Proposed smoking ban a sticky issue for gay bars.

Redrant: Umm! I don't have any reason to frequent gay bars but my urban Minneapolis Longfellow neighborhood has a significant number of gays and lesbians. Good neighbors but they mostly older GLBT's do tend to disproportionately smoke. One reason might be the bar culture and another is the low number of children they have.

My district's former state representative Alan Spear was was the first openly gay state level elected official in Minnesota, perhaps one of the first in the US. Spear retired a few years ago but I remember him as a strong supporter of the bar culture, and not just gay bars.

I talk mostly with "baby boomer" age gays and lesbians who are appalled by the "Nanny state" tactics in places like San Francisco with it "vanguard" smoking bans. I always thought that the gay rights movement was, to a high degree high jacked in a stealth manner by the far left Marxist/Socialist/prohibitionist types. BTW: I find that most of these older gays very easily take the "hint" that you are not gay. This might be an extreme case of the old maxim "politics makes for strange bedfellows". Greg Lang

http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_9591.php


From DallasVoice.com
TexasProposed smoking ban a sticky issue for gay barsBy John Wright - News EditorAug 14, 2008 - 8:27:08 PM
Dallas Tavern Guild forms committee to study pros and cons of prohibiting smoking


The bar at Throckmorton and Maple is the only Dallas Tavern Guild member club without a patio. - BEN BRISCOE/Dallas Voice

Gays are 40 to 70 percent more likely to smoke cigarettes than straight people, studies have shown. However, the LGBT community is also disproportionately affected by HIV, meaning it’s more vulnerable to the negative health impacts of secondhand smoke. At the same time, bars and clubs traditionally have played a huge role in gay culture.Given all this, it’s no surprise that a proposed ban on smoking inside their businesses is an extra-sticky issue for members of the Dallas Tavern Guild. “We don’t have one single club where either every customer smokes or no customer smokes,” said Michael Doughman, executive director of the Tavern Guild, an association of 20 local gay and lesbian bars. “It’s money out of their cash register either way they go, and that’s why they don’t want to be the one to make the statement.”

Although Tavern Guild members are reluctant to take a position on the proposed ban, they did decide Aug. 7 to set up a three-person committee charged with drafting a list of the association’s concerns. After it’s finalized in the next few weeks, Doughman said members will submit the list individually to their representatives on the Dallas City Council. Although the full council is expected to take up the proposed ban by the end of the year, it has yet to be publicly discussed by the quality of life and government services committee. “There are just a myriad of things that have no focus at this point, and we have no idea what the committee is writing, but we’re going to submit the issues that we think are important to us and would definitely impact our business,” Doughman said. “There’s just a laundry list of things we discussed.”

At the top of the Tavern Guild’s list is ensuring that outdoor patios are exempt from the ordinance. Only one bar that’s a member of the Tavern Guild, Illusions, is known to lack a patio. Other concerns include minimizing the distance from entrances and exits within which smoking is prohibited, allowing the sale of cigarettes by bars, and ensuring that the ordinance is uniformly enforced. Doughman said it’s likely that if all of the Tavern Guild’s issues are addressed, a majority of members will support the proposed ban. Still, despite pressure from city officials to do so, the Tavern Guild may not make a formal endorsement. It’s an issue of semantics that stems at least partly from the Tavern Guild’s decision to back a similar proposal five years ago.

The decision angered members who opposed the ban — which was eventually scaled back to include only restaurants — causing a rift within the association. “It’s not appropriate for me to lump all of my members into a blanket statement,” Doughman said, adding that he doesn’t plan to identify which members support the proposal. Alan Pierce, co-owner of the Round-Up Saloon and treasurer of the Tavern Guild, is heading up the committee formed by the association last week. Asked whether he supports the ban, Pierce would only say that he’s “open to it.”

However, he added that he believes the ban is inevitable because a majority of council members have expressed their support. “I think we’re all convinced that it’s probably going to happen,” Pierce said. “If it has to happen, we want to be on the inside track and have some say in the writing of the laws to help protect our smoking customers.”

Eddie Bonner, the owner of Illusions, is fighting the ban because he fears it would put him out of business. Bonner said there’s no room to add a patio at his four-year-old establishment on Maple Avenue, where he estimates that 90 percent of customers smoke. Nevertheless, Bonner said he plans to work with the Tavern Guild.

“My position really hasn’t changed any as far as being adamantly opposed to the whole thing, but this will at least give me an opportunity to have my concerns presented through an organization of other bars,” Bonner said. “It may carry a little bit more weight than speaking on my own behalf.”

Get informedFor more information on groups that are fighting the proposed ban on smoking in bars, go to www.myrightstexas.com. For information on the health impacts of smoking on the LGBT community, go to www.lgbthealth.net.
E-mail wright@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 15, 2008