Tinderbox

  4.Johnny Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn: The Up Stairs Lounge Fire (self-published through BookLocker.com, 2011), 304; interview with Robert Camina, July 2016.

  5.“The State of the Caucus,” LAGPAC, August 1981, Alan Robinson Papers, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans; “By-laws,” LAGPAC, August 18, 1980, Alan Robinson Papers; “Dear LAGPAC Members and Friends,” LAGPAC, January 1981, Stewart Butler Papers, Louisiana Research Collection; “Membership Form,” LAGPAC, 1981. Alan Robinson Papers; “Minutes,” LAGPAC, October 25, 1980, Alan Robinson Papers; “Charged with Obstruction of Free Passage,” n.d., Alan Robinson Papers.

  6.Frank Locascio, memorandum to William Roth and John Fischer, 1980, in supplemental materials to “Official Report,” Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, July 22, 1975, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge; “Official Report,” Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, July 22, 1975, 6, Louisiana State Archives; interview with Stewart Butler, July 20, 2014.

  7.“Gays Seeking Equal Rights Form Crescent City Coalition,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 19, 1981, 16; interview with Roberts Batson, July 11, 2014; “For Immediate Release” (press release), LAGPAC, May 5, 1981, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files, Sears Papers; “Police Raids Net 101 Arrests,” Impact, May 1981 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files); “Mass Arrests of Gays Spark Reaction,” Figaro, May 4, 1981 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones Research Files); “Charged with Obstruction of Free Passage”; “Police Explain Last Month’s Actions,” Impact, May 1981 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files).

  8.“Dear Members and Friends,” LAGPAC, July 23, 1982, Alan Robinson Papers; “Charged with Obstruction of Free Passage”; “Gay and Lesbian Town Meeting,” LAGPAC, July 8, 1981, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files; “Charges Are Dropped!,” Impact, July 1981 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones Research Files); Henry Morris to Roberts Batson, 1981, Stewart Butler Papers, Louisiana Research Collection.

  9.Frank Perez, “Metropolitan Community Church,” Ambush, April 9, 2016, 12 (www .ambushmag.com/is916/images/916main11-15.pdf); Clayton Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2014), 176; “Larson Rev. William R.,” Interment Records of St. Roch Cemeteries 1 & 2, 1981, http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/orleans/cemeteries/roch/book/1981.txt; Henry Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account” (unpublished manuscript, November 14, 2013), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  10.Howard Smith, email to author, October 10, 2016; Wally Sherwood, “Former Olympus King Passes Away,” Ambush, July 19, 2005 (www.ambushmag.com/is1505/sherwoods.htm); Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 321; Perez, “Metropolitan Community Church,” 12; “Larson Rev. William R.”; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 176.

  11.Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account”; “Larson Rev. William R.”

  12.Interview with Joseph Bermuda, March 31, 2015; “Ordinances,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 14, 1981, 70; interview with Roberts Batson, September 13, 2017.

  13.“Candidates for LAGPAC Board of Directors” (newsletter), LAGPAC, November 19, 1982, Alan Robinson Papers, Louisiana Research Collection; interview with Steven Duplantis, March 11, 2016.

  14.Duplantis interview.

  15.“1983—The Year Many People Would Like to Forget,” Impact, July 1983 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files, Sears Papers); “Rare Cancer Seen in Forty-One Homosexuals,” The New York Times, July 3, 1981, 20; “ ‘Homosexual Plague’ Strikes New Victims,” Newsweek, August 23, 1982, 10; John Pope, “Deadly AIDS No Longer Stranger to La.,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 10, 1987, 29; “Gay Parades Dedicated to AIDS Victims,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 27, 1983, 29.

  16.W. Pate McMichael, “The Pre-Pandemic Puzzle,” St. Louis Magazine, August 2007; Todd Summers and Jennifer Kates, Trends in U.S. Government Funding for HIV/AIDS Fiscal Years 1981 to 2004 (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, March 2004; https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/issue-brief-trends-in-u-s-government-funding-for-hiv-aids-fiscal-years-1981-to-2004.pdf); “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Weekly Surveillance Report—United States,” Centers for Disease Control, December 22, 1983, www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/reports/surveillance/cdc-hiv-surveillance-report-1983.pdf; Kathleen Mulvihill, “AIDS: Mystery Disorder,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 11, 1983, 38.

