unit that same year. But because of his negative experiences in the military, he hadn’t planned on coming out in the NYPD.

However, in 2014 the coordinating officer of his auxiliary unit informed Jimenez that his fellow officers all knew he was gay. C.J. didn’t know how they found out or who began telling others, but the outing made him feel very uncomfortable. He decided he wouldn’t “broadcast” his homosexuality at the department, but he could sense that others were gossiping about it.

C.J. told LGBTQ Nation that he endured a lot of mistreatment in the military because of his perceived sexual orientation. He served in the U.S. Army from January 2000 to January 2005, joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2007, and served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009.

At the time, he didn’t report his mistreatment to his superior officers for fear of being forcibly discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the U.S. military ban on homosexual service members. He retired from the reserves as a Sergeant First Class in June 2022.

However, his old fears about homophobic mistreatment materialized in October 2014 when fellow Auxiliary Officer David Jones* allegedly assaulted him while off-duty. C.J. already disliked Officer Jones, seeing him as a narcissist whom he never saw eye-to-eye with. While the two were being driven from a Halloween party, they got into a drunken verbal argument.

Jones began yelling and belittling C.J., to which C.J. responded, “You’re just pissed off because I’m gay and I have more balls than you, and you haven’t been in Iraq.”

When C.J. exited the vehicle to take a subway home, Jones allegedly shoved him out of the car onto the ground, began kicking and choking him, and called him a “wetb**k,” a “queer,” and a “dirty fa***t.” C.J. said he felt stunned and surprised to see Jones’ “true colors.”

The attack didn’t leave C.J. with any serious injuries, but he felt emotionally shaken. Despite this, he didn’t report the attack because it happened off-duty and because he thought things at the NYPD would be better if he didn’t.

In 2015, Jones was transferred to a special auxiliary unit. In November of that same year, C.J. asked Sergeant John Smith*, the coordinator overseeing all auxiliary special units, for a transfer to another special unit patrolling the borough of Queens. C.J. spoke with that unit’s coordinator, Sergeant Tim Jackson*, and went on rides with two unit sergeants who seemed to like him.

But by February 2016, neither Smith nor Jackson had returned C.J.’s calls asking about his transfer. “At that point, I began to realize something wasn’t right,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation.

By July 2016, C.J. spoke with Detective Robert Brown*, an officer overseeing the special unit Jones had transferred to. C.J. confided about the assault, and Brown reportedly told him that Smith and Jackson weren’t processing his transfer request because he didn’t get along with Jones.

Tired of the stonewalling and mistreatment, C.J. reported Jones’ assault to NYPD Internal Affairs in October 2016. Nine months later, in July 2017, C.J. tried filing another transfer request to the special unit where Jones no longer worked. Brown, the unit head, seemed reluctant to accept C.J.’s transfer request, C.J. said.

In November of that year, C.J. filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Equal Opportunity (EO) office about the lack of responses to his transfer requests. In response, Smith then allegedly ordered C.J. not to contact him or anyone in auxiliary special units anymore. C.J. felt that his order was a retaliation for filing a complaint.

In June 2018, C.J. filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights that he was being retaliated against for his EO complaint. However, C.J. didn’t pursue it because he couldn’t afford a lawyer. 

C.J. unsuccessfully filed another transfer request in October 2018. He then filed a Human Rights complaint with the City of New York in September 2019 to address the ongoing stonewalling. The COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020 delayed any handling of his complaint, and it was administratively dismissed in September 2021. Yet again, C.J. chose not to pursue the matter because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.

Despite the stonewalling, C.J. continued volunteering with the auxiliary program. However, in December 2020, someone broke into his departmental locker, cutting the lock with bolt cutters. Whoever had broken in had removed his duty belt, baton, flashlight, uniform cap, road guard vest, tie, and other various uniform items that he kept in a blue IKEA bag. The vandal hadn’t touched any items belonging to his locker mate. He later found what he believes to be his broken lock on top of the lockers while deep cleaning the area in May 2023.

“I was hesitant to say anything because I was burned out,” he told LGBTQ Nation. He felt like he had been targeted for filing complaints and that no one would really care or do anything about the locker break-in. He alerted the EO office about the vandalism, but nothing came of it, just as nothing came of his repeated transfer requests, the most recent of which he filed in late 2023. C.J. says his transfers seem to keep disappearing with no explanation.

C.J. says he has had no disciplinary actions filed against him for any misconduct on the force, meaning that his on-duty behavior doesn’t seem to be the reason for his mistreatment. He feels his experience at the NYPD shows that some in the department are acting like a “good ol’ boys” club at the taxpayers’ expense, basing their workplace decisions on who he gets along with rather than his actual qualifications.

LGBTQ Nation contacted the NYPD for comment but they did not respond by the time of publication.

“Following the locker incident, I have been reluctant to do any auxiliary police patrols because, at this point, I feel very uncomfortable because of everything that has happened,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation. Despite this, he said he has stayed in the NYPD because he refuses to be scared away.

“NYC prides itself on being a safe haven for LGBTQ [people] and NYPD says it is here to protect the LGBTQ community,” he added. “However, look at what happened to me after I felt safe to open my mouth about a problem in a place that is supposed to be a safe haven — I am getting the runaround.”

