Cops have plenty of discretion in choosing which laws to enforce, and how. They have to - they have limited resources and we have a ridiculous number of laws. I’ve had a cop say that if he wants to pull someone over, he just has to follow them for a while. They’ll drift their lane, fail to signal, speed just a bit - there’s always something. Her doesn’t have to, he just does it if he feels like fucking with someone. They chose to do this. He’ll, I think Seattle was one of the cities where the cops basically went on strike and refused to enforce the law almost at all during some dispute with the mayor.
Harassment at LGBT bars has been historically one of the main ways the LGBT community was systemically oppressed and made to stay in the closet. It happened all the time in the 50s and 60s, and bar owners used to have to bribe the cops to stay open (and sometimes still get raided but with advanced warning). Hell, some of the bars were run by the mafia.
This was exactly the kind of thing that kicked off the LGBT rights movement when their arrest of Stonewall patrons triggered a riot. There were laws on the books then, too, including full on criminalization of homosexuality.
That’s exactly where a significant chunk of this country wants to go. And this is the kind of thing that starts it.
Hopefully, this will force them to change those laws, but that’s just removing the opportunity for these kinds of raids. They should no more be having these raids than Texas should have enforced its antiquated and never-enforced sodomy law, which resulted in the Lawrence ruling (which they also want to overturn).
Cops have plenty of discretion in choosing which laws to enforce, and how. They have to - they have limited resources and we have a ridiculous number of laws. I’ve had a cop say that if he wants to pull someone over, he just has to follow them for a while. They’ll drift their lane, fail to signal, speed just a bit - there’s always something. Her doesn’t have to, he just does it if he feels like fucking with someone. They chose to do this. He’ll, I think Seattle was one of the cities where the cops basically went on strike and refused to enforce the law almost at all during some dispute with the mayor.
Harassment at LGBT bars has been historically one of the main ways the LGBT community was systemically oppressed and made to stay in the closet. It happened all the time in the 50s and 60s, and bar owners used to have to bribe the cops to stay open (and sometimes still get raided but with advanced warning). Hell, some of the bars were run by the mafia.
This was exactly the kind of thing that kicked off the LGBT rights movement when their arrest of Stonewall patrons triggered a riot. There were laws on the books then, too, including full on criminalization of homosexuality.
That’s exactly where a significant chunk of this country wants to go. And this is the kind of thing that starts it.
Hopefully, this will force them to change those laws, but that’s just removing the opportunity for these kinds of raids. They should no more be having these raids than Texas should have enforced its antiquated and never-enforced sodomy law, which resulted in the Lawrence ruling (which they also want to overturn).