Gayola: Police professionalization and the politics of San Francisco's gay bars, 1950-1968

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 462-489

  Agee, Christopher ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34347251249     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/sex.2007.0024     Document Type: Article

References (132)

1. John Mindermann interview, 29 March 2004 and 14 April 2004, This article is based on the research from "Gayola: The San Francisco Police Department, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and San Francisco's Homosexual Bars, 1950-1965," chap, 3 of my "The Streets of San Francisco: Blacks, Beats, Homosexuals, and the San Francisco Police Department, 1950-1968," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2005.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003);
5. and John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
6. The difficulty of researching police departments is compounded when they have destroyed their past records, as the SFPD has done.
7. Edward Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
8. Conversely, the city's elite did accept religious, ethnic, and class pluralism, and it therefore admonished the SFPD when officers employed subjective charges against people for their religious, ethnic, or laboring status. Between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s San Francisco's mainstream discussions of race and crime focused almost exclusively on African American residents. During this period the major dailies occasionally reported on crimes committed by Chinese Americans and Latinos, but neither pundits nor politicians used these incidents
9. to generalize more broadly on questions of race and policing. The mainstream's focus on African Americans was due, in part, to that population's rapid growth and political mobilization. Between 1940 and 1960 the black population jumped from .8 to 10 percent of the city's general population. The Chinese American population, on the other hand, rose from 2.8 to 4.9 percent of the general population during these years, and in 1960 the U.S. Census created a separate racial category for "Hispanics" and counted this group as 7 percent of the population. Mainstream discussions of race and policing began including Latinos and Chinese Americans during the mid- and late 1960s as both groups experienced surges in population and upswings in political organizing. For population figures see Brian J. Godfrey, Neighborhoods in Transition: The Making of San Francisco's Ethnic and Nonconformist Communities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 97.
10. Boyd, 11; Allan Béruhé, Coming out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 29-30, 51.
11. For a discussion of the growth of San Francisco's gay bar industry see Boyd, 113-14, 125-33;
12. Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 209, 214-16;
13. Martin Meeker, "Come out West: Communication and the Gay and Lesbian Migration to San Francisco, 1940s-1960s," Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 2000, 10; and Béruhé, 113.
14. A number of scholars have investigated the performance of gender in battles over street space. See, for instance, Boyd; Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993);
15. and George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
16. See, for example, the reporting on the serial killer Stephen Nash: "Man of Hate Speaks Chillingly of Love," San Francisco Chronicle, 16 December 1956: 22.
17. San Francisco Police, November 1959: 9. I would like to thank Sgt. Ray Shine for providing me with access to the back copies of the San Francisco Police Officers Association's (POA) journal, San Francisco Police. A complete run of San Francisco Police does not exist, and unfortunately there are significant gaps in the POA's collection.
18. Police officers generally viewed African Americans as the most physically threatening citizens, and the department therefore placed a premium on a patrol officers' ability to subdue black men physically.
19. The SFPD's sex detail investigated all forms of sex crimes. While uniformed beat officers focused on gay and lesbian people on the city's streets and in the bars, sex detail concentrated on gay activity primarily in parks, public bathrooms, and bus terminals. The sex detail included four to five officers and operated under the Bureau of Special Services, the inspector's bureau responsible for investigating so-called vice crimes. For a discussion of the sex detail, see "S.F. Drive on Sex Deviates," San Francisco Examiner, 1 July 1954: 1, 12. The inspectors in the sex detail took a different approach toward gay men than did patrol officers for two reasons. First, inspectors could often make "stronger" arrests for sexual activity in nonbar spaces such as parks, bus stations, and public restrooms. Second, inspectors had different standards of masculine policing. Because inspectors were charged with addressing crimes that had already been committed rather than enforcing "order" in a specific neighborhood, inspectors placed less emphasis on physical prowess and more importance on investigation and crime-solving abilities.
20. "Thomas Cahill Interview," from the "Shedding a Straight Jacket Oral History Collection" (hereafter "Shedding a Straight Jacket"), Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society of San Francisco (cited hereafter as GLBTHS), no. 97-026. For other fearful law enforcement accounts of policing gay men see San Francisco Police, November 1959: 9. Even inspectors from the sex detail were sometimes unnerved by close contact with gay men. In 1953, for instance, when two male homophile activists arranged a meeting with a sex detail officer, the inspector brought a female officer along in order to prevent any advances (although there is no evidence to suggest policewomen were consistently used to police gay men). "Don Lucas Interview," 325, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-032.