C.J. said he missed out on his longevity ceremony and because of his reluctance to do hours due to the runaround. He is telling his story now in hopes that the NYPD might finally live up to its standards and address his ongoing issues, not only for himself but for future officers who might otherwise face similar mistreatment.

“I know from military experience that all it takes is one or two people with ulterior motives … to make things difficult for [someone], especially if they have power over them such as rank or authority,” he said. “My goal isn’t a lawsuit, or another investigation — all I want is the wrong righted.”

*The officer in this story asked LGBTQ Nation to use aliases for fear of violating department policies as his official complaints move through the system.

A group called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS) sought to educate their small Massachusetts town about LGBTQ+ issues while building support for queer youth in schools. But soon after the group formed, another resident established a similarly named group to mock them. That resident has since accused LLIS and its supporters of being pedophiles and suggested that violence awaits them if they continue their advocacy.

Some residents of Seekonk, Massachusetts (population 15,700), were angered in late March 2023 when Mildred H. Aitken Elementary School advertised its annual Boy’s Choice mother-son dance with an ad welcoming all boys, students who identify as boys, and non-binary students.

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After right-wingers shared the ad’s wording on social media accounts, the school district received phone calls and online messages threatening protests and violence. One post featured a picture of a bullet and the caption “PEDOCILLIN,” a combination of the word pedophilia and the medication penicillin. The district canceled the $1,500 event hours before it was about to begin and canceled its scheduled Girl’s Choice dance that following April since its flier used similar wording about trans and non-binary students.

Upset by the cancellation, local parent Joe Novinson spoke passionately at a school board meeting, calling out the violence directed against children and the right of queer families to exist without being shot. After hearing his speech, a group of LGBTQ+ supportive parents, called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS), recruited Novinson to join their board. He did.

The group, started by local parent Kris Lyons and Pam Godsoe, decided to help raise the $1,500 that the school’s parent-teacher organization (PTO) lost by canceling the dance. So they began selling yard signs and bumper stickers colored like the progress Pride flag with the group’s name printed on them. The group raised nearly the full amount by April 11, 2023 and presented the amount to the PTO in an oversized check.

As the group’s membership grew, it pledged to hold community and educational events for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. LLIS held a September event to paint rocks for the local library’s Kindness Rock Garden, a November Lovesgiving fundraiser, and a February 2024 trivia night. The group, which became a non-profit in August 2023, donated $300 to Seekonk High School’s gay-straight alliance. LLIS also uses its Facebook page to educate residents about LGBTQ+ issues like pronouns, banned books, trans athletes, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, coming out, queer crisis hotlines, and other topics.

“[The events were] really just about bringing the community together,” Novinson told LGBTQ Nation. “There was a lot of pushback initially to our group and people accused us of being online only, that we didn’t have much more than a digital footprint. So we wanted to counter that by holding events in real life. And we’re making our presence here felt, and we’re telling [those who disapproved of us that] we’re not going anywhere.”

Around fall 2023, the group also began publishing letters to the editor in the monthly local news magazine, The Seekonk Reporter. Since the magazine often reprints long letters to the editor and gets delivered to each local resident’s mailbox, LLIS thought it’d be a good way to reach older populations who didn’t engage with the group’s Facebook or Instagram pages.

In October 2023, the Reporter published Lyons’ letter introducing LLIS to the community. In November 2023, the news magazine published a letter written by Joe Novinson’s husband and fellow LLIS member Michael about how visible attempts at LGBTQ+ inclusivity aren’t a form of discrimination against Christians or Republicans.

“Just because something makes you as a parent uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s discriminatory in nature,” Michael Novinson’s letter said. “Schools should be opening children’s minds to the world outside of our own family, not building protective bubbles around children to keep new ideas and people you consider undesirable out.”

That’s when the trouble started. A local resident named Kanessa Lynn sent a letter to the Reporter claiming to represent a similarly named group called Luv Lives in Seekonk.

In one letter, Lynn wrote, “Luv Lives in Seekonk had its first ever LuvsGiving fundraiser on November 8th…. All proceeds are going to myself.” She claimed her group sold yard signs and bumper stickers and held a rock painting event, claims that others in the town doubted, considering her letter made it sound like she was just writing a satirical article mocking Love Lives in Seekonk. “I seen how gullible people are,” her letter continued, “and I’m excited to come up with more merchandise to scam, I mean sell to the community!”

Lynn reposted the article in Seekonk Residents, a right-wing Facebook group that reposts screenshots from anti-LGBTQ+ activist Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok X account, the transphobic right-wing group Gays Against Groomers, and videos of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. The group also features various posts opposing transgender athletes, immigrants, DEI efforts, “the war on whites,” and the “COVID vaccine hoax.”

After complaints about Lynn’s letters, The Seekonk Reporter removed LLIS’ and Lynn’s letters from their website.

On October 26, 2023, Michael Novinson said he had a phone conversation with Barbara Georgia, co-owner of The Reporter. According to him, Georgia said the publication reprinted Lynn’s letters so that it wouldn’t be seen as “taking sides.” Georgia also reportedly said that the Reporter didn’t fact-check Lynn’s claims because “Those are her words, not ours” and that the publication had the right to refuse any submissions.

“We have given space to both groups in the past and due to the fact that it has escalated so much in nature we have decided to remain neutral and no longer print either side,” Georgia wrote to Michael Novinson in a January 4, 2024 text message exchange.

