 |
The Ariston Bathhouse raid in 1903 was the first anti-gay police raid on an establishment located in New York City. It resulted in thirty-four arrests, sixteen charges of sodomy, and twelve trials, five of which possess transcripts.
| |
The Ariston Bathhouse raid in 1903 was the first anti-gay police raid on an establishment located in New York City. It resulted in thirty-four arrests, sixteen charges of sodomy, and twelve trials, five of which possess transcripts.
On February 21, 1903, at nine o’clock at night, two undercover officers entered the building of the Ariston Bathhouse. Their names were Thomas Phelan and Norman Fitzsimmons. Since the building had been under surveillance via insistence by the police, it is known that at least one police officer, Norman Fitzsimmons, had entered the establishment at least twice prior to the police raid. Twenty minutes after arrival, according to his court testimony, Phelan was approached sexually by a man named Walter Bennett. After Bennett turned down Fitzsimmons's request to join, on the basis of Bennett preferring “fat boy[s]”, they arranged to meet later at 2:30 a.m. Shortly afterward, two other undercover officers joined Phelan and Fitzsimmons. They spent some time observing the bathhouse to gather evidence to incriminate individual patrons, and witnessed multiple instances of anal and oral sex, which they later recounted at the trials. [1]
At 1:45 a.m., a group of police officers entered the establishment and blocked the exits so that none of the seventy-eight men inside could escape. They went through the men and found the individuals who they possessed complaints against, and arrested thirty-four men. The rest were let go with a warning. The proprietor of the bathhouse, John Begley, was accused of keeping a disorderly house and was held in $2,000 bail. Of the men arrested, some were charged with liquor law violations and disorderly conduct, and at least sixteen were charged with sodomy. Twelve of those sixteen were sent to trial, and five trials have transcripts that survived and are viewable today. [2] [3] [4] [5] Of these five trials, three returned verdicts of guilty, one verdict of guilty with a recommendation to mercy, and a mistrial. However, two of the guilty verdicts were later appealed. [6]
It is known that police had spent several weeks collecting evidence against men who entered the bathhouse, which they did in conjunction with the Society for the Prevention of Crime. They used this evidence to create two diagrams of the bathhouse, which were used in the trials that followed. [7]
In the trial of People v. Kregel, the defense relied on the physical impossibility of sodomy. The defendant, Andrew Kregel, was a tailor who was married with five children. At his trial, Andrew Kregel was said to have entered the bathhouse around 1:00 a.m. where he was approached by a man named Charles Chamberlin. The prosecution continued to describe that Chamberlin had performed anal sex with Kregel, while another man, John Rogers, performed oral sex on Kregel. All three were arrested by police about an hour later. However, Kregel denied the testimony about the alleged sex acts, and maintained that he had never been to a Turkish bathhouse before and that he received the ticket to the bathhouse from a customer at his shop in exchange for fixing a coat.
At that point, Dr. Pierre A. Siegelstein was called by the defense attorney to the witness stand. He told prosecutors that he had testified in two prior sodomy trials, and that anal sex performed by two men standing up was physically impossible due to physiological reasons. A medical expert specializing in sex crime cases, William Travers Gibb, refuted this claim, and said that upright anal sex was feasible. [4] Eventually, it was declared a mistrial and Kregel's bail was reduced from $2,000 to $750. [1]
In People v. Galbert, the defense attorney cited the “physical impossibility” and “mathematical impossibility” of the crime. An employee from the bathhouse was called as a witness, and said that the couches present in the room where Galbert was found were a little more than a foot high, and Charles LeBarbier, Galbert's attorney, suggested that the couches were too low to permit the accused crime to take place. Galbert was an architect for Carrere and Hastings, a prominent firm that lead the Beaux Arts movement. Because of this, John Carrere, an accomplished architect, was called to attest to Galbert's mental health along with four other character witnesses. When Galbert was found guilty, LaBarbier used his resistance against the police during his arrest as a testament to his manliness and masculinity. [8]
In People v. Schnittel, Arthur C. Butts, Micheal Schnittel's defense attorney, attempted to defend his client by providing evidence of Schnittel's heterosexuality. He was accused of performing oral sex on another man by police, as well as walking about the bathhouse wearing a sheet the same way that a woman might. He was also accused of having a venereal disease due to his face having broken out in large, blotchy patches of red. His defense claimed that Schnittel had entered the bathhouse in an effort to clear up the skin condition. Schnittel himself claimed that he had never been in the room where the alleged sex acts took place, and his defense attempted to cement his masculinity by pointing out his engagement ring. In the end, the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged. [5]
In People v. Bennett, Walter Bennett's defense attorney also cited his client's heterosexuality and desire for women as proof that he was innocent. The police accused him of wearing a sheet as a woman might, as well as engaging in oral and anal sex with another man. To testify against this, two women and a minister who knew Bennett were called. One of the women, Catherine Bolton, said that she had known Bennett since he was fourteen years old and implied that she had been romantically involved with him at some point. The prosecuting attorney claimed that the feminine perspectives of the women and the minister were not a good indication of Bennett's character, and went on to imply that Bennett was not unlike the women himself. [3]
In People v. Casson, Theodore Casson denied the charge of sodomy placed against him, but did admit to being in the Turkish bath, where he was arrested. The officer who arrested him claimed to have arrested him shortly after the accused act took place, which caused a direct conflict of testimony. The jury returned a verdict of guilty with a recommendation to mercy. [2]
Gwen Amber Rose Araujo was an American teenager who was murdered in Newark, California at the age of 17. She was murdered by four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering that she was transgender. Two of the defendants were convicted of second-degree murder, but not the requested hate-crime enhancements to the charges. The other two defendants pleaded guilty or no-contest to voluntary manslaughter. In at least one of the trials, a "trans panic defense"—an extension of the gay panic defense—was employed.
