Wow, 60 years on and they’re still raiding gay bars. Can’t express how profoundly depressing that is.
Stonewall season?
Keep your bricks handy. When Trump wins reelection in November, we’re all going to need them.
Doomerism breeds apathy. Get your bricks ready just in case, but don’t forget to vote
Voting’s not going to matter now.
We elected a Democratic Congress and president and abortion was still criminalized. Their only response to it was to raise money. (A cool $80,000,000 to be precise.)
The only difference between these two groups of legislators is that one will stab you in the front while the other stabs you in the back. They’re both getting richer no matter who wins.
Sorry, but who exactly is in control of the House and stonewalls any sort of progress before it could ever reach the Senate or Biden? Here’s a hint: it’s not the Democrats. Get your voter apathy nonsense outta here, people who think like you do are why the Republicans are able to win and do so much damage.
No, the Republicans win because we give Democrats power and still get conservative outcomes regardless.
In half of the states it’s still legal to pay someone seven bucks an hour. A single unexpected $400 expense will drive 30-40 million Americans to take on more debt. An unexpected injury or illness will still put most Americans into bankruptcy.
And what do Democrats do? Pretend that war is the most important issue, and move heaven and earth to ship more of our tax money overseas for it.
That is why so many people don’t think voting matters, and they’re not wrong.
Abortion is a product of the supreme Court being stuffed by Conservatives under Trump. So yes, a precise product of letting Conservatives win the elections in 2016. It doesn’t get more direct than this
Voting’s not going to matter now.
get fucked with that rhetoric. it’s defeatist and garbage. in the process of tearing down the old system, you can still use a broken system to reduce harm. abandoning the fucking enterprise and alienating your allies is blisteringly stupid.
So… who are you voting for?
If anything voting matters even more! Especially for those of us that are in red states. Thomas already said that he would reverse Lawrence v TX (2003) and Hodges v Obergefell (2015). The anti-sodomy laws are still on the books in TX and the TX AG has said that he would use that law should Lawrence be overturned.
It’s comments like this that keep people from the polls, when we should be running towards them! We could turn TX blue, if people just bothered to show up. We were the first state to have in-person early voting (1980) and we still have terrible turnout partly due to this mentality.
We need more people voting to help shift the country to the left. There are lives at stake if we let the Republicans win.
They should checkout sniffies.com it’s literally a map of guys wanting to fuck other guys. Maybe they can raid people’s houses? That’ll teach them to not want penises in their orifices right? They are probably drinking while doing it.
I feel like we need to start a m4m for Seattle on Lemmy or mastodon. I actually started r/Seattlegay in reddit but then they banned me. Assholes. Hey if there’s such a thing already I would love to partake.
OKAY, time for some clarification as a Seattle local:
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This was NOT an isolated incident. The Cuff Complex, which was one of the bars that got raided, had been raided so many times in the past the owner had to put up a sign warning customers not to wear jockstraps because of the heavy enforcement (which ironically caused him to lose even more business because everyone was pissed at the owner for “policing bodies”)
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Gay bars were being targeted disproportionately to straight bars. A gay cabaret club owner crunched the numbers and found his establishment was raided 1,588% more than the average liquor licensee. The owner of the Cuff also owns another gay bar and a regular straight bar. His two gay bars are frequently raided, while the straight bar has NEVER been raided.
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The board that enforces liquor laws is the LCB. Two funny facts: First, the rule against lewd conduct was created by… The LCB, not the state legislature. Second, the LCB stands for the Liquor and Cannabis board, which means that they are already ignoring a law when it suits their purpose (the federal prohibition against cannabis).
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Finally, after the gay community collectively tore the LCB a new asshole during a board meeting earlier this week, the LCB reversed course and basically said “ah shit we fucked up” and is suspending enforcement of its lewd conduct rules. I strongly recommend this Mastodon thread from someone who attended the meeting, it’s truly a thing of glory and demonstrates just how close the LCB was to getting slapped with a discrimination lawsuit: https://partyon.xyz/@nullagent/111851872885551640
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I believe that the Seattle polices sent more retired officers and off duty officers to terrorize people on Jan 6 in DC than any other department in the country.