Novinson explained to Georgia that, unlike Lynn, his group was created to improve the lives of local queer kids, not “to get in a tit-for-tat with” Lynn or her sham group. “Silencing our voice will only serve to hurt LGBTQ+ youth,” Novinson wrote. Georgia and her husband have previously made donations to Republican candidates and the 2020 re-election campaign of President Donald Trump, according to data from the Federal Election Campaign.

Lynn cheered Georgia’s decision in a January 18 Facebook post in the Seekonk Residents Facebook group, writing, “To them it was a setback, but for all of us in Seekonk it was a victory!!! Now we don’t have to read their useless articles filled with lies.” 

In other posts in the same group, she arranged four progressive Pride rainbow flags in the shape of a swastika, misgendered reposted screenshots of the full names of all the members of the LLIS Facebook group, and posted images of her car with two signs on it: one reading, “Love Lives in Seekonk are GROOMERS,” and another reading, “LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!”

At the January 8 meeting of the Seekonk School Committee, Lynn said the LLIS’s members and supporters are “groomers.” She referenced the community upset at the aforementioned “PEDOCILLIN” social media post, saying that it meant that “pedophiles should get a bullet.” 

“If you’re not a pedophile or a group that grooms children,” she continued, “then the meme shouldn’t even have affected you.” She then asked if the library or school board if either would be able to handle a neo-Nazi protest if either organization ever held a community drag event at LLIS’s request.

“You might wanna take that to Rehoboth or Attleboro because it’s not going to happen in Seekonk,” she said. “We’re not going to have grown, mentally ill men dressed as women coming to read to little kids in Seekonk — it’s not going to happen, I promise you that…. Leave the kids alone, leave the schools alone… You have a sick obsession with children.”

As proof of LLIS’s obsession, she noted an LLIS Facebook post in which Michael Novinson opposed a proposal to make the school district’s sex education classes opt-in and to let parents opt their child out of any curriculum that contradicts their religious beliefs. In his post, Novinson worried that the policy would reduce the number of students learning about human sexuality and “lead to more STIs and unwanted pregnancies for teenagers in town.”

Beyond the censorship, accusations, and threats, Seekonk is gearing up for the upcoming April 1 townwide elections. Lynn and other town residents are supporting conservative school board candidates who could push school policies banning LGBTQ+ books, curriculum, and trans-inclusive policies. Meanwhile, LLIS’s members continue to speak out at board meetings and inform its Facebook followers members about why LGBTQ+ kids need community support.

“Folks running from the right are making things like gender ideology and critical race theory central components of their campaign,” Michael Novinson said. “In that way, Seekonk mirrors national patterns and a push on the right to make this a culture war.”

Lyons, one of the straight co-founders of LLIS, said she wants to encourage more residents in her town and in neighboring towns to “feel more emboldened to step up and be loud” in support of LGBTQ+ people. 

“Two straight moms from Seekonk got together with a bunch of people to take a stand, and you can too.”

A federal appeals court has issued an injunction against part of Texas’ book-banning law that requires book vendors to rate books for “sexually explicit” and “sexually relevant” materials. Vendors must submit those ratings every year to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the agency overseeing public schools. The TEA can then overrule a vendor’s ratings and place vendors on a “noncompliant list,” forbidding schools from buying books from them if the vendors disagree with the TEA’s decisions.

Two Texas bookstores — Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop — filed a lawsuit against the 2023 Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act, calling the law overbroad and an unconstitutional violation of their free speech rights. The bookstores were joined in their lawsuit by the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that an injunction against the aforementioned section of the READER Act should remain in place because the booksellers in question are likely to suffer irreparable economic and reputational harm because of the law.

Blue Willow Bookshop said that it had already lost $200,000 in business after the law was passed as the Katy Independent School District had already paused all purchasing from it while awaiting for the business to comply with the new law.

The law requires booksellers to rate all books sold to schools if they’re either “sexually explicit” (“patently offensive” by vague and undefined community standards) or “sexually relevant” (with depictions of any sexual conduct). Blue Willow estimated that rating all of its books will cost between $200 and $1,000 per book and between $4 million and $500 million overall. This would bankrupt the store since it only makes $1 million annually, the bookseller said.

Because the bookseller makes 20% of its annual revenue through school sales, if it fails to comply with the law it would lose a large part of its business. 

The Texas government argued that the plaintiffs’ case should be thrown out because vendors aren’t required to participate in the rating system and their economic injuries have not yet occurred. However, in its ruling, the court wrote, “We are not persuaded.”

The state also argued that its law didn’t violate free speech rights because there is an “abundant history” of movie and video game ratings and warning labels on cigarettes. However, the court wrote that movie and video game ratings are entirely voluntary since there are no legal requirements that any entity submit ratings before sale. Also, ratings of sexual content are not “purely factual and uncontroversial,” unlike the health warnings on cigarettes.

“The statute requires vendors to undertake contextual analyses, weighing and balancing many factors to determine a rating for each book,” the court wrote. “Balancing a myriad of factors that depend on community standards is anything but the mere disclosure of factual information. And it has already proven controversial.”

In its lawsuit, the plaintiffs wrote, “The overbroad language of the Book Ban could result in the banning or restricting of access to many classic works of literature, such as Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Ulysses, Jane Eyre, Maus, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, The Canterbury Tales, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and even the Bible.”