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. It was overturned in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), though the statute had already been struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1998.
A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath, is a public bath targeted towards gay and bisexual men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", or "the tubs". Historically, they have been used for sexual activity.
The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979 in San Francisco. Earlier that day White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible conviction for his actions. The lesser conviction outraged the city's gay community, setting off the most violent reaction by gay Americans since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
Operation Soap was a raid by the Metropolitan Toronto Police against four gay bathhouses in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which took place on February 5, 1981. Nearly three hundred men were arrested, the largest mass arrest in Canada since the 1970 October crisis, before the record was broken during the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs in Edmonton, Alberta.
The People's Court was a Sondergericht of Nazi Germany, set up outside the operations of the constitutional frame of law. Its headquarters were originally located in the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin, later moved to the former Königliches Wilhelms-Gymnasium at Bellevuestrasse 15 in Potsdamer Platz.
Gay cruising describes the act of searching about a public place in pursuit of a partner for sex. This activity has existed in England and Wales since at least the 17th century and has a colourful legal history. It differs from prostitution in that the parties involved do not seek money for sex, and from gay nightclubs or bathhouses in that they are not on private premises, although they may take place on private land to which the public have been granted access.
The Little Rascals Day Care Center was a day care in Edenton, North Carolina, where, from 1989 to 1995, there were arrests, charges and trials of seven people associated with the day care center, including the owner-operators, Bob and Betsy Kelly. In retrospect, the case reflected day care sex abuse hysteria, including allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The testimony of the children was coached.
The Enumclaw horse sex case was a series of incidents in 2005 involving Kenneth D. Pinyan, an engineer who worked for Boeing and resided in Gig Harbor, Washington; James Michael Tait, a truck driver; Douglas Spink; and other unidentified men. Pinyan and Tait filmed and distributed zoophilic pornography of Pinyan receiving anal sex from a stallion under the alias "Mr. Hands". After engaging in this activity on multiple occasions over an unknown span of time, Pinyan received fatal internal injuries in one such incident.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people living in Lebanon may face discrimination and legal difficulties not experienced by non-LGBT residents, although they have more freedom than in other parts of the Arab world, as Beirut is often called the Gay Capital of the Arab world. Various courts have ruled that Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which prohibits having sexual relations that "contradict the laws of nature", should not be used to arrest LGBT people. Nonetheless, the law is still being used to harass and persecute LGBT people through occasional police arrests, in which detainees are sometimes subject to intrusive physical examinations.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Nigeria face severe challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. LGBT rights are generally infringed upon; both male and female expressions of homosexuality are illegal in Nigeria and punishable by up to 16 years of prison in the conventional court system. There is no legal protection for LGBT rights in Nigeria—a largely conservative country of more than 225 million people, split between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. Very few LGBT persons are open about their sexual orientation, as violence against them is frequent. According to PinkNews, Nigerian authorities generally target the LGBT community. Many LGBT Nigerians are fleeing to countries with progressive law to seek protection.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Dominica face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Sodomy, also known as "buggery", is illegal for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Dominica provides no recognition to same-sex unions, whether in the form of marriage or civil unions, and no law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Sándor Képíró was a Hungarian gendarmerie captain during World War II accused of war crimes committed by Hungarian forces.
The Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials are a source of considerable political controversy in Malaysia. The first trial was held in 1998, and resulted in former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim being convicted, and given a nine-year prison sentence. This verdict was overturned in 2004, resulting in Anwar's release from prison.
Richard Allen Minsky, also known as Richard Alan Minsky, is an American former used car salesman who was convicted of multiple charges of rape, assault, battery, extortion, grand theft, larceny, lewd and lascivious behavior, oral copulation, sexual assault, sexual battery, sodomy, and escape. He was charged over 80 times and convicted in more than a dozen trials over a series of scams committed in the states of California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
The Portland vice scandal refers to the discovery in November 1912 of a gay male subculture in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon. Nearly 70 men were charged, and three were convicted by jury; the Oregon Supreme Court then reversed the convictions on legal technicalities.
People's Law Office (PLO) is a law office in Chicago, Illinois, which focuses on public interest law, representing clients believed to have been the subject of attacks by governmental officials and agencies. It was founded in 1969. Clients have included political activists, people who have been wrongfully arrested and imprisoned, or subjected to excessive force; and criminal defendants.
Daniel Ken Holtzclaw is a former police officer in the United States. He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, and other sex offenses while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department.
State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin was an American criminal case in the District Court of Minnesota in 2021. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was tried and convicted for the murder of George Floyd, which occurred during an arrest on May 25, 2020, and led to global protests over racial injustice and police brutality. A 12-member jury found Chauvin guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. It was the first conviction of a white police officer in Minnesota for the murder of a black person.
The Village Station police raid was a police raid that targeted the Village Station, a gay bar in Dallas, Texas, United States. The raid occurred on October 25, 1979, and saw several bar patrons arrested for public lewdness while performing a bunny hop dance. The raid and the subsequent court cases involving those arrested are considered an important moment in the LGBT history of Dallas, with the impact it had on the city compared to that of the Stonewall riots of 1969.
{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help){{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help){{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help){{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)