Texas Restaurant Doesn't Allow "That Faggot Stuff"

Hey, remember last week when I talked about police arresting and sometimes injuring people in a gay bar on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots? Remember how the Ft. Worth police chief Jeff Halstead tried to use the Gay Panic defense?

It turns out that there was another Texas police incident the next night, this time way the hell on the other side of the state. From the El Paso Times:

Guards at a Chico’s Tacos on the East Side ejected a group of gay men from the restaurant because two were kissing, police said Wednesday.

“It was a simple kiss on the lips,” said Carlos Diaz de Leon, who called police when he feared he and his group were targets of discrimination after his friends, both men, kissed in public.

At about 12:30 a.m. on the morning of June 29, the five men were placing their order at the Chico’s Tacos on Montwood when the two men made their public display of affection, sparking the ire of two contracted security guards at the restaurant, police and witnesses said. After the group sat down, the security guards told them “they didn’t allow that faggot stuff to go on there,” and made them leave, de Leon said.

An officer arrived at the restaurant about an hour later, after police received five calls, including from the security guards and de Leon. The men were told to leave the restaurant and had anti-gay slurs directed at them while they waited for the police.

“I went up to the police officer to tell him what was going on and he didn’t want to hear my side,” de Leon said. “He wanted to hear the security guard’s side first.”

The officer informed the group it was illegal for two men or two women to kiss in public, de Leon said. The five were told they could be cited for homosexual conduct – a charge the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. That same year, the city of El Paso passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by employees of the city and by businesses open to the public.

El Paso Police Detective Carlos Carrillo said a more appropriate charge would probably be criminal trespass.

“The security guard received a complaint from some of the customers there,” Carrillo said. “Every business has the right to refuse service. They have the right to refuse service to whoever they don’t want there. That’s their prerogative.”

Briana Stone, a lawyer with the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project, disagrees. She said city ordinance protects people on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in public places, including Chico’s Tacos. Perhaps more troubling, she said, is that the police officer chose not to enforce that ordinance and may have contributed to discrimination.

::sigh::