While Texas schools will still be allowed to remove sexually explicit and relevant materials from libraries and classrooms, book sellers won’t have to comply with the law for now. The full issue will be decided as the lawsuit proceeds through the judicial system.

In a statement issued after the ruling, the plaintiffs said, “We are grateful for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decisive action in striking down this unconstitutional law. With this historic decision the court has moved decisively to ensure the constitutionally protected speech of authors, booksellers, publishers, and readers, and prevent the state government from unlawfully compelling speech on the part of private citizens.”

“The court’s decision also shields Texas businesses from the imposition of impossibly onerous conditions, protects the basic constitutional rights of the plaintiffs, and lets Texas parents make decisions for their own children without government interference or control,” the statement contnued. “This is a good day for bookstores, readers, and free expression.”

Right-wingers like Alex Jones and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have long accused LGBTQ+ people and allies of being “groomers” and pedophiles. But they’re making excuses now that former President Donald Trump may soon be unveiled as one of 200 people connected to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

A judge has recently unsealed and uncensored previously redacted court documents that name up to 200 associates of Epstein. The documents were unsealed in a lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre. Guiffre accused Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of forcing her to have sex with Epstein’s powerful and wealthy friends, including Britain’s Prince Andrew — something Prince Andrew has denied.

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Trump’s name is expected to appear alongside former President Bill Clinton’s in the un-redacted files since Epstein’s flight logs have already shown that they flew on Epstein’s private Boeing 727 plane. The plane was nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” after Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 pedophilia novel, due to the frequent delivery of apparently underage women to Epstein’s privately owned island of Little Saint James. Epstein pleaded guilty to sex with a 14-year-old girl in 2008 and was undergoing investigation for other possible sex crimes before his suspicious August 2019 suicide at a New York prison.

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There’s no evidence that Clinton or Trump ever visited the island, and neither have been charged with a crime related to Epstein. Nevertheless, Jones and Greene are already pushing a conspiracy theory that any mention of Trump in the un-redacted files will be due to “deep state” federal operatives trying to smear the former president.

Jones, the host of InfoWars whose social media accounts and guests have repeatedly accused LGBTQ+ people and their allies of pedophilia, recently said, “If they put out a client list, and that’s possible that it could be fake, because Epstein’s dead. And that’s something very possible.” Jones said the CIA had previously committed similar actions in connection with the Israeli and British intelligence agencies.

Defending Trump, Jones added, “[Trump] gets devoted to one woman at a time, gets totally obsessed with them, totally nice to them.” Despite Jones’s claim, at least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including extra-marital affairs. 

Greene, whose anti-LGBTQ+ tweets about grooming and pedophilia have spread far on social media, has tried to deflect any association between Epstein and Trump by focusing on Clinton instead.

“For some us, it’s no surprise at all that Bill Clinton will be named in the Jeffrey Epstein files,” she wrote in a January 3 X post. “We said it a long time ago but they labeled us conspiracy theorists. There will be lots of names you’ve never heard of and the IC collected info on them. Pedophiles belong in jail not on secret government lists.”

Several X commenters asked if she’ll hold Trump to the same standard if he’s named in the un-redacted documents. 

 In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine, Trump said “I’ve known Jeff[rey Epstein] for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

However, in 2019, soon after Epstein was taken into custody by New York authorities, Trump said he had a “falling-out” with Epstein about 15 years ago, adding, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.” Trump allegedly banned Epstein from his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida in the early 2000s after Epstein expressed interest in a club member’s teenage daughter.

Flames shot through the crowded Up Stairs Lounge as bartender Buddy Rasmussen opened the front door to see who had been ringing the downstairs buzzer. Someone had lit the popular bar’s stairwell carpet on fire, and it burned its way up the wooden stairs into the bar, quickly igniting the lounge’s red wallpaper, curtains, and posters of Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug and Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz wearing his seven gold medals, a star-spangled Speedo, and a smile.

Some patrons saw the blaze and ran for the nearest exits or down the stairwell, emerging with their clothes on fire as neighbors raced to pour pitchers of water onto them. Rasmussen began tapping patrons on the shoulder to follow him toward the fire exit at the back of the bar, but many were too shocked by the exploding blaze to move.

The June 24, 1973, conflagration, likely set by a sex worker ejected from the New Orleans bar earlier that night, killed 32 people and injured at least 15 others. 

Yet the reaction to the catastrophe hardly matched the immense suffering the fire caused, and the tragedy was compounded by multiple denials: Public officials refused to issue statements about the fire, and Catholic churches refused to hold funeral services for the victims, whom they saw as unrepentant sinners. The media only reported on the fire briefly or not at all, and some families refused to claim their relatives’ bodies because they didn’t want to acknowledge that they were gay. Three of the victims ended up buried in unmarked graves — two remain unidentified.

To this day, the arson remains unsolved.

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Hate crimes reverberate through communities, intimidating an entire class of people. The Up Stairs Lounge had been a safe space in the gay-friendly, tourist-heavy French Quarter. But as bar patrons feared a similar attack on other gathering spots, still others worried that police might start raiding gay bars more often and arresting more men in the name of public safety. Bar owners believed talking too much about the fire could hurt business. And locals just wanted to move on from the horror.

As a result, to this day, even many queer New Orleanians aren’t aware of the most devastating fire in their city’s history, the deadliest massacre of gay men in the U.S. before the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. 

