bars, we concluded that almost any act or conversation in a gay bar is sufficient for arrest and for use as data in revoking the license. There is also the question of the strict legality of ruses and ploys employed by these agents in their efforts to make a case against the gay bar. We ask: In playing their part in an endless crusade to enforce the so-called moral code of society, are these agents free from disposition toward prejudice or a tendency to deliberately distort and alter the facts just to get sufficient evidence to close the bar?

This, then, is the ninth great injustice: In order to make a case against a licensed public place believed to serve homosexuals or persons presumed to be homosexuals, plainclothes investigators employ methods of enticement and entrapment to secure "evidence" which is often proved false or irrele-

vant.

X

Although the ABC has repeatedly denied that it keeps files of charges on gay bars, or that such charges are being gathered against all gay bars in San Francisco, logic indicates that the entire truth is not being told. Somewhere a closed file or its equivalent, unavailable for public or legal scrutiny must be in the process of being assembled, for in many cases the dates of actual incidents used as evidence to suspend a license date far back into the bar's history. As we have stated, from our observation the standards of behavior in gay bars are equal to, if not higher than, those in most heterosexual bars; therefore unless we assume that carefully assembled files of charges are kept on such bars we are at a loss to explain the fact that almost all gay bars are eventually closed.

Since the files remain secret, since the undercover agents never report arrests to the bar owner, and since the ABC never publishes the charges until

14

action is taken to suspend or revoke the license, the owner of the bar is required to defend himself against accusations concerning acts which may have occurred months or even years earlier. Proper defense against such charges is then almost impossible. Indeed, in criminal court the charges against the person arrested and named in the ABC action are often dismissed for lack of evidence, but the arrest is still held against the bar. Such accusations, traditionally of dubious merit, are used at a cut-and-dried pro forma hearing where, almost without exception, they form the basis for the suspension of the license pending appeal. Appeals through the ABC almost always fail, and since actions on the constitutional issues in the civil courts are prohibitively expensive, most bars whose licenses are suspended are financially unable to fight for justice. Therefore they have no alternative but to go out of business.

The whole idea of suspending a license pending appeal seems to be a denial of due process. Unable to properly defend himself against vague and often uncorroborated charges of which he is unaware until his license is suspended, the licensee is found sufficiently guilty by the ABC to justify suspending the license, leaving him the almost impossible task of proving that he is innocent when in effect he has already been convicted. When we examined the actual court cases, the hearings and the appeals, we noticed that gay bars never seem to win reversals of any sort. As we have seen in the Black Cat case, those few that do fight their cases through the courts only achieve a temporary stay of execution. ABC pressure continues until something is found which will justify a revocation of the license. We feel the ABC is well aware that without funds the licensee cannot afford the great cost of taking the case into the courts where reversal might be possible. We