  17.“Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Weekly Surveillance Report”; Evan Thomas, “The New Untouchables,” Time, September 23, 1985 (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959944,00.html); “U.S. Urges Homosexual Men Not to Give Blood Donations,” Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1983, 12 (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1983/03/04/page/12/article/u-s-urges-homosexual-men-not-to-give-blood-donations).

  18.“Patients Advised Transfusions Risky Because of AIDS,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 15, 1983, 3; “AIDS Has Killed Five in State,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 23, 1983, 23; “Gays’ Disease Spreads to Heterosexuals,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 30, 1982, 65; John Pope, “AIDS Scare Closing Bathhouse,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 23, 1985, 19; “Fear That Blood Has AIDS Blamed as Donations Fall,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 9, 1983, 25; “Heterosexual Contact May Spread AIDS, Study Says,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 19, 1983, 6.

  19.“Articles of Incorporation,” NO/AIDS Task Force, June 28, 1983, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files, Sears Papers; “Meeting!,” NO/AIDS Task Force News, September 1983, Alan Robinson Papers, Louisiana Research Collection; Gayle Ashton, “AIDS March Turns Heads in Quarter,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 9, 1983, 2; Rich Magill, Exposing Hatred: A Report on the Victimization of Lesbian and Gay People in New Orleans, Louisiana (New Orleans: LAGPAC, 1991), 2.

  20.Robert Steinbrook, “The Times Poll: 42 Percent Would Limit Civil Rights in AIDS Battle,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1987 (http://articles.latimes.com/1987-07-31/news/mn-217_1_aids-virus); “N.O. Architecture Critic Bill Rushton, Thirty-Nine, Dies,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 11, 1987, 18; Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account”; “Two Hundred Attend Service for Lounge Victims,” New Orleans States-Item, July 2, 1973; “Church Leaders Urged Family Not to Confirm Bishop Died of AIDS,” Associated Press, May 25, 1987; Emily Yoffe, “Bishop Denies ‘Brotherhood’ to the End,” Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1987 (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-12-03/features/8703300793_1_rev-troy-perry-metropolitan-community-churches-gay-bar).

  21.“Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Committee Meeting” (meeting notes), LAGPAC, February 21, 1983, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files; “The New Orleans Gay Civil Rights Ordinance” (report), LAGPAC, 1984, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files; Marion Barry to “Public Official,” LAGPAC, 1984, Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files; “Gay Civil Rights Ordinance Debated,” Impact, March 16, 1984, 1 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files); Patricia Behre and Frank Donze, “Catholic Groups Waging Battle Against Gay-Rights Ordinance,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 8, 1984, 1.

  22.Frank Donze, “City Council Kills Ordinance on Gay Rights,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 13, 1984, 1, 4; “N.O. Gay Ordinance Fails to Pass,” Impact, April 20, 1984, 1 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files); Frank Donze, “Support Fell Through, Gay Rights Leaders Say,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 14, 1984, 4; “Vice Squad Arrests Total 1,443 in 1965,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 4, 1966, 50.

  23.Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 314; “A Minority Agenda for the Decade of the 1990s,” George Steven Matyi Private Trust, June 24, 1988, Johnny Townsend Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles.

  24.Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 314; Rod Wagener to Johnny Townsend, August 9, 1990, Johnny Townsend Collection.<
br />
  25.Philip Batiste, “A Defeat for the City,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 11, 1986, 26; James Gill, “Gays and the Ending of Prejudice,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 9, 1986, 27; Sheila Grissett-Welsh, “Civil Rights Measure Rejected,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 5, 1986, 1; interview with Stewart Butler, August 4, 2015; Frank Perez, “Rich Magill Exposes Hatred,” Ambush, June 11, 2013 (www.ambushmag.com/is1213/images/1213main26-30.pdf).

  26.Perez, “Rich Magill Exposes Hatred”; Magill, Exposing Hatred, 1.

  27.Magill, Exposing Hatred, iii.

  28.Ibid.; Butler interview, August 4, 2015; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 168.

  29.Butler interview, August 4, 2015; Magill, Exposing Hatred, iii; Perez, “Rich Magill Exposes Hatred.”

  30.Susan Finch, “Fire of ’73: Tragedy United Gays,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 24, 1993; Mark Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed in Fire Remembered at Quarter Church,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1995.

  Coda: Second Line

  1.Interview with Dexter Brecht, January 19, 2017.