This year, half a century later, there’s considerable important work being done to ensure that the arson and its aftermath are remembered and the deaths memorialized. For the tragedy’s anniversary, a group of community activists, religious leaders, and queer historians partnered with the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and the Historic New Orleans Collection to organize a weekend of commemorative events at the end of June. 

The weekend, attended by LGBTQ Nation, featured discussions with religious leaders and activists who lent a hand in the fire’s aftermath, artists who have made documentaries and theatrical works based on the event, church leaders concerned with the tragedy’s spiritual legacy, and podcasters and archivists dedicated to preserving its terrible memory. The weekend events also included art exhibitions, film screenings, a memorial service, and a “second line” jazz funeral through the city’s streets to the now defunct bar’s front entrance.

Their work is especially important considering the current backlash against remembering the atrocities America has committed against its most vulnerable communities. Extreme right-wingers are busy denying our guilt over slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the effect these traumas have on minority communities to this day.

But those committed to preserving history aren’t just making artworks and public speeches about the tragedy; they’re also working to ensure that the victims and their families finally get the recognition and empathy they deserve for their loss.

The fire occurred when New Orleans author Johnny Townsend was only 11 years old. Though he saw horrific photos of the aftermath on TV news at the time, as he grew up, he could find little background on what happened. So in 1989 — 16 years after the fire — he began tracking down the bar’s survivors and former patrons with the help of Rasmussen, the lounge’s surviving bartender.

Through interviews and research, Townsend published the first historical account of what happened as well as profiles for each victim in his 2011 book Let the Faggots Burn. The amateur historian struggled to find a publisher, so he eventually published it himself via BookLocker.com. After the 333-page book was released, a son of one of the fire’s victims approached him after Townsend spoke publicly about the book and said that all he had ever known of his father was what his mother had told him: “Your father was a drunk, and he died at a bar.” 

Townsend’s book had given his dad back to him. Today, the historical amnesia is finally being addressed. There are three books about the fire — including Clayton Delery-Edwards’ comprehensive 2014 account, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, and Robert W. Fieseler’s 2018 nonfiction narrative, Tinderbox.

Three documentaries have been made about the arson, with a fourth in production, as well as one play, a stage musical, four unproduced screenplays, a dance piece, various podcasts, and a permanent art installation.

One of the documentaries, a 2013 short by Royd Anderson, helped the estranged family of World War II veteran Ferris LeBlanc realize that he was one of three “unidentified white males” who perished in the blaze. The city buried his corpse in an unmarked plot within Resthaven Memorial Park, a potter’s field located near the city’s northeastern coast.

Anderson is now working on a documentary called Saving Ferris and pressuring government officials to exhume LeBlanc and give him the proper military burial that he deserved.

Max Vernon’s 2017 stage musical, The View UpStairs, depicts a snarky gay fashionista millennial who buys the dilapidated Up Stairs Lounge to launch his flagship store but is then magically transported to 1973, just before the fire. Despite its tragic content, it has been seen by over 100,000 people — Off-Broadway, in multiple U.S. cities, as well as in England and Australia — and has been translated into Japanese and seen by 20,000 theatergoers. Drag legend RuPaul called the musical “fantastic.”

None of these things would’ve been possible without Townsend’s first book. Delery-Edwards and Fieseler agreed on this point as the three book authors spoke at an opening-night panel during the 50th-anniversary commemorative weekend.

Fieseler said that people still contact him regularly with new information about the fire. At speaking engagements, attendees will often approach him, tears in their eyes, to confess their estrangement from their own queer family members.

“It can change minds,” Fieseler said of the history. “It can melt hearts when they learn the inhumanity of how these people were treated.”

Many of the weekend panelists said they wanted to ensure that the history is never forgotten and that it never happens again — but it already is happening again. 

“New Orleans is renowned internationally for being a welcoming, open city. And part of us continuing to promote that narrative requires us to acknowledge a time when we were not an open, welcoming city.”City Council Vice President J.P. Morell

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Eleven states have laws censoring discussions of LGBTQ+ issues in public school classrooms. Thirty-three states have banned LGBTQ+-inclusive books from schools and public libraries, according to the free speech organization PEN America. Meanwhile, recent reports show that the LGBTQ+ community has increasingly been targeted by legislation banning drag shows and gender-affirming care, as well as by hate speech, threats, and violence from white supremacist, neo-fascist, parental rights, and Christian nationalist groups.

“New Orleans is renowned internationally for being a welcoming, open city,” City Council Vice President J.P. Morell told attendees at the opening reception of the 50th anniversary commemoration. “And part of us continuing to promote that narrative requires us to acknowledge a time when we were not an open, welcoming city.”

Morell spearheaded an official apology from the city, delivered in 2022, for its “botched and callous response” to the arson. He said that the city and media had made an “active effort” to bury the massacre and shield the politically powerful from any guilt for neglecting its victims. That same year, Louisiana state Rep. Alonzo Knox (D) passed a resolution apologizing for the state’s response.

A growing community has emerged to preserve the arson’s memory and counter those who wish to keep it buried. To understand what drives them, one must first know a little about the bar, the community it created, and the fire that ravaged both.

“When I try to explain [the arson] to people not in the queer community,” Morell told the reception attendees, “I tell them the Up Stairs Lounge is like the [1921] Tulsa Massacre for those in the African American community … The fact that we didn’t know about it as a country tells you how successful the government and the media can be in erasing history if we don’t fight for it.”

