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California's District Court of Appeals recently struck down the license suspension of a bar in Oakland, closed in 1956 by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control "because its patronage consisted almost exclusively of homosexuals and lesbians." The court opinion, reversing the ABC suspension, and reaffirming the rights of homosexuals as citizens, can stand as a strong legal precedent in other states as well as California.

The 1956 closing of the bar, the First and Last Chance, had been vigorously pushed, along with other raids, closings and spyings, by the state Attorney General's office as part of a campaign to "clean up on perverts" in the state, a campaign which was felt primarily in the Bay Area. And perhaps former Attorney General Pat Brown, now Governor of California, felt the need of some group to crusade against in his campaign for the gubernatorial office without running the risk of losing many votes he even got mine, I must say. Pat Brown is too canny a politician to alienate any group he expects might exert any appreciable

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political influence, on one side or the other.

But the closing of the First and Last Chance, also known as "Mary's Bar." flew in the face of a 1951 decision of the California Supreme Court which had held that homosexuals, as "members of the public of lawful age have a right to patronize a public restaurant and bar so long as they are acting properly and are not committing illegal or immoral acts; the proprietor of an establishment has no right to exclude or eject a patron 'except for good cause,' and if he does so without good cause he is liable to damages." (Stoumen v. Reilly.)

In the 1951 Stoumen case, involving the Black Cat, a colorful bar at 710 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, which has for over thirty years been one of the country's most interesting bohemian-gay bars, the high court upheld the civil right of homosexuals to gather in a bar, and to use it as a meeting place, providing they did so for the purpose of eating or drinking.

After suitable squawks from the Attorney General's office, the Legis-

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