  2.Mark Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed in Fire Remembered at Quarter Church,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1995 (used with permission of the Times-Picayune and NOLA.com, © 2017 NOLA Media Group, LLC, all rights reserved); Dexter Brecht, email to author, December 15, 2015; interview with Mark Thompson, January 21, 2016.

  3.Joseph P. Manguno, “Deacon in Tavern Blames Arsonist,” Boston Herald American, June 26, 1973; interview with Henry Kubicki, September 4, 2015; Brecht interviews, January 19, 2017, and July 29, 2015.

  4.Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; David Cuthbert, “Where There Was Smoke,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 20, 1998.

  5.Wayne Phillips, notes for “Remembering the Up Stairs Lounge Fire,” 1998 (courtesy of Wayne Phillips); Richard Everett, email to author, August 26, 2015.

  6.William Faulkner, “Banquet Speech,” Nobel Prize, December 10, 1950, www.nobelprize.org; Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; interview with Henry Kubicki, September 5, 2015.

  7.Roberts Batson, “Out of the Ashes,” Impact, July 3, 1998 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones Research Files, James T. Sears Papers, Duke University Libraries, Durham, N.C.); Cuthbert, “Where There Was Smoke”; interview with Wayne Phillips, June 14, 2016.

  8.Bruce Nolan, “Service Remembers Upstairs Fire Victims,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 25, 1998, B1; Rip and Marsha Naquin-Delain, “Upstairs Fire Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Memorial,” Ambush, June 1998 (ambushmag.com/is1498/hot.htm); Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; “Upstairs Lounge Fire Memorial” (program), MCC of New Orleans, June 24, 1998, Skylar Fein Upstairs Lounge Fire Collection, Historic New Orleans Collection; Troy Perry and Nancy Wilson, “Report to the President for the White House Conference on Hate Crimes,” November 1, 1997, 2, LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  9.Interview with Troy Perry, December 2, 2014; Nolan, “Service Remembers Upstairs Fire Victims,” B1; Batson, “Out of the Ashes”; Nick Spitzer, “Love and Death at Second-Line,” Southern Spaces, February 20, 2004 (https://southernspaces.org/2004/love-and-death-second-line).

  10.Batson, “Out of the Ashes”; Nolan, “Service Remembers Upstairs Fire Victims,” B1; “Upstairs Lounge Fire Memorial”; interview with Roberts Batson, May 18, 2016; Brecht interview, July 29, 2015.

  11.Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; “ ‘We Knew Them as People,’ Pastor Tells Gay Mourners,” New Orleans States-Item, June 26, 1973.

  12.Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Eileen Loh Harrist, “Just Married?,” Gambit, 2002 (www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/just-married/Content?oid=1242206); interview with Wil Coleman, November 20, 2015.

  13.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed”; Tom W. Smith and Jaesok Son, “Trends in Public Attitudes About Sexual Morality,” National Opinion Research Center, April 2013, 11 (www.norc.org/PDFs/sexmoralfinal_06-21_FINAL.PDF); Richard Bernstein, “A Stand on Homosexuality for Both Left and Right,” The New York Times, September 6, 1995 (www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/17/home/18419.html); “Yep, I’m Gay,” Time, April 14, 1997 (http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1704183_1704257_1704513,00.html); Michael Winerip, “Gay Support Holds for Clinton in Middle America,” The New York Times, September 22, 1996, 22; Bill Carter, “ABC Is Canceling Ellen,” The New York Times, April 25, 1998 (www.nytimes.com/1998/04/25/arts/abc-is-canceling-ellen.html); “Gay Man Beaten and Left for Dead,” The New York Times, October 10, 1998, 9; Tom Kenworthy, “Gay Wyoming Student Succumbs to Injuries,” The Washington Post, October 13, 1998 (www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/10/13/gay-wyoming-student-succumbs-to-injuries/ba23fb55-c545-4ab0-b446-515ab22d899c/?utm_term=.53457d529eee).

  14.Toni Pizanie, “Why?,” Ambush, June 3, 2003 (www.ambushmag.com/is1103/sappho.htm); Keith O’Brien, “Final Witness,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 2, 2003, E1; interview with Stewart Butler, July 20, 2014; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; “Refined from the Ashes” (program), MCC of New Orleans, June 22, 2003, Skylar Fein Upstairs Lounge Fire Collection, Historic New Orleans Fire Collection.

  15.Interview with Richard Everett, January 20, 2017; interview with Henry Kubicki, April 7, 2016.

  16.“Refined from the Ashes”; Coleman interview; Clayton Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2014), 176; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Phillips, notes for “Remembering the Upstairs Lounge Fire”; Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed.”

