Documentary highlights turning point in fight for gay rights

On New Year’s Day 1965, San Francisco police raided a fundraiser ball for a newly created group called Council on Religion and the Homosexual, a multi-denominational group formed to support and promote LGBT issues.

Under the guise of a fire inspection and then a liquor license inspection, police searched the crowd for infractions to the city’s anti-homosexual ordinances and made two separate arrests, the first for interfering with an officer and the second for lewd and lascivious behavior.

Four years before the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City brought attention to the fight for homosexual rights, this incident would prove to be a major turning point for San Francisco’s community.

The Rev. Chuck Lewis, then a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who was developing a mission parish in North Beach, and fellow Lutheran Joanne Chadwick were there to witness that police raid. On Saturday, they will be in Santa Rosa to host a screening of “Lewd & Lascivious,” a documentary about the incident. Lewis, now retired, will speak alongside Chadwick at the screening.

Q: Where were you at the time of the raid?

I had been out to dinner with Joanne, who was working with me to develop the mission. When we arrived to attend the dance, we noticed there was a police car at each end of the block, a paddy wagon directly across the street from the entrance, and a still photographer and a movie photographer who were photographing everybody who entered and left the dance.

Q: What did you see inside?

A squad of police officers came in to do a fire inspection. They had already been there a half-hour beforehand to inspect the liquor license. They were challenged by two of the attorneys we had on hand, and the attorneys were arrested, along with a straight woman and another attorney.

The original charge was interference with an officer in the line of duty, but the police tried to change it to moral turpitude at the station.

Later on, two more inspectors came from vice squad, and they were led into the dance past the lobby. Two men were standing on folding chairs, and as they started to fall they grabbed for each other. One vice squad member said to the other, “Did you see those two men kiss each other?”

The person who let them in said, “No, I didn’t, and neither did you.”

However, the two men were arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct, and that’s where the title of this particular movie comes from.

Q: What were things like before the raid?

They were harassing. The average gay bar was open two years before the police found an excuse to close it down. If one guy tried to get close to his partner, the bartender would immediately tell them, “If you touch him again you’re permanently 86’d,” because there might be an undercover officer in the bar.

If you were arrested in a gay bar, they’d find out who your employer was, call your employer and tell him you had been arrested at a gay bar for lascivious behavior. Then the charges would be dropped. The next day you got fired. It was another form of harassment.

Q: What happened after the raid?

The Tavern Guild, the main sponsor of the dance, turned around and sued the city and county of San Francisco, the mayor’s office and so on for false arrest. They settled out of court, I don’t know for how much. That lawsuit is what changed everything in the city.

Q: How?

It increased the political involvement that the gay organizations had in terms of influence in the city. The politicians who were running for supervisor would come to the various gay organizations and want to make a presentation as they were running for office. They started to realize that the gay community represented a solid political force.

The next year when the tavern guild sponsored another dance, the police went to them and said, “What can we do to help you? Can we block off the street for you?”

They also appointed a police officer to be a liaison to the gay community. That had never happened before.

Q: Did it change you?

It did. I got more involved. I became a charter member of Citizen’s Alert, a new group that was formed to monitor police harassment and brutality in the city. I also became more involved in my own denomination. A group called Lutherans Concerned formed, and a local chapter was formed in my parish around 1974.

Q: Why was this movie made now?

Jallen Rix wanted to do this documentary as part of his PhD. He started working on this about two to three years ago, interviewing various people who were all part of the event itself. That film premiered in San Francisco about a year ago, and he’s been trying to get it on public broadcasting.

Q: What should viewers take away from the film?

I would like them to understand how the world has changed. It’s a much more open and welcoming and mixed community then it was before.

I would hope that they would go away with a better understanding of how the movement developed, and why the lawsuit was necessary, because it brought the issue to the foreground and let people know that LGBT people had a voice.

“Lewd & Lascivious” will be screened at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at Thanksgiving Lutheran Church, 1225 Fulton Road. Admission is free. More info: thanksgivinglutheran.org.