Indeed, civil rights and feminist constituencies in the 1970s did not leap to the defense of the Up Stairs Lounge victims. The Up Stairs Lounge, Brecht related to his flock, represented a moment that exposed a majority of citizens as at best apathetic toward homosexuals while also revealing that civil rights movements of the era were tone-deaf to homosexual plight. Most of the dead-educated and illiterate, young and old, white and black, including a hustler, a minister, and a dentist-perished within the fire’s first 360 seconds. Yet, in fact, the tragedy had affected nearly every segment of New Orleans’s closeted gay community, estimated a month later by the local Gay People’s Coalition to be from 40,000 to 100,000 of the city’s then 600,000 residents.
Local and national television channels would dedicate just a few minutes of on-the-scene coverage to the Up Stairs Lounge, in which survivors were interviewed with cameras to their backs, due to reporters’ fear of legitimizing the gay lifestyle and victims’ fear of outing themselves. After a mere blip of coverage, it fell off the front pages of newspapers, and then from interior pages entirely. Fingers and faces and bones were scorched beyond recognition. The fast-moving blaze overtook the second-floor bar with deep ties to the MCC faithful, but the destruction would extend well beyond church membership, claiming the lives of thirty-one men and one woman.Īlthough it raged out of control for less than twenty minutes, the blaze left a fallout that shocked Carl Rabin, the coroner who would struggle to identify the bodies using jewelry and hotel room keys. On that evening, flames had invaded a sanctuary for blue-collar gay men. It was a horrific scene to relate: a fire in a busy bar on the fringe of New Orleans’s French Quarter that was set with lighter fluid. It is good as a way of acknowledging our grief.”
“Remembering, whether we like it or not, is part of the human condition.
“We gather here this morning to remember,” Brecht continued. This tragedy, congregants knew, was in fact the only reason that the New Orleans Times-Picayune had opted to send a reporter to hear their minister that Sunday. This fire, which had happened twenty-two years and one day before, at a hangout called the Up Stairs Lounge, remained so disturbing a memory that it never existed in the pages of American history. It was a fire set intentionally on June 24, 1973, resulting in the death of one-third of their Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) congregation at the time. It was a fire so horrific that Courtney Craighead, the church’s deacon (who was standing nearby), couldn’t even speak about his memories of the event. There was a fire, the minister of the Metropolitan Community Church – a gay man named Dexter Brecht – preached to his small flock of gays and lesbians. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with Fieseler ( about the book. (Jack Thornell/AP) This article is more than 3 years old.Īuthor Robert Fieseler's book " Tinderbox" looks at the 1973 fire at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, which killed 32 people and put prejudicial beliefs against gay men in sharp relief.
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Most of the victims were found near the windows in the background. A view inside the UpStairs Lounge following an arson on June 25, 1973.