  17.Butler interview, July 20, 2014; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 168; Paul Breton, “United We Stand” (unpublished manuscript, August 1973), National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles; “General Case Report,” New Orleans Department of Police, August 30, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library; “Upstairs Lounge Fire Memorial,” 1998, Skylar Fein Upstairs Lounge Fire Collection.

  18.Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Wally Sherwood, “Former Olympus King Passes Away,” Ambush, July 19, 2005 (www.ambushmag.com/is1505/sherwoods.htm); Manguno, “Deacon in Tavern Blames Arsonist”; Butler interview, July 20, 2014; Perry interview.

  19.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed”; Sherwood, “Former Olympus King Passes Away”; Kubicki interview, September 5, 2015.

  20.Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Perry interview; Coleman interview; O’Brien, “Final Witness,” E1.

  21.Laine Kaplan-Levenson, “Arson at the UpStairs Lounge,” WWNO.org, July 28, 2016 (http://wwno.org/post/arson-upstairs-lounge).

  22.Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 176; O’Brien, “Final Witness,” E1.

  23.Brecht interview, January 29, 2017; O’Brien, “Final Witness,” E1; Toni Pizanie, “Upstairs Fire Memorial,” Ambush, April 22, 2003 (www.ambushmag.com/is803/Sappho.htm); interview with Tina Matyi, October 29, 2016; interview with Mary David Mihalyfi, May 4, 2016.

  24.Interview with Carole Cotton Winn, March 5, 2018; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 135; Butler interview, July 20, 2014.

  25.Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 136; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017.

  26.Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 136; interview with Skylar Fein, July 24, 2015; Ralph Spencer Forest, Statement to Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, November 19, 1974, 1, Skylar Fein Upstairs Lounge Fire Collection, Historic New Orleans Collection; “Stephen Ledet,” Social Security Claims, November 15, 2007, Ancestry.com; O’Brien, “Final Witness,” E1; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017.

  27.Tragically, after serving as an Up Stairs Lounge spokesperson for more than a decade through his public remembrances and his “Together, you and I” workshop at religious conferences, Wil Coleman passed away in October 2017 due to health complications related to HIV/AIDS. He was only fifty; Coleman int
erview; Perry interview; Brecht interview, January 19, 2017.

  28.Linda Greenhouse, “The Supreme Court: Homosexual Rights; Justices, 6–3, Legalize Gay Sexual Conduct in Sweeping Reversal of Court’s ’86 Ruling,” The New York Times, June 27, 2003 (www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/us/supreme-court-homosexual-rights-justices-6-3-legalize-gay-sexual-conduct.html).

  Acknowledgments

  Although I was the vessel through which Tinderbox took form, a team of allies seemed to circle this project from the beginning, as if to guard its creation.

  First, I must recognize my husband, Ryan Leitner, to whom I dedicate this book. Through Ryan’s strength I found the strength to write and finish this work—testimony of a world that predated us but, in many ways, created us too.

  I owe a great deal to my editor, Robert Weil, as well as to two of my former Columbia Journalism School professors, Nicholas Lemann and Samuel G. Freedman. At a lunch, Bob and Nick discussed the Up Stairs Lounge fire as an underexplored event, one that someone needed to write a book about. In a subsequent email exchange between Nick and Sam, my name was mentioned, opening the way to my taking on this project. I must also thank Jim Adams, who graciously proofread the resulting book proposal; Jeff Ferzoco, who created the elegant map at the beginning of this book; and Trent Duffy, who copyedited the final draft.

  An equal, if not greater, debt of gratitude is owed to the survivors and families of the fire. Stewart Butler, Steven Duplantis, Ricky Everett, John Golding Jr., Tina Marie Matyi, Mary David Mihalyfi, Duane Mitchell, and Ronnie Rosenthal all spoke with me on the record for this book, often for many hours. All gave a wide range of access and bravely recounted their experiences without asking for editorial control. I also appreciate the witnesses and advocates who spoke to me about those weeks in 1973: Joseph Bermuda, Clancy DuBos, Mark Allen Guidry, Lynn Jordan, Paul Killgore, Henry Kubicki, Ronnie LeBoeuf, Milton Mary, Naoma McCrae, John Meyers, Troy Perry, and Roy Reed. Dexter Brecht and Wil Coleman provided the much needed context of recent history, without which this book would have lacked a sense of legacy.