Source URL: https://americanendeavor.blogspot.com/search/label/black%20gay%20menGay activists and civil rights lawyers will go to court Thursday to try to stop the NYPD from closing Chi Chiz, a Christopher Street bar that caters to homosexual and transgendered black men.
The police claim in Manhattan Supreme Court that on four instances in a six-month period, undercover officers witnessed the sale of marijuana, cocaine and other controlled substances in the bar, which opened 12 years ago.
But Chi Chiz supporters say the crackdown's motivated by racism and homophobia in a community that's increasingly white, wealthy and worried about property values.
"These are the same people who forced the city to tear down the Women's House of Detention on Sixth Avenue and Christopher Street," activist Allen Roskoff told Page Six.
"Manhattan so-called liberals are only so when it affects others. Otherwise, they cry 'quality of life' and 'not in my neighborhood.' "
Chi Chiz's lawyer, Tom Shanahan, told Page Six the city asked the bar to make an iron-clad guarantee that no drugs would be sold or used on its premises -- but Chi Chiz couldn't promise that.
"We can't guarantee that," Shanahan explained. "I said to the judge, when the city figures out how to keep drugs off Rikers Island, they can hold us to the same standard. The terms they are insisting on would put us out of business. This is what they wanted all along."
ABC responded with this statement to CNN: “ On June 22, during a discussion about blood donation and the transmission of HIV/AIDS, a guest moderator on the show expressed his interpretation of data about one way the virus can be transmitted. The topic of HIV/AIDS has been raised many times over the show’s 13 years, with many voices and opinions contributing to a conversation that we expect to continue as long as The View is on the air.”