21. John Mindermann interview.
22. "Honesty vs. Graft in the Police Dept.," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 13 October 1959: 4, and 16 October 1959: 39;
23. John Lehane interview, 23 June 2003; and Kevin Mullen interview, 21 November 2002. John Lehane grew up in San Francisco and joined the SFPD in 1947. Lehane was active in the San Francisco Police Officers Association and served briefly as the organization's president in 1970. Born in 1935, Kevin Mullen graduated from St. Ignatius High School and entered the SFPD in 1959.
24. Also see "Longtime Police Policies Junked-Stern Ahern Hand Brings Change," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 15 October 1959: 11; and William Joseph Winters, "Redistribution of the Patrol Force of a Hypothetical City," master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1957.
25. John Mindermann interview. The most notorious postwar example of SFPD officials scapegoating a lower-ranking officer came in 1960, when the high brass made a lowly inspector responsible for the supervision of a massive protest against the U. S. government's House Un-American Activities Committee. The inspector had no experience in crowd control, and as the high brass remained far away, the officer ordered his men to attack the demonstrators. The press eventually pilloried the inspector for his actions and for his subsequent false claims that protesters had initiated the violence, and when the high brass offered him no cover, he was forced to leave San Francisco in disgrace. For discussions of the 1960 city hall protest and its aftermath see Ralph Tyler, "Why It Happened in San Francisco," Frontier June 1960: 5-11;
26. "Jury Ready to Deliberate in Riot Case," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 3 May 1961: 1, 7;
27. "S.F.'s Riot-Haunted Cop," San Francisco Examiner, 17 April 1965: 19;
28. and the film produced by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California entitled Operation Correction (San Francisco, 1961).
29. William N. Eskridge, Jr., Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999; repr. 2002), 32,61-62, 72. This legislative movement included the 1954 opening of Atascadero State Hospital. Known as "Dachau for Queers," Atascadero staff subjected men convicted of either consensual sodomy or child molestation to lobotomies, electrical and pharmacological shock therapy, and castration, all authorized by a 1941 law.
30. "Thomas Cahill Interview," 110, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-026; and John Lehane interview.
31. For a discussion of police officers disregarding lesbians see Richard Hongisto interview, 8 April 2002. Hongisto was the son of a sheet metal worker, and after earning a degree from San Francisco State College he joined the SFPD in 1960. Hongisto was elected sheriff in 1971 and appointed police chief in 1992. For an example of the SFPD police journal ridiculing cross-dressing lesbians see San Francisco Police, September 1959: 9. Boyd has identified the 1954 police raid on Tommy's Place, a North Beach lesbian nightspot, as an example of police persecution of lesbians (91-101). However, the SFPD only became interested in Tommy's Place during an ongoing investigation into the relations between an African American man and a group of white high school-aged women. Police closed Tommy's Place but did not use the incident to justify a wider crackdown on lesbian bars or women.
32. See also "Schoolgirls' Vice, Dope Revealed in S.F. Bar Raid: Man Held as Corrupter of Youths," San Francisco Chronicle, 9 September 1954: 1, 14.
33. Lesbian bars faced a greater threat from male heterosexual residents and tourists who tried to pick up, mock, and intimidate lesbian patrons. See Sherri Cavan, "Social Interaction in Public Drinking Places," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1965.
34. Bob Ross interview, 5 October 1999. There is no evidence of San Francisco police officers ever extorting money from a lesbian bar.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Northern Station covered the Polk Gulch and Fillmore neighborhood bar areas; Central Station included the bars in the Tenderloin, North Beach, the Embarcadero, and the lower Market Street areas; and Southern Station monitored the bars in the South of Market district.
38. John Mindermann interview.
39. The cost of these items in midcentury ran about $400. See Gale Wright interview, 4 June 2003. Gale Wright moved to San Francisco as a youth and after attending City College for two years joined the SFPD in 1957.
