Clinton foundation takes money from countries that hate gays

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. Around that piano in the s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment.

These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. Two days later, on June 26, , as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire.

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a separate post.

Photo by Gage Skidmore; courtesy Flickr. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec.

Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev.

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. The Clinton Foundation has accepted millions from Middle Eastern and other foreign governments that criminalize homosexuality – but prominent gay rights groups in America have stayed silent on. Customs officer.

News FACT CHECK: Did Hillary Clinton take money from countries that treat women, gays poorly? Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business.

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. It echoes comments Trump himself in the third presidential debate when criticizing his opponent over the Clinton Foundation.

Chris Barron, a gay conservative activist and who has declared Islamic terrorism the No. The Blade has placed a request in with the Trump campaign seeking comment on why it continues to mischaracterize ISIS as a donor to the Clinton Foundation. As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by.

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. Did Hillary Clinton take money from countries that treat women, gays poorly? For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence.

The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing. New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking.

On the Sunday night of June 24, , their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals.

So these are people that push gays off business — off buildings. Donald Trump continues to attack Hillary Clinton on everything from campaign spending to ISIS. When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears.

By , the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. Donald Trump continues to attack Hillary Clinton on everything from campaign spending to ISIS. Conway, a former pollster for anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage, appears to be referring to controversy over the millions of dollars the Clinton Foundation has accepted from countries with anti-LGBT laws and harsh laws against women.

And yet you take their money. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the French Quarter for Japanese audiences.