And let’s remember the Washington State Police did nothing to stop protestors from storming the WA governor’s mansion.
Seattle is a lovely place. The SPD work at ruining that regularly.
I feel like there are a couple misrepresentations in your comment: SPD did not send people to DC. They went on their own time. There were 6 of them. Two were terminated after an investigation. For the others, there was not sufficient evidence of any illegal activity to take action. Just being there wasn’t illegal. Don’t think people didn’t take notice, though.
As for the protestors at the governor’s mansion… That has nothing to do with SPD. The state patrol had officers on standby for any violence at the capitol but they weren’t actively on site when people jumped the fence. Still, they responded and had the entire situation under control in 30 minutes. Nobody was hurt. The only damage was a broken gate. I don’t know if anyone was ever charged with anything. I think WSP have revised operating policies as a result. In their defense, nothing like that had ever happened at the governor’s mansion. Ever.
All that said, SPD has some serious issues. They were under federal DOJ oversight for over 10 years as part of a settlement over a pattern of excessive force. It was just lifted in September. I’m not sure it should have been. The fact that 6 officers went to DC for the protests shows that there’s a deep cultural divide between the police and the people of Seattle that they’re supposed to be serving.
Tear gassing the ciry council members was a signature moment.
SPOG is the problem. Any half decent union that cared about it’s ability to police would have fired those fuckwits in a heartbeat.
SPOG defended the trump flags and fucking headstone one unit had. they’re defenders of corruption and enablers - we STILL don’t have accountability on police overtime after 12 fucking years. Officers are still pulling $200k+ from unaccountable paper reported shit.
SPOG’s the fucking problem.
Is this enough motivation to get people out to vote this election? Wtf Seattle!
Or you go out and vote and then the mayor appoints someone who lost her election to the council 🤡
So you don’t vote but the Christofascists do vote, that’s your solution? Political apathy is going to somehow save the day? If you don’t like the pool of candidates maybe you should study law and politics for 2 years then run for the position yourself?
Where did I say that??
Seems like they were just the ones breaking the rules.
Postman further detailed the extent of the inspections, noting that on Friday night, the JET visited 10 locations, including two known as historic gay clubs. On Saturday, LCB officers inspected eight clubs, two of which were gay clubs. He said these inspections were part of their routine work to ensure compliance with state liquor laws.
Annecdotal the gay clubs and festivals I’ve been too are way more sexually charged so tbh this isn’t really shocking to me.
Selective enforcement is a very common mechanism for harassment.
2 in 8. Not sure what’s selective about that 🤷♂️
You’re going to tell me that college dive bars never flash some tits?
Stop, can we fucking discuss why the fuck we should not be allowed to be lewd in the first place because that’s old pedo church boomer talk
I couldn’t care less. But it’s a law and not targeted, which is what this is saying.
The law isn’t targeted (on paper, at least), but the enforcement definitely is.
No it wasn’t. At all. 2 out of 8.
Once or twice, nothing even close to hanging out at a drag show.
I’m not judging, I’m just saying that gay clubs are usually more sexually explicit in my experience 🤷♂️
i feel like this has happened more than a few times in seattle in recent years.
Yall good?
No, in fact 😔
damn, best wishes, get better soon :)
The police are on occupying force everywhere in the US, they make it painfully obvious in Seattle. For example in 2020 a police vehicle cruised slowly through my neighborhood blasting the COPS theme “Bad Boys”. Not as bad as murder or brutality obviously but I think it helps illustrate their average behavior.
Lewd conduct? Nah, that’s just locker room talk.
Lewd conduct?
New York’s hottest new club has everything.
Everything? Yes, every thing.
It’s got the entire universe in there, inside a black 2 legged tripple amputee miget named Fran.
The lube bills alone are 30% of the operating costs.
…
It’s consensual, that’s why Christian’s hate it.
YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL GUILT GOSH DARN IT!