40. See also Elliot Blackstone interview, October 16, 1999. Elliot Blackstone was a San Francisco police officer, and during the late 1960s he served as the homosexual community liaison for the SFPD's Police-Community Relations Unit.
41. Kevin Mullen interview. See also "The Untold Story of the San Francisco Police Department," San Francisco Chronicle, & February 1955: 1;
42. and "Honesty vs. Graft in the Police Dept.," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 13 October 1959: 4.
43. Elliot Blackstone interview and San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco Police Department Study (San Francisco: City of San Francisco, 1957), 13.
44. "Honesty vs. Graft in the Police Dept."; and "Why Federal Agents Bypassed S.F. Police," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 13 October 1959: 4, and 14 October 1959: 4.
45. For discussions of Republicans intimidating black voters see "Challenge 'Raids' on S.F, Polls," San Francisco Examiner, 9 November 1960: B;
46. "Voter Challenges Set off Dispute," San Franciso Chronicle, 9 November 1960: 14;
47. and "Row over Polling at Hunters Point," San Franciso Chronicle, 7 November 1962: 1B.
48. Samuel Walker, Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 131.
49. "Knight to Fill New Liquor Post Soon," San Francisco Chronicle, 4 November 1954 1;
50. "Knight Criticizes 'Food-in-Bars' Law," San Francisco Chronicle, 24 March 1955: 1;
51. an Caspar W. Weinberger with Gretchen Roberts, In the Arena: A Memoir of the 20th Centurn (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2001), 102-3.
52. Boyd's Wide-Open Town discusses the ABC' policing of San Francisco's gay bars (123, 134, 144, 207). I have limited my discussions c the ABC and other state and federal policing agencies (such as the Armed Forces Disciplin ary Board) because SFPD patrol officers rarely paid these outside organizations any heed, disagree with Boyd's contention that the state liquor officials' various victories and defeat affected the intensity of policing by the SFPD.
53. "Appellant's Petition for a Hearing by the Superior Court," Stoumen v. Reilly, Superior Court of the State of California, 14-15,
54. and "Opening Brief for Appellant," Stoumen v. Reilly, California District Court of Appeal, 66, GLBTHS. Previous histories have erred in assuming that state liquor officials targeted the Black Cat Cafe because of its gay and lesbian clientele: D'F.milio (187) asserts that Stoumen did not make the payoffs demanded of bars with homosexual patronage, and Boyd (116, 121-23) states that the prosecution occurred as part of a wider crackdown. By failing to understand the initial Black Cat case as a labor issue, historians have overemphasized the street-level changes brought about by Stoumen. The relative laxityof homosexual bar policing during the early 1950s can also be attributed to the decentralization of policing and the reticence of rank-and-file officers. It is likely that some SIPI) officers were not even aware of the Stoumen ruling, and policemen continued using informal tactics with impunity to either regulate gay bars or drive them out of business.
55. "Opening Brief for Appellant," Stoumen v. Reilly, California District Court of Appeal, 66;
56. Stoumen v. Reilly 37 Cal. 2d (1951), 713;
57. and Eskridge, 94.
58. One way ABC officials stacked the legal process against homosexual bar owners was by instructing their agents not to warn gay and lesbian bar owners of infractions and not to document any information about the persons involved in the infractions. Thus, after a year-and-a-half-long investigation, the ABC presented a bar owner with a list of incidents, some more than eighteen months old, in which faceless, unnamed, and unnumbered persons were said to have committed specific illegal acts. See "Appellant's Opening Brief," Stoumen v. Munro, 50, 9-12, 283.
59. In the 1959 case of Vallerga v. Munro the state supreme court ruled that "any public display which manifests sexual desires and urges" that appeared in the bar "as a continuing course of conduct" could be considered harmful to the welfare and morals of society. Boyd's (206-7) and D'Emilio's (182) narratives both present this ruling as an advance in gay rights because it affirmed the right of gay and lesbian people to congregate in bars and because it spoke in the language of civil rights. But, as Boyd notes in passing, the vague meaning of "continuing course of conduct" and the potentially all-encompassing definition of "sexual desires and urges" suddenly placed all gay and lesbian bars at risk. Indeed, most contemporary observers viewed Vallerga as a victory for the ABC, and there is no public evidence to support Boyd's and D'Emilio's argument that Vallerga. inspired owners of gay bars to expose police corruption. Nor does it appear that the ruling stifled the ABC's campaign. The ABC's Northern California prosecutor expressed delight over the Vallerga decision, remarking that it "probably" made the closure of all homosexual bars "inevitable." See "Oh, Bitter Dicta! A Case Won-and Lost," Ladder 4, no. 5 (February 1960): 9, 7,20;
60. and "Appellant's Opening Brief," Stoumen v. Munro, 32.