How a refuge turned into a deadly nightmare

Gay life during the early 1970s was nothing like today. The American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a mental illness, the best-known depiction across America was the hillbilly rape scene from the film Deliverance, and some closeted men got married and had children just to avoid persecution.

While some of New Orleans’ queer community joined invite-only dinner clubs and Mardi Gras krewes to socialize privately, others frequented public cruising spots and bars. In the late-night hours, police would sometimes raid these establishments, beating up and arresting patrons on vague “obscenities” charges for actions as simple as hugging. Arrestees had their names published in the newspaper, resulting in firings, divorces, and even taking their own lives.

In 1970, gay entrepreneur Philip Esteve opened the Up Stairs Lounge and hired Rasmussen, a friendly man who had been dishonorably discharged from the military for being gay.

The bar didn’t get much business when it first opened, but then Rasmussen had the idea for a Sunday evening Beer Bust from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. when customers could pay $1 for all-you-can-drink beer. He figured, accurately, that Beer Bust customers would become bar regulars.

As the crowds grew, the lounge became a refuge for its patrons, some of whom were out among gay friends but closeted at work. The bar held annual parties for Mardi Gras and Halloween and also community fundraisers for children’s hospitals and other causes. On a small stage, patrons performed plays and lighthearted “Nellydramas” where men played women’s roles, and the audience threw popcorn at cartoonish villains.

The bar also hired a pianist to play singalongs. At the end of every Beer Bust, he’d play the 1970 Brotherhood of Man song “United We Stand,” and patrons would sing together: “There’s nowhere in the world that I would rather be / Than with you my love / And there’s nothing in the world that I would rather see / Than your smile my love / For united we stand / Divided we fall / And if our backs should ever be against the wall / We’ll be together, together, you and I.”

The bar also hosted Sunday morning services for the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a gay-affirming church started in Los Angeles in 1968. William “Bill” Larson, New Orleans’ MCC minister, temporarily held Sunday services in the bar’s intimate theater. Even after moving the gatherings into his own home, church members still patronized the bar after services, often staying for the Beer Bust.

According to accounts in the aforementioned books and an ABC News featureabout the arson, during one Beer Bust on June 24, 1973, 26-year-old sex worker Roger Dale Nunez was reportedly sexually harassing patrons. One patron punched him, and the bartender threw him out. But before leaving, Nunez allegedly said, “I’m gonna burn you all out!”

It’s believed that Nunez then went to a nearby Walgreens, purchased a 7-ounce canister of Ronsonol lighter fluid, emptied it onto the bar entrance’s bottom steps, and ignited it. The small fire quickly blazed up the carpeted stairway and swept into the bar, engulfing its wallpaper, window drapes, wood paneling, posters, and decorations.

Rasmussen, who received fire training in the military, helped 22 people safely exit from a fire door behind the stage, but others were too intoxicated or stunned to follow. Some of the 42 people who remained in the bar escaped through another fire door; others ran down the fiery stairwell and emerged downstairs severely burned.

Twelve escaped by miraculously squeezing through the 10-inch gaps in the metal safety bars guarding the lounge’s large floor-to-ceiling windows. One such person was Rusty Quinton, a man who would soon after be photographed while looking at the fiery bar and crying, “My friends are up there!”

Others weren’t so lucky. Larson, the MCC pastor, squeezed his head and arm through the bars before catching flame and burning alive. Some people feared the windows’ 12-foot drop to the sidewalk and blocked others from escaping through them.

Though firefighters extinguished the blaze barely 20 minutes after it began, when they entered the bar, they discovered that nearly 17 corpses had piled atop one another while trying to escape through the windows. Firefighters vomited from the stench and cried at the horrific sights. Larson’s charred corpse remained visible in the window for nearly four hours before being removed.

Fifteen injured survivors went to Charity Hospital, forcing it to prematurely open its new burn unit. Three of those admitted died from their injuries.

One survivor with burned hands asked for help dialing his boyfriend on a pay phone. When his lover answered, he looked at the floor and said, “Hello, David? Listen, I’ve had a sort of accident. Yes … Please come quick. Please come. I hurt.”

Heroes from the ashes

Throughout history, some haven’t considered the fire a hate crime because it was committed by someone from the LGBTQ+ community. But, as one commemoration panelist, Metropolitan Community Church minister Paul Breton, said, the real hate crime happened afterward with the inhuman response of the city, state, and church.

The indignities began almost immediately. As journalists arrived at the scene, Rasmussen found Nunez in the crowd and dragged him to a police officer for arrest. The cop, possibly more concerned with crowd control, told Rasmussen to move along. The officer’s negligence characterized the police’s handling of the case. While investigators often use victims’ clothing, jewelry, birthmarks, and IDs to identify the dead, the fire had rendered them unidentifiable. Police officials told reporters from then newspaper The States-Item that they had trouble identifying people because “some thieves hung out” at the bar, and it was “not uncommon for homosexuals to carry false identification.”

Reggie Adams, Adam Fontenot, Horace “Skip” Hetchell, Ken Harrington, Rev. William “Bill” Larson, Ferris LeBlanc, Robert Lumpkin, Leon Richard Maples, Bud Matyi, Duane George “Mitch” Mitchell, and Perry Lane Waters, Jr. were among the victims on June 27, 1973. Photos courtesy of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana.