Seattle? 🤔😕🤔😕🤔😕🤔
Sometimes the brightest lights create the darkest shadow
The authorities in Seattle are brutal to any non-white/non-wealthy people, it doesn’t surprise me at all they would also be brutal on non-cishet peoples as well… I think the old money still hates that it turned into a melting pot and the do everything they can to prevent social mixing of classes and races
The reaction by the liquor board is just bizarre too:
“The lewd conduct violations in question were related to clothing that exposed the buttocks and nipples of patrons, which is prohibited under state law in liquor establishments”
Well, you better be ready to show your citations for all the titty bars or you can shut right the fuck up about your “violations”.
https://m.yelp.com/search?cflt=stripclubs&find_loc=Seattle%2C+WA
So for lewdness, they should raid these kinds of places too right?
Those used to be all over the place. The girls were pretty scantily clad but never naked. A lot of them did get shut down for prostitution though.
The shut down ones were usually Ladybug. They had different owner and different kind of staff. At cowgirl they had college coed and you paid a dollar or two more for your coffee and tipped well because they were super nice. The other place had skanky strippers on drugs, $20 coffee and you sometimes wondered if the coffee came with an STD.
Haven’t been to Seattle in years, I hear many didn’t survive.
To be honest, I prefer my coffee to be prepared by fully clothed people and I never really went to one. And coffee makes me feel really freaking weird so I just make my own if I really want some. I just remember the news stories and the sarcasm about it in my friend group.
I think I’ve seen a few of them lately they’re nowhere near as common as they used to be though.
What are those places? Stripclubs?
Drive up coffee shops with barely clad baristas.
Unfortunately the guy who owns Ladybug (same concept) has purchased most of the bikini coffee shops. It’s now WAY over priced and the quality of service is WAY lower. You’re more likely to get skanky stripper flashing than college coed flirt. Also apparently that guy is an asshole on many levels according to the girls. Many of them are closed now.
Source: I managed a club and have known many of the bikini baristas around Seattle.
And this is Seattle. If you want to ogle a bikini girl your choices are these shops or Alki during our annual one-week heat wave when you don’t need to wear multiple layers.
Wait what? Isn’t Seattle a naked city?
Apparently not with alcohol…
https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/04/washington-strip-clubs-wont-be-selling-alcohol-anytime-soon
Oddly enough, in Washington state strip clubs do not serve booze. You can have nudity or alcohol, but not both.
Same for Vegas, though I don’t think it applies to the top. And I think there is one or two places that are exempt, who knows what laws they grandfathered.
Occupied Duwamish Territory?
Postman further detailed the extent of the inspections, noting that on Friday night, the JET visited 10 locations, including two known as historic gay clubs. On Saturday, LCB officers inspected eight clubs, two of which were gay clubs.
Also
The lewd conduct violations in question were related to clothing that exposed the buttocks and nipples of patrons, which is prohibited under state law in liquor establishments, he said, noting that, in his opinion, the law needed to change to be a reflection of today’s times.
Sounds like pretty standard, as opposed to directed, harrassment. Well, if they had information about how many tickets were given out at each club they “visited”. And I happen to agree with the guy (shudder), the law needs to be changed.
Nah, the seattle PDs MO would be to target the gay clubs but then also “inspect” several straight clubs to cover it up.
Its a police department that’s been under a federal consent degree for over a decade due to racist policing and excessive force. Its the police department whose second in command of the union was recently recorded joking about how little a young indians woman’s life was worth after a cop just recklessly killed her with his car going 74 in a 25. Its a department that illegally hung a “trump 2020” flag in the same break room they were displaying trophies from black lives matter protests. A department that directly maced a small child during said protests, along with hundreds of other brutal and unjustified actions. The same department whose last chief mysteriously lost a great sum of official conversations with the the mayor and the head of the police union during the protests. The previous mayor and head of the police union also strangely “lost” those legally public conversations.
They get no reasonable doubt because they have failed to live up to that standard too many times.
Don’t forget the cop who tweeted “black lives splatter LOL” after a woman was killed at one of the BLM protests.
Or the lieutenant who asked everyone to refer to him as Obergruppenführer and had Nazi memorabilia in his office. And yes, that was the local sheriff’s department not Seattle PD, but still…
This is some straight bullshit, I was literally there in Seattle that week looking to move into a different company, we even went to a drag show to see what the vibe was like.