61. "Grand Jury to Get Report on Raids," San Francisco Chronicle, 25 April 1955: 1, 10.
62. For information on how the "tip-off flourishes" in San Francisco see "The Untold Story of the S.F. Police Dept.," San Francisco Chronicle, 31 January 1955: 1.
63. Helen P. Branson, Gay Bar (San Francisco: Pen-Graphic Press, 1957), 43;
64. "Appellant's Opening Brief," Stoumen v. Munro, 73;
65. and Meeker, "Come out West," 28.
66. Scott Newhall, A Newspaper Editor's Voyage across San Francisco: San Francisco Chronicle, 1934-1971, and Other Adventures: Oral History Transcript (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 217-18;
67. Kevin Mullen interview; and Malcolm Glover interview, 7 July 2004. Malcolm Glover joined the San Francisco Examiner in 1946 and served as the newspaper's police beat reporter for nearly four decades.
68. "Christopher Promises Police Modernization," San Francisco Chronicle, 29 December 1955: 1. Christopher worked to clean up the police department during his tenure as mayor because he was genuinely disturbed by vice and he understood that city officials would focus on his business-friendly agenda, including his efforts toward redevelopment and the wooing of major league baseball, only if he kept the police department off the front pages.
69. See Kevin Mullen interview; and "Big-Thinking S.F. Mayor of 50s and 60s Is Dead," San Francisco Chronicle, 15 September 2000: Al.
70. "Big Police Shakeup for 'Efficiency,'" San Francisco Chronicle, 15 November 1958: 1;
71. and Kevin Mullen interview.
72. Previous histories have argued that Mayor Christopher's tough-on-crime image had made him a vulnerable candidate in 1959. Scholars have assumed that voters saw the SFPD's new assertiveness as a violation of the city's culturally permissive tradition (see Boyd, 142, 204). But during the late 1950s the press generally discussed Christopher's and Cahill's professionalization campaign in terms of government reform and the threats of predatory criminals. For instance, the press celebrated Operation S, a professionalization program that saturated so-called high-crime neighborhoods with police officers, as a program targeting muggers and murderers. Few mainstream pundits wondered whether Operation S also ensnared citizens the city might view as less physically dangerous and more culturally interesting. Media figures did not present police interactions with bohemians in North Beach as evidence of Christopher's and Cahill's professionalization. Rather, both cultural liberals and cultural conservatives used articles on relations between police and bohemians to argue for a centralization of police power. Mayor Christopher was therefore rarely implicated in the discussions over the policing of the beats. For longer discussions of Operation S and the policing of North Beach see Agee, "The Streets of San Francisco," chaps. 1 and 5.
73. Jim Kepner, Rough News - Daring Views: 1950s Pioneer Gay Press Journalism (New York: Haworth Press, 1998), 377, 379;
74. and "Praise of Mayor's Policy on Deviates Engineered by Ex-Police Informer," San Francisco Chronicle, 9 October 1959: 1,5.
75. Wolden did not enter the 1959 race with a reputation as a teetotaler. Prior to the election, Herb Caen mentioned Wolden and "his handsome wife" "rolling along California Street at midnight in their sleek convertible." See Herb Caen, Only in San Francisco (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 15.
76. Kepner, Rough News, 385-86;
77. "Wolden Sued for Slander," San Francisco Chronicle, 9 October 1959: 4;
78. "'Plant' Revealed in Wolden's Smear Drive," San Francisco Examiner, 9 October 1959: 1, 8;
79. George Dorsey, Christopher of San Francisco (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 189-90;
80. and "The Shining Badge," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 19 October 1959: 14. For additional discussions of the Wolden scandal see D'Emilio, 121-22.
