Gay bar san antonio military

The purpose of this grant is to assist advanced students engaged in LGBT-related research, and awardees are expected to produce an article for this magazine as part of their project. And yet, San Antonio was at the center of an important legal battle between the U. Indeed this court case provides a lens through which we can examine how gay people in this era survived in the face of persecution by outside forces.

Conversely, placement on this list also meant harassment and increased risk for service members who frequented these bars. The Stonewall Riots had provided one model of resistance, but the response this time was different. Veltman and Elder, with bar help of their lawyers, challenged this injustice in military court. This court case is legendary in San Antonio queer history and resulted in several published articles and oral histories, a documentary, and even a play.

I hope to elucidate some of the complexity of queer urban politics in South Texas and, in doing so, to broaden our understanding of a larger swath of that life: that of Southern, Black and brown, and noncoastal urban queer experiences in the era between Stonewall and the AIDS epidemic of the s. Complicating the Narrative The court case was a small part of a long history of harassment by MPs military establishments were placed on the U.

After the SA Country was placed on this list and police harassment began, Veltman and Elder challenged this injustice in a military tribunal. Finally, the SA Country went to multiple military tribunals, and while the harassment of the club abated over time, it never went away completely.

The military tribunal transcrips reveal that Veltman, Elder, and their lawyers san that the placement of the SA Country on the off-limits list, and the harassment and mistreatment by the MPs, represented an infringement of their economic rights without reference to the sexual orientation of their clientele.

In addition, Veltman and Elder tried to demonstrate that they had ties to reputable business and publishing organizations. It has been offered membership in the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, and the Texas Restaurant Association, which membership it has under consideration. All I ask is that the military in turn indemnify me for any liability I may incur in doing so.

I do not think any businessman could be asked more. It should be noted that neither Veltman nor Elder is alive to speak for himself. Veltman died inElder in However, I had the opportunity to speak to Elder in Even gay, a few years before his death, he was an outspoken advocate for social justice who had fought for equal rights for decades and created the Happy GLBT Archive dedicated to the preservation of queer history.

Their statements in the mids must be understood in the context antonio the complexity of survival in an era of homophobic persecution.

Letters to the Editor

It was a constant … they would put us on the banned list and then he would go over there and fight to get the military people to be able to come into his bar, and then they would put us on the banned list again and he would go back and fight it. It was a constant battle. The documentary discusses the court case as a byproduct of this harassment.

However, this chronology does not accurately reflect the timeline of events, as the court cases date to the summer of In an oral history conducted inElder discussed the raid of December and read from the military tribunal that took place six months earlier. After a hearing by military officials, however, the issue was dropped.

Clearly harassment by the military and the San Antonio Police Department did not end in In fact, the story of the SA Country ends with another homophobic legal challenge.