Police concluded their investigation about two months later without ever questioning or arresting Nunez. The fire marshal’s more thorough investigation subjected Nunez to a psychological stress evaluation (PSE) that detected dishonesty in Nunez’s denials. PSEs, however, are subjective and often inadmissible as court evidence.

Nunez drunkenly confessed to three people — his lover, a nun, and a drag queen — that he had started the fire, only to deny it when sober. None of them told the police. The drag queen, Miss Fury, said Nunez confessed to her on Christmas Eve 1973 that “He’d only meant to cause a little fire and smoke. He’d only meant to scare everybody. He didn’t realize the whole place would go up in flames.” The 27-year-old arsonist died by suicide on November 15, 1974, by overdosing on beer and painkillers.

Even though the fire marshal concluded that Nunez was guilty, the Orleans Parish District Attorney refused to sign off on the conclusion. With no fingerprints on the lighter fluid can, witnesses to the fire setting, or confession, there was no proof and no conviction — the case remains officially unsolved to this day.

The local paper, The Times-Picayune, printed the names of the deceased and the survivors, outing some of them. Closeted survivors who avoided the press still couldn’t mention the tragedy at their workplaces. According to Delery-Edwards’ and Townsend’s research, tasteless jokes began circulating among New Orleans locals about “flaming queens,” how the dead homos should be buried in fruit jars, and how the real tragedy was that more f**gots didn’t die.

When a 1972 fire at New Orleans’ Rault Center killed six people, then-Mayor Moon Landrieu, then-Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, and then-Catholic Archbishop Philip Hannan issued sympathetic statements to the victims and their families. However, after the Up Stairs Lounge fire killed 32, the officials said nothing for weeks. Hannan reportedly told local Catholic churches not to hold funerals or burials for any of the fire’s non-Catholic victims.

An appeals court blocked 19 different lawsuits suing city and state agencies for failing to inspect the bar for fire hazards for over two years before the blaze. With no one else to hold accountable, the litigants sued the bar’s owner for $80,000, a paltry sum to split among them all.

But even amid this coldness, heroes rose from the ashes.

Three MCC leaders — MCC founder Troy Perry of Los Angeles, Reverend John Gill of Atlanta, and Minister Paul Breton of Washington D.C. — quickly met in New Orleans to begin organizing memorials and press conferences, shaming the media and government for sweeping victims’ ashes under the rug.

These men helped establish The National New Orleans Memorial Fund, which raised $18,000 (worth about $125,000 today). The fund covered burial costs and aided survivors with medical bills and lost wages. It was the first-ever national fundraiser for a gay cause, and it provided a blueprint for similar fundraisers during the soon-to-come AIDS epidemic.

Breton, who is now 83, recalled the unkindness of churches that refused to host memorials for homosexuals.

“Church is not necessarily found in a community of people who adhere to a creed,” Breton said during a 50th anniversary panel about the fire’s spiritual legacy. “The Beer Bust was a church. You had people of like mind and like interest coming together every Sunday at a specified time, and they did something that people in church should do and often that people in churches don’t do — they were friends with each other.”

The three MCC leaders eventually convinced Father Bill Richardson of St. George’s Episcopal Church to host a June 25 memorial in the church’s small chapel. Only 50 people attended since it wasn’t well publicized and victims were still being identified. But afterward, 100 parishioners complained to the local bishop and demanded Richardson’s resignation.

In response, Richardson wrote a June 28 letter to congregants stating, “St. George’s is not a private club but the House of God … Would Jesus have barred these grief-stricken people from His church, or would He have welcomed them?” If congregants felt that the church should only minister to a select few, he wrote, he’d consider resigning. He never resigned, but the Episcopalian bishop of New Orleans, Iveson Nolan, told Richardson and other local Episcopal churches not to host future memorials.

A second memorial was held at St. Mark’s Methodist Church on Sunday, July 1. Its organizers printed 3,000 flyers to advertise it, and about 300 people attended, including the Methodist Bishop of Louisiana — a big deal considering the church officially sees homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The mourners then sang “United We Stand,” the same song that bar patrons sang at the end of every Beer Bust.

That same day, 46 MCC branches in the U.S. and Europe held memorial services, and several gay bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses in eight major U.S. cities also closed for an hour to commemorate the victims.

“I’m not ashamed of who I am or who my friends are. I came in the front door, and I’m going out that way.”An attendee at a memorial event for the Up Stairs Lounge fire, circa 1973. 

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Though the organizers of the New Orleans memorial had asked the press not to attend, The Times-Picayune and the local NBC TV affiliate arrived with cameras, waiting to record departing attendees and potentially out them. Perry notified the mourners and offered a backdoor exit. But an unidentified butch lesbian reportedly shouted, “I’m not ashamed of who I am or who my friends are. I came in the front door, and I’m going out that way.”

Recounts differ on what happened next. Some say the mourners left through the front door. Some say a few exited out the back. Others say the TV cameras had already departed by the time the memorial ended. Perry told one historian it didn’t matter if the cameras were there or not — what mattered was that the gay mourners faced them.