81. "Big Beatnik Rally to Protest Raids," San Francisco Chronicle, 31 January 1960: 5. In the summer of 1959 the Chicago Police Department experienced a well-publicized scandal.
82. See Samuel Walker, A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1977), 170.
83. "Bob Ross Interview," 45-46, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 98-012.
84. "1st Bar Bribe Cop Plans Guilty Plea," San Francisco Examiner, 10 July 1960: 3;
85. and "All 4 Cops Acquitted in 'Gayola' Trial," San Francisco Chronicle, 20 August 1960: 1, 5. Not understanding the importance of police professionalization has prevented historians from recognizing why the press discussed the gay bar owners with relative civility during the gayola scandal. Boyd, for instance, speculates that the journalists wished to chastise Cahill for his more assertive policing policies (209). I argue, however, that by avoiding sensational discussions of the bars and their owners the journalists were supporting Cahill and his attempts to use the bar owners' accusations to clean up the department.
86. For example, see "Police Candor," San Francisco Examiner, 4 August 1960: III, 2.
87. "City, State Officials Plan Crackdown on 'Gay Bars,'" San Francisco Chronicle, 29 June 1960: 4;
88. and "Appellant's Opening Brief," Stoumen v. Munro, 176-77.
89. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 April 1960 and 29 April 1960, GLBTHS, 1950s and 1960s news clippings box, gayola folder; "65 Freed in 'Gay Bar' Case," San Francisco Examiner, 7 September 1961: 3;
90. and "Special Cops for 'Gay' Bars," San Francisco Examiner, 12 October 1961: 3;
91. Eskridge, Gaylaw, 80;
92. D'Emilio, 183;
93. and Morton Colvin interview, 5 November 1999. Morton Colvin served as an ABC prosecutor in San Francisco during the 1960s.
94. For a discussion of San Francisco gay and lesbian bars serving as "home territories" or community service centers see Sherri Cavan, "Social Interaction in Public Drinking Places," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1965, 147-48, 276.
95. See, for example, "Bob Ross Interview," 60, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 98-012;
96. and "Charlotte Coleman Interview," 72, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-023.
97. Eskridge, 80.
98. William "Uncle Billy" Morrell, owner of the 585 Club gay bar and steakhouse, organized both the bar owners involved in the gayola prosecution and those involved in the first meeting of the Tavern Guild. It is not clear from the existing sources, however, that his work with the heterosexual and homosexual bar owners in the gayola prosecution inspired him to create the Tavern Guild. See "Bob Ross Interview," 30, 58, 60, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 98-012; "Bill Plath Interview," 15, 16, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-024; "Charlotte Coleman Interview," 72, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-023; Tavern Guild Foundation, "What We're All About" (n.d.), Tavern Guild of San Francisco Records (cited hereafter as TGSF), GLBTHS, box 1, folder 1; Minutes, TGSF, 19 February 1963, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 11; Minutes, TGSF, 2 February 1965, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 14; and "Remarks of Darryl V. Glied, President of Tavern Guild of San Francisco," 30 March 1965, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 14; George Applegate to William Plath, 21 May 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 4, folder 12; Minutes, 19 May 1964, written 26 May 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13; and Minutes, 30 June 1964, written 10 July 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13. D'Emilio (189) and particularly Boyd (223-26) have provided important and useful discussions of the Tavern Guild. This section of my article builds upon these studies by utilizing the recently processed Tavern Guild Papers.
99. Boyd, 223-36; Tavern Guild Foundation, "What We're All About" (n.d.), TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 1. Gay bars held three fund-raisers for the Mattachine Society in 1964. See Martin Meeker, "Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s," Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 1 (January 2001): 109.
100. For discussion of the "cross-pollination" between the Tavern Guild and the Society of Individual Rights see "Herb Donaldson Interview," 8, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-025.
101. D'Emilio, 176-82; and Richard Cándida Smith, Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pt. 3.
102. Boyd, 226.
103. "Bob Ross Interview," 54, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 98-012. In 1964 the organization also established a political committee that arranged meetings with city officials to build bridges between the guild and the existing city government. See Minutes, 19 May 1964, written 26 May 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13; and Minutes, 18 November 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13. The Tavern Guild also used bar benefits to make contributions that connected it with the city's other homosexual and nonhomosexual progressive agencies. See Tavern Guild Foundation, "What We're All About" (n.d.), TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 1.