This shit is wack af.
Word. Vancouverite here. Nudity law in Canada is fairly lax. As long as the windows of the bars are tinted and the owners like it, full nudity is a go. We got folk doing fully nude pole dances in the shower over at the Pumpjack.
If folk gunna be a delicate homophobic snowflake… just stay out of the steam.
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).
When I was a kid, I asked my parents for the book of laws. They looked at me like I was crazy
We learn our laws through gossip.
We are responsible for following them despite there being no practical way to learn them. Not even law school.
We enforce our laws at the discretion of the police department/city/state/federal government.
The police don’t know the law, and they’re allowed to arrest you because they think what you’re doing is illegal.
The government doesn’t know the law - there was a federal effort to count the number of federal crimes. We know there’s over 100k, because they gave up after 120k.
Laws do not have to be enforced. They’re usually left on the books - the only time laws are revoked are when there’s disagreement over if it should be enforced, or someone wants to make a show of it.
It’s an insane system.
But there’s someone in Seattle that ordered this, and they had no responsibility or duty to do so. And there’s someone (probably the mayor) who could order this to stop with a phone call
We’ll see how this turns out. I’m pretty sure the immediate national attention has a basis, but I’ve been wrong before.
One thing I can say is I’ve learned a lot about the laws in this state. A male bartender got ticketed for having a nipple exposed, despite nudity being largely legal in public, just not where alcohol is served. For instance, people can legally play tennis outside in their underwear, but if they enter a bar afterwards it becomes illegal. I can see the pros and cons to that.
What I find deeply concerning are reports of police taking photographs of everyone in the gay bars. Including patrons who were not doing anything illegal, who might not have come out to family or friends yet. That worries me.
Yeah, I caught that near the end. Fucking cops. That should be an immediately fireable offense, and you can’t be a cop anywhere ever again. They might get a “stern” talking to here.
You’re joking, right? Murder gets you a paid vacation
IMO… anyone dies resulting from interactions with the cops, that should trigger an automatic, mandatory, criminal trial. Make them justify themselves in court.
And because they’re being indicted for a felony… and its federally illegal for such people to have a gun… They get to be put on desk duty answering phones or fetching donuts. maybe cleaning out the jail cells.
What I find deeply concerning are reports of police taking photographs of everyone in the gay bars. Including patrons who were not doing anything illegal, who might not have come out to family or friends yet. That worries me.
taking photographs of innocent people is extremely unnerving. Very likely they’re being uploaded into an AI facial recognition database. They’re going to be used to profile those individuals.
It’s SPD and WLCB, both like a good shakedown.
I ran a club for years and dealt with their bullshit often. Luckily I knew my local SPD so our checks were super easy. LCB didn’t like us though so when they decided to come by they would have a list of tickets to write up and if you didn’t know your RCWs front to back you’d have no choice but to accept the fines. (Much like police don’t know the laws they enforce, LCB agents don’t either.)
It was more than just gay clubs visited all under enforcing liquor laws which begs the question, is this a top priority for Seattle society as surely those same police personnel could have been working on real issues as surely naked nips and exposed ass pants are doing little society harm. Meanwhile, a few more drunk drivers never got stopped. That is the real crime here. Seattle police are distracted with low priority issues. Is this ok with the people living there?
Nah but the libs keep electing conservative Dems.
The head of the city council is also against the recent referendum to shift local elections to even years, which would likely increase turn out. Higher turn out usually means more progressive votes
I mean Sarah Nelson thought we could reduce traffic by using kayaks in Elliott Bay for freight, so she’s just a font of good ideas.
Let’s not forget the major gerrymandering that was done to the 3rd district to push out socialist Kshama Sawant.
SPD has “limited value” to the small biased sample of locals I know. They’re very unpopular in some communities, especially queer/minority communities around where these inspections took place. But as always, many others aren’t directly impacted and so they tend to be quietly neutral or supportive of the police.
SPD is more or less a rogue agency. Their actions are unaffected by what Seattleites want.
I expect to see this shit to go down somewhere like Alabama or my home state of Tennessee or even Utah but Seattle? I thought Seattle was one of these “progressive” cities. What the fuck is going on?
