Stonewall Inn Hate Crime Attack: Gay Man Assaulted In New York

by NowPublic Staff | October 4, 2010 at 01:55 pm

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Two Staten Island Men Arrested After Attacking Gay Man At Stonewall Inn: Legendary Christopher Street Bar, NYC

Two Staten Island men, Matthew Francis, 21 and Christopher Orlando, 17 have been arrested on charges of yelling anti-gay slurs and beating a man during a robbery at the Stonewall Inn on Sunday.

In the Stonewall incident, Francis and Orlando are accused of confronting a 34-year old man in the restroom of the Christopher St. bar.
At Francis' arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, a prosecutor said the suspect started the confrontation while standing next to the victim at the urinals and asking, "What kind of bar is this?"

The victim responded, "This is a gay bar."

"Get away from me f----t! I don't like gay people. Don't pee next to me," Francis yelled.

As Orlando blocked the door, Francis asked the victim for a dollar and then for $20, said Assistant District Attorney Kiran Singh.

The Stonewall Inn is the legendary gay bar on Christopher Street, in Manhattan's gay friendly West Village.

In 1969, 8 New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, (even then a gay friendly bar), sparking protest and riots, and what some say helped trigger the modern gay rights movement.

This is how the description on the Stonewall Inn's website describes what happened on June 28th, 1969.

The uprising was inspirited by a potent cocktail of pent-up rage (raids of gay bars were brutal and routine), overwrought emotions (hours earlier, thousands had wept at the funeral of Judy Garland) and drugs. As a 17-year-old cross-dresser was being led into the paddy wagon and got a shove from a cop, she fought back. "[She] hit the cop and was so stoned, she didn't know what she was doing—or didn't care," one of her friends later told Martin Duberman, author of the history of Stonewall. Later, the deputy police inspector in charge would explain that day's impact: "For those of us in [the] public morals [division], things were completely changed ... Suddenly they were not submissive anymore."

But clearly some things never change. In addition to the hate crimes attack at the Stonewall Inn there was another hate crime related attack in Chelsea - the New York Post picks up the story,

...at about 11:50 pm Friday, a 20-year-old named Andrew Jackson and several other unidentified men allegedly attacked two men who who had been hugging and kissing each other good-bye at the corner of 9th Avenue and W. 25th Street in Chelsea, yelling "Go home f---ts, this is our neighborhood," according to authorities.

Jackson allegedly picked up a garbage can and struck one of the victims in the head.

Jackson was awaiting arraignment today on assault as a hate crime and other charges in Manhattan court.