104. San Francisco's professional gay image was first cultivated by the area's homophile activists. The historian Martin Meeker explains that activists in the local Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis were successful at injecting this new "mask of respectability" into the city's press. Indeed, journalists covering the gayola scandal took their cues from the homophile movement's images and described the gay bar owners as professionals (Meeker, "Behind the Mask," 81). For a similar analysis see Mark Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 212-19. George Chauncey argues that a new and self-consciously masculine gay male culture first arose in America's urban homosexual communities on a significant scale during the 1940s. Chauncey terms this image the "new virile look" and explains that homosexual men during this period could adopt a masculine identity because society as a whole was now dividing men along lines of sexual-object choice, not gender persona (358). Throughout the fifties middle-class homosexual novels and homoerotic muscle magazines continued spreading this masculine gay image. See Don Romesburg, "Camping out with Ray Bourbon: Traveling Female Impersonators and Queer Dread of Wide-Open Spaces, 1930-1970," unpublished paper, courtesy of the author, 25.
105. "Vice Raid Justified - Mayor," San Francisco Examiner, 15 August 1961: 12;
106. and "Vice Case to Test Public 'Tolerance,'" San Francisco Examiner, 16 August 1961: 1. There is evidence that in other cities police used raids to compel bar owners to make extortion payments. It is probable that some raids were used for this purpose in San Francisco prior to Mayor Christopher's tenure. But after the gayola scandal Mayor Christopher and Chief Cahill directed raids to eliminate payola opportunities.
107. "Big Sex-Raid - Cops Arrest 103," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 August 1961: 3.
108. "Separate Barrooms for the 'Third Sex'?" San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, 26 June 1961: 15.
109. San Francisco Chronicle, 14 August 1961: 3.
110. "Vice Raid Justified - Mayor," San Francisco Examiner, 15 August 1961: 1;
111. the San Francisco Police Department, City of San Francisco, Annual Reports, "Adults Arrested and Charged by Sex and Race" (San Francisco, 1961, 1962, and 1963), San Francisco Public Library. D'Emilio has noted that Christopher "'applauded' the raid as 'justified' and praised the police for 'being on the right track'" (184). This is correct but misses the important change in how the mayor explained the term "justified." Boyd attributes the post-1961 decline in high-profile raids to the state legislature's rewriting of California vagrancy law, Penal Code 647a, which included the offenses of "disorderly conduct," "solicitation, " and "lewd vagrancy." She mistakenly states that when the legislators revised the vagrancy code in June 1961, they circumscribed the police's ability to arrest homosexual people for their gay status and thus denied officers the "power to control and dominate queer public space" (Boyd, 216-19). But while the legislature reformed the vagrancy code to protect most citizens from status-based charges, the lawmakers specifically strengthened the codes targeting gay and lesbian people. As in the Vallerga decision, Penal Code 647a allowed police to criminalize homosexual people by making criminal vagrants of anyone who solicited others to engage in "lewd or dissolute conduct in any public place or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view," an extended definition of space that spoke directly to the semipublic, semiprivate nature of bars. Penal Code 647a also allowed police to consider as vagrants all persons who loitered at a public toilet or who loitered around "any school or public place which children attend or normally congregate." In the 1960s American Civil Liberties Union lawyers and other civil liberties attorneys worked to constrict and overturn these provisions, primarily using arguments about the law's vagueness. Penal Code 647a remained on the books, however, until it was overturned in the 1979 Pryor v. Municipal Court case, when a superior court judge accepted the argument that the statute violated due-process guarantees because it was vague and arbitrarily enforced only against gay men.
112. See "Appellant's Opening Brief," Stoumen v. Munro, 176-77;
113. ACLU News, July 1961: 3, July 1963: 2, August 1963: 1, and October 1964: 1;
114. and Eskridge, 110.