Cops are cops everywhere. Progressive police do not exist.
City cops don’t live near the people they police.
Lower housing costs by banning zoning. People serving a community should live in the community.
Shit! Seattle was one of those places that I was thinking about moving to escape the south.
it’s still one of the best places I’ve ever lived in, including the uk, singapore, and all over the west and east coasts of the US. SPOG sucks big nuts but no place is perfect. Moved here from DFW, was DEFINITELY a major upgrade in QOL.
Money.
How’s about investigating straight bars where dudes drug girls by sneaking GHB on their drinks or spend the night sexuality harassing and touching girls without their consent?
No, they gotta go after the assless chaps.
Can we do both? Lewd behavior doesn’t belong in public.
A bar is a private establishment.
If they do it in the bushes in a public park, that’s a different story.
Some bars are private establishments. Those bars require memberships. The rest are public non-governmental establishments. These are open to the general public. Lewd behavior does not belong in any public establishment. If you want that type of environment, make it a membership only establishment.
Gay bars ain’t exactly public. It’s why cops don’t charge you with drunk in public till.you leave.
Assless chaps? Have you seen some dudes’ asses? Or am I missing a reference?
Only without the bluejeans.
Haha, different meaning of the word. Referring to “chaps” the clothing item from the Western part of the U.S., not to folks who don’t have an ass. Chaps were made of leather and worn over jeans to protect to protect the inside seam area of them from excess wear from rubbing against the side of the saddle and the stirrup straps when spending a long time riding a horse. Or are sometimes worn without the jeans by men being lewd.
Thanks for explaining! Today I learned something new.
You want a reference to dude’s asses?
Show me chaps that aren’t assless.
Ironically, an assless chap could not shit.
Oh is this why they are assless? I could never figure it out
That whooosh was not a fart.
Any one got a pic of DeSantis or Gregg Abbott in chaps?
I’m scared to Google that one.
They’ve paid good money to keep those photos hidden.
Exactly. Assful chaps are just pants.
You just wanna see assess don’t you?
I mean they did a while ago nightclub called Foundation. But it’s been a couple years…
Doesn’t excuse this though. Like at all.
You think that doesn’t happen in gay bars?
In gay bars, people aren’t wasting good GHB on OTHER people, we’re taking it ourselves.
Doesn’t GHB basically turn off the record button on your brain? What fun is a trip you can’t remember?
Oh absolutely not! A small dose is like being a little tipsy but without the wobbles. It’s tingly and feels nice. It tastes like a tyre store smells.
A medium dose makes sex touching feel REAAAALLY GOOD. There’s no memory loss involved. It just feels fucking awesome.
An overdose will put you in a sleep for 1-2 hours, and you cannot be roused. It’s quite scary. You’ll probably pee. The threshold for taking a heavy dose and feeling awesome vs falling asleep for a long while is pretty small.
Weighing out 1.75g and recoding with .5g 20 minutes later is the best way to go.
NEVER combine with alcohol.
It tastes like a tyre store smells.
fascinating description. pass, but thanks for sharing
Oh shit I was describing GBL. GHB has a very slight salt taste. It’s not great but it’s not bad. GBL turns to GHB while you metabolize it. GBL tastes terrible.
They’re both fun but in a responsible manner and NO ALCOHOL.
Makes sense, thanks for sharing.
Totally! It’s a fun substance that unfortunately shitty people do bad things with.
Nope, not in quantities people take for recreational purposes
so, per a thing on NPR radio… it was 4 gay bars and 6 other establishments (presumably that serve alcohol.)
Not gonna say it wasn’t harassment - cuz it was. There is and was a better way to handle it, even if the law needs to be enforced at all. I would suggest the purpose behind the law makes sense. I know Minneapolis handles the issue by not giving places that allow nudity liquor licenses, and from experience, drunken horndogs are some of the worst humans you’ve met.
I don’t see any justification at all for government-enforced dress codes in private adult-only spaces. I think the government should fuck off and stop exerting cultural control over people.
If chaps had an ass they would be pants.
It is so goddamn depressing how far we’ve backslid on LGBTQ+ issues since 2016.
