Dallas wade gay

Travis reveals the TRUTH about Dallas Wade a.k.a.

Just two weeks later, the Iranian hostage crisis would begin, facilitating Ronald Reagan’s election victory and a hard shift right politically. It changed the whole relationship between the community and law enforcement.”

The Village Station closed for a time in the early 1980s, but re-opened in 1987 in a larger space on Cedar Springs — that just happened to be next door to Adair’s Bar & Grill.

And in Dallas, gay men — and some women — were routinely labeled “perverts” and “deviants” in local newspapers, while raids on gay bars, bathhouses and theaters were commonplace. Gay citizens began appearing at city council meetings, demanding an end to harassment. Club Dallas filed a federal suit against city and county law enforcement, citing harassment of its patrons in December.

And in a matter of weeks, the nation’s first reports of a mysterious and deadly disease spreading within the gay community would change everything forever.

Ernie Dougherty was staffing the Village Station’s front door that night, on Oct. 24, and Streisand and Summer’s defiant “Enough is Enough” was thumping through the speakers as patrons formed a conga line, laughing and singing along as they bunny-hopped through the club.

In February, Dallas Criminal Court Judge Chuck Miller found two more defendants not guilty after five of the undercover vice cops at the Village Station that night could not corroborate their testimony and it was revealed that they could not even agree on the layout of the club.

Riled at the judge’s decisions, District Attorney Henry Wade dismissed the remaining six cases and reassigned them to conservative Judge Ben Ellis’s court, citing bias on Miller’s part.

Thanks to Dallas attorney Don Maison, who represented two of the defendants — in one notable trial, Bible-toting citizens were countered with disco-dancing men in the courtroom — the names and badge numbers of questionable cops were publicized.

He posted signs at the club asking for witnesses to the raid to come forward.

Within a week, Dallas attorney Mike Anglin, who chaired the Dallas Bar Association’s Goals for Dallas Committee, met with police officials and committee members, to state its strong opposition to raids on gay bars. It later led the police department to assign a liaison officer to the gay community.

The Dallas Bar Association concurred. The typical mid-week clientele danced to Donna Summer’s “Dim All the Lights” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” while nursing 10-cent draft beers. By the end of 1980, the remaining Village Station cases were decided, mostly with guilty verdicts, although at least two of those were later dismissed.

It was a turning point for LGBTQ citizens of Dallas.

And as the new decade began in January, members of the Gay Political Caucus met with city officials, including Mayor Bob Folsom, who admitted that his knowledge of the gay community was “somewhat limited” and asked for a follow-up meeting to learn more about gay issues.

By the end of the month, more than 600 people attended a meeting, at which an assistant city attorney urged the group to file harassment complaints with the DPD’s Internal Affairs Department, outlining the steps to do so.

Two of the men arrested at the Village Station pled guilty to misdemeanor charges in January and the bartender’s case was dismissed.

They ought to be locked up. Some compared notes on the “March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights” held the week before.

Others contemplated checking out the Hidden Door, a new bar holding its grand opening the next night.

They didn’t know it was the twilight of an era. Dallas Wade's sexuality. 

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In November, Dallas schoolteacher Don Baker, backed by the Texas Human Rights Foundation, filed a federal class action suit challenging the state sodomy law. They’ve tried to buy up every piece of property around here and turn this into a queer community, but I don’t intend to let this place become a queer joint.”

But the Village Station raid was different.