G ay bar busts
ram pant in Houston
Less than a week following a surprise tour
of Houston’s gay bars by Mayor Kathy Whit­
mire and three city council members, about
50 patrons of bars and bookstores were ar­
rested in what local observers called "a strug­
gle between the mayor and the police
department"
Mayor W hitmire’s tour of nine clubs was
prompted by the support she received from
Houston’s gay community during last fall’s
mayoral election.
At one club, the Exile, about twenty people
were arrested. According to an eyewitness,
"The bartenders were the first to be arrested,
but the rest were picked at random. There
was this cop that kept walking around, and
he’d go you,’ and they’d carry the customer
o u t”
None of the persons taken were discem-
ably drunk, according to persons who witnes­
sed the incident in the Exile. “Obviously
everyone was having a good time, but no one
was falling off the barstools.”
The eyewitness said there was no basis for
the police to be harassing the bar patrons,
“ because they weren’t doing anything. They
were just drinking their drinks. You know if
there’s something obscene going on, or vile
or crazy. But there was not Things were really
quiet”
Those arrested in the bars were taken in for
public drunkenness, public lewdness, and in
the case of the bartenders, “for serving al­
cohol to intoxicated persons.”
An ironic twist to the gay busts in Houston
is that on the day following the first raids on
January 12, Houston Police Chief Lee Brown
was in Portland appearing as the keynote
speaker of the Metropolitan Human Rights
Commission annual luncheon. During his
speech Brown spoke of the need to take
action and, “Speak the truth for what we
know to be right and to take sides in the
confrontation between those forces that seek
to change society and those that seek to
maintain the status quo.”
Chief Brown expressed surprise as he
listened to complaints about his vice squad's
activities during two meetings between
Houston’s gay community leaders and the
Houston Police Department Throughout the
meetings, Brown’s vice squad said the«r ar­
rests were made under a “ business as usual”
condition.
Houston gay community spokesman,
Larry Bagneris commented, “We don’t have
the money to waste in this community on
games these policemen play,’ adding that the
costs to the community of such vice squad
activities ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.
Nestle complies,
boycott
suspended
A coalition of church, education and health
groups suspended the 6 Vi-year boycott of
Nestle products. The boycott was called off
because Nestle S A has complied with
UNICEF and World Health Organization reg­
ulations on marketing infant formula.
Boycott spokesman Douglas Johnson
said Nestle will teach Third World mothers
the pros and cons of bottle feeding and will
cease giving free infant formula in areas
where formula is likely to be mixed with con­
taminated water.
The coalition had blamed Nestle for the
deaths of children in underdeveloped
countries because their mothers had aban­
doned breast feeding for infant formula with­
out proper intructions. The coalition said that
the infant formula was in most cases mixed
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A precedent setting decision by the Cali­
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death of his lover, Thomas J. Finnerty, Jr.
Finnerty lived with Donovan for 27 years
until his death in 1976. In awarding the
benefits, the appeals board overturned a
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In his arguments before the board, Dono­
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Marvin. “The California Supreme Court in
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The Appeals Board agreed, ruling that
homosexual relationships had to be given the
same credence that unmarried straight
people get and that the primary issue was
whether Donovan was Finnerty’s dependent
The ruling will not affect cases where an
inheritance is involved and there is no will,
nor will it allow a partner in an unmarried
couple to bring a wrongful-death civil action.
The ruling relates only to worker’s compen­
sation cases which operate on dependency
rules rather than on the basis of legal inheri­
tance rights.
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