115. Minutes, 24 November 1964, written on 3 December 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13.
116. "Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin Interview," 1 May 1990, 16-17, Scott Bishop Papers, San Francisco Public Library (hereafter SFPL), no. 90-11, box 1, folder 10; and "Cops Invade Homosexual Benefit Ball," San Francisco Chronicle, 2 January 1965: 12. The CRH worked to repay the Tavern Guild for its funding by exerting pressure on the ABC. A few days after six ministers from CRH conferred with the state liquor agency an ABC hearing board officer broke from convention and ruled against an ABC agent making charges in a B-girl case. (A B-girl was a covert employee of the bar who induced male patrons to buy her cocktails. The bartender secretly served the B-girl nonalcoholic drinks so that she could continue encouraging more drink orders.) The ABC hearing officer criticized the manner in which the agent misrepresented himself in gathering the evidence. Minutes, 24 November 1964, written 3 December 1964, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 13.
117. "Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin Interview," 19, Scott Bishop Papers, SFPL, no. 90-11, box 1, folder 9.
118. "Robert Cromey Interview," 25 April 1990, 11, 12, Scott Bishop Papers, SFPL, no. 90-11, box 1, folder 8; and "Herb Donaldson Interview," 14 February 1990, 2, Scott Bishop Papers, SFPL, no. 90-11, box 1, folder 5. The participation of the Protestant ministers in the CRH did not necessarily reflect or lead to a more progressive attitude toward San Francisco's homosexual population by the Protestant population at large. Many of CRH's most forceful religious spokesmen received their salaries from national or state organizations and were on special assignment or serving in missionary capacities. These religious leaders therefore did not have to answer to local congregations. See "Charles Lewis Interview," tape 1, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 02-169.
119. "Herb Donaldson Interview," 50, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 97-025; and "Charles Lewis Interview," tape 1, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 02-169.
120. ACLU News, February 1965: 4; Bob Ross interview; and Boyd, 229.
121. "Angry Ministers Rip Police," San Francisco Chronicle, 3 January 1965: 1A;
122. and "Robert Cromey Interview," 25 April 1990, Scott Bishop Papers, SFPL, no. 90-11, box 1, folder 8.
123. "Witness Breaks up a Courtroom," San Francisco Chronicle, 11 February 1965: 2;
124. "Trial Halted on Technicality," San Francisco Chronicle, 12 February 1965: 3;
125. "Judge's Q. and A. on Raid," San Francisco Examiner, 11 February 1965: 9;
126. "Court Orders Jury to Free 4 in Trial," San Francisco Examiner, 12 February 1965: 14;
127. and "Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin Interview," 20, Scott Bishop Papers, SFPL, no. 90-11, box 1, folder 9. Serving as assistant district attorney from 1920 to 1925, Friedman earned notoriety for prosecuting the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle case. Friedman then served nearly four decades as a criminal lawyer before his election to the bench in 1963. See "Friedman's Big Hurdle to Municipal Court," San Francisco Examiner, 6 November 1963: A.
128. After nearly a decade the lawsuit was settled out of court for $50. "Bob Ross Interview," 57, "Shedding a Straight Jacket," GLBTHS, no. 98-012; and Bob Ross interview. The New Year's Day Ball is a well-covered subject in the historiography of gay and lesbian San Francisco, but historians have not previously discussed the potential lawsuit or its importance. Rather, scholars have focused on the public support the ball organizers received from the city's Protestant clergy and the acquittal the CRH ministers won in their trial. These studies have then assumed that this negative publicity and failed prosecution persuaded the police to curb their repression of gay bars. But the SFPD frequently ignored press conferences and critical newspaper reports, and police officers could still expect to secure convictions from the city's more conservative judges. For previous discussions of the ministers' press conference and the CRH trial see Boyd, 234-35; and D'Emilio, 194-95.
129. While Cahill could expose a police officer's shakedown practices through a prearranged sting, the chief could not re-create acts of brutality. Community members thus had more difficulty holding Cahill accountable for not putting an end to brutality.
130. 74I interviewed seven former SFPD officers who were walking a beat in 1965, and only two, both of whom eventually formed political alliances with gay and lesbian activists, recalled the ball or the trial.
131. Minutes, 22 June 1965, written 1 July 1965, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder
132. See Minutes, 22 June 1965, written 1 July 1965, TGSF, GLBTHS, box 1, folder 14.