Reading this article from Gay.Com, about a raid on a New Mexican gay gym, was like reading a history book about gay life before Stonewall…except that only one person was arrested…

New Mexico state police and the Albuquerque fire marshal’s office entered and secured the men-only gym about 10 p.m. Saturday and arrested club manager Ron Cordova on suspicion of selling and dispensing alcohol without a liquor license, said New Mexico Department of Public Safety spokesman Peter Olson.

But gym patrons — who were forced to lie on the floor, handcuffed, with semi-automatic rifles pointed at them — say that if the raid was about an alcohol infraction, it was, at least, overkill.

Ronald, a 57-year-old gay man from Miami Beach who requested that his last name not be used, said he was visiting New Mexico looking for real estate opportunities when he heard about a "social event" at Pride Gym on Saturday evening.

"There were about 35 of us there, and most were older men, some in their 70s, eating tacos and chatting," Ronald said. "Most of us were fully dressed, because it’s a legitimate gym with a sauna, but not a bathhouse."

"Suddenly, a SWAT team carrying semi-automatic weapons, plastic shields and late gloves burst through the door and told us to get on the ground. They kept saying, ‘We’re not here for you,’ but still they handcuffed us and kept us on the ground until they could run background checks on all of us. This took about an hour."

At least one elderly man suffered a panic attack and was taken away by paramedics, Ronald said. A few of the patrons were in the sauna when the raid occurred, and, when their towels fell, they were forced to lie on the floor naked, he said.

Ronald claimed that police officers led one man into a separate room and took pictures of him.

"The guy was wearing a leather harness and a jockstrap. A female officer with a digital camera took him into a room; we saw about 15 or 20 flashes coming from there and heard lots of laughter. They (the officers) were having a good old time. It was like the gay Abu Ghraib."

The ACLU is looking into it, but this is George Bush’s America, and I honestly can’t see any court case against police treatment of citizens like this, let alone homosexuals, going anywhere.  The Bush supreme court gives the police pretty much carte blanche these days, and it seems sometimes reading the news accounts of police behavior that made it past the courts, that they can cuff you and strip search you and do a cavity search of you during a routine traffic stop, so long as in their "judgment" they needed to do that.

"The officers were serving a search warrant and the fire marshal was there to inspect the building," Olson said. "Any time there is a situation with a large number of people, officers will employ whatever tactics they need to maintain control of the situation."

The warrant, he said, arose from tips from locals that alcohol was being served at Pride Gym. "Any time agents find someone serving alcohol without a license, it causes concern because those proprietors are operating outside of the law." He said it’s inaccurate to characterize Saturday night’s event as a ‘raid,’ and maintained that officers were not out of bounds.

…

"We were committing no crimes, and not one of us treated the police with any disrespect," Ronald said. "If they (the police) were trying to prevent drunk driving, why didn’t they target the art gallery where I went earlier that night? They were serving wine."

Olson said art galleries serving alcohol had been the focus of similar enforcement in the past, and now employ professional bartenders to serve wine.

However, he said he was not aware of incidents where gallery patrons were forced to lie on the ground at gunpoint.

Does anyone really need to explain why art gallery patrons are treated more like human beings by the police then the patrons of a gym that caters to the gay community?  The only difference here from the way cops treated gay people pre Stonewall is that everyone inside wasn’t led in handcuffs to police vans stationed outside, but that’s only because sodomy isn’t a crime anymore.  One more Bush appointee to the supreme court, and that will change, and the vans will be back.