A reckoning 50 years in the making

Contrary to widespread belief, the Up Stairs Lounge fire wasn’t New Orleans’ Stonewall moment. The fire wasn’t a victory against oppression, and it didn’t rouse the local gay community to start fighting for their rights. In fact, the LGBTQ+ community rarely discussed the fire, and some opposed the efforts of the visiting MCC ministers.

The ministers were referred to as “fairy carpetbaggers,” borrowing a post–Civil War term for Northerners who profited off of Southern suffering. Up Stairs Lounge bar owner Esteve and other local gay business owners blamed the out-of-state activists for interfering in local matters, divisively politicizing a tragedy, and attracting unwanted government attention to gay establishments and their patrons.

Though the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders six months after the fire, it wouldn’t be until six years later that the city’s queer community would unite to oppose a force that bears an eerie resemblance to the threat LGBTQ+ people face today.

In 1977, the leaders of seven local gay and lesbian groups organized a 2,000-person protest against hate group leader Anita Bryant — it was the city’s largest-ever gay rights demonstration. That same year, a gay and lesbian newspaper Impact began publication, and the mayor appointed gays and lesbians to his city hall committee. Throughout the 1980s, various gay political and HIV advocacy groups evolved, including the New Orleans Chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

Despite this progress, the Up Stairs Lounge Fire remained mostly forgotten, and it was even excluded from a 1991 Louisiana State Museum exhibit about the city’s historic fires. However, on the arson’s 30th anniversary in 2003, the New Orleans MCC and others placed a bronze memorial plaque with the names of the fire’s 32 victims in front of the bar’s original entrance. By the arson’s 40th anniversary, the city’s then-mayor Mitch Landrieu (son of the mayor who had served during the fire) issued a statement formally recognizing the fire, and then Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond apologized for the archdiocese not issuing a statement when the blaze occurred.

Many of the fire’s survivors are dead, and the victims’ families have grown older and largely moved away. But local MCC Rev. Lonnie Cheramie, a queer group called the Crescent City Leathermen, and others have helped organize annual memorials, including a 2023 recreation of the 1973 memorial service that occurred at St. Marks.

“There are growing numbers of people across our country who want to erase our history and our very existence. Your very existence and participation today is, in fact, a political act.”Apostle Shelly Planellas of New Covenant Church, host of the Up Stairs Lounge 50th anniversary commemoration

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In front of the crowded sanctuary stood 32 small black banners, each with the name of a different victim sewn in gold lettering. After the New Orleans Gay Men’s Chorus sang “United We Stand,” various leathermen, drag nuns with the Big Easy Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and others carried the banners through the French Quarter for a “second line” jazz funeral procession to the entrance of the former Up Stairs Lounge. (The street-level bar, The Jimani, has occupied the space since 1972, with building records dating back as far back as 1848.)

There, people left flowers and bouquets on the plaque as Regina Adams observed the proceedings. Her husband, Reginald “Reggie” Adams, died in the fire. When she returned to the bar after going home to retrieve her checkbook, she saw the fire and stood in the middle of Iberville Street, screaming. Every day of the following week, she laid out her husband’s work clothes as if awaiting his return. She has rarely ever attended these memorial events, one local filmmaker noted.

“We still have a lot of work left to do,” said the event’s emcee, Apostle Shelly Planellas of New Covenant Church, through a loudspeaker in front of the 32 black banners. “Seven years ago, we lost 49 lives at Pulse in Orlando. Last year, we lost five at Club Q in Colorado Springs. And we have lost countless members of our beloved trans community to bigotry and hatred. And our work does not end here. Our work and our mission do not end ever. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, and hatred are still a part of our daily reality. There are growing numbers of people across our country who want to erase our history and our very existence. Many would say that we should never politicize a tragedy like this. Your very existence and participation today is, in fact, a political act.”

Most of the memorial’s attendees skewed older, Tim Reynolds of the Crescent City Leathermen said, because the older generation is more invested in preserving history. His group helps organize the memorials, he said, to keep the memory alive for the next generation. 

In a recently released podcast about the arson, The Fire UpStairs, activist, drag performer, and RuPaul’s Drag Race alum BenDeLaCreme said that many younger queer people and allies don’t understand why gay life is so centered around bars.

“These were the spaces that [homophobic society] pushed us into,” BenDeLaCreme told the podcast’s co-creator Joey Gray. But now — with more hookup apps and civil rights — even queer spaces are disappearing, she said.

This disappearance of queer spaces makes it more urgent to convey this history, Gray said, especially at a time when bigots are fighting to actively erase it. The AIDS epidemic silenced an entire generation of queer elders from passing down our community’s legacy. Because of this, more young people have grown up in an unprecedented era of acceptance and find themselves shaken and unprepared to face the current threat to our progress, not aware of similar historical threats and actions.

“In order to fight these battles and to stand up for what’s historically our culture, you have to have some kind of a foundation, a base knowledge,” said Gray about why he started the podcast.

Another guest of Gray’s podcast — Brian Derrick, founder of the progressive political engagement site Oath — noted that the cost of LGBTQ+ progress has been paid with career sacrifices, lives, and emotional labor.

“So now we have this fight in front of us,” Derrick said. “It’s also going to be expensive, and it’s going to cost a lot of time, money, careers, and all of these massive inputs in order to again move equality forward so that the next generation doesn’t have the same fight that we have right now. So we are leaving our kids — both literal and metaphorical — in a better place.”

Additional research by Billy McEntee and Kelly Suzan Waggoner.