Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” When asked about identifying the victims, the chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department responded, “We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on.
No one has ever been prosecuted for the crime. (The Archdiocese apologized for its silence in 2013.) Many news outlets ignored the story some of those that did cover it mocked the victims for being gay. The vast majority of politicians declined to comment on the arson, and the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans did not offer support to the victims. An arsonist set fire to the bar, killing 32 people in less than 20 minutes. Until the Pulse massacre, the most notorious act of violence against a gay bar was the burning of the UpStairs Lounge, a New Orleans gay bar, in 1973. In fact, for as long as LGBTQ people have been congregating in their own social spaces, these spaces have been the target of vicious homophobic and transphobic violence. The mass shooting at Orlando’s LGBT nightclub Pulse, which left at least 50 dead, is only the latest chapter in a long history of violence at LGBTQ bars and clubs in America.
