AKA William

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Texas really seems to be on the leading edge of backwardness lately.

Following the Fort Worth Stonewall-style raid of The Rainbow Lounge two weeks ago comes more anti-LGBT news. In El Paso, Carlos Diaz de Leon and a group of his friends decided to stop by Chico’s Tacos for a late-night dinner. And were almost given a citation by El Paso police for being . . . gay.

“Two of my friends were, actually, were kissing,” Carlos said. “We went, sat down to eat our food and security guards came and said that if they kept doing that, they were going to throw us all out of the restaurant.”

Carlos said he then asked them why? Their response, according to Carlos: “They said ‘we didn’t allow that gay stuff to go on here.’ ”

. . . Carlos said he and his friends did not deserve to be harassed, so he called someone else.

“Here I am calling the police to help us out and the police turned against us, I mean, who are you going to call now if you can’t call the police department?”

That’s because, Carlos says, the officers told him something that didn’t make sense.

“Told us it was against the law for two males and two females to kiss in public, that they could cite us for homosexual activity.” [ABC]

The anti-sodomy I believe the officer was referring to was struck down in 2003 by the U.S. Supreme Court. When contacted for a statement, El Paso Police Department spokesman Chris Mears said the problem arose with a rookie officer’s misunderstanding of the law, “We don’t enforce that law, there’s been court decisions about Texas’ law on that. We don’t enforce it and what happened there wouldn’t have even have met the elements of the offense, even if it had been enforceable . . . I think it was poor understanding of the law. ”

Diaz has been contacted an attorney, and he and his friends are filing a complaint against the two police officers with the department’s Internal Affairs.