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    Homestate Shame

    Bigotry lives on: Gay couple barred from dancing in a Texas country Western bar, told it's "unacceptable"

    Elizabeth Rhodes
    Dec 27, 2013 | 7:04 am

    After being ejected from a nightclub in Victoria — little more than two hours southeast of Houston — a young gay couple is trying to fight back against bigotry.

     

    Twenty-one-year-old Justin Meyer of Victoria and his boyfriend of nine months, 30-year-old James Douglas of Karnes City, were simply dancing to a country song at the Cactus Canyon Club when the couple was told by management that it was against the club's policies for two men to dance to country music together.

     

    "He told me they have a policy that states that they don't allow males to dance with males to country songs," Douglas tells KAVU-TV. "I said, 'Just country?' and he said, 'Yes.' "

     

    After the pair was told they couldn't dance together to country music, Douglas proceeded to close his bar tab and went to ask management for proof of the bar's policy. Meyer's request was quickly denied and the bar manager insists this is when a confrontation took place — although Meyer vehemently denies this — and that confrontation was the reason the couple was asked to leave the club and were issued a "no trespassing" warning.

     
     

      "It's not acceptable for men to dance together in the type of business that we run." 

     
     

    A corporate spokesperson for Cactus Canyon, Roger Gearhart, said that there is a policy prohibiting men from dancing together, but that the couple was asked to leave for being confrontational and disruptive and not because of their orientation.

     

    "For many decades, it's acceptable for women to dance together in all kinds of clubs, but it's not acceptable for men to dance together in the type of business that we run," Gearhart told KAVU.

     

    The openly gay couple says they were discriminated against for their sexual orientation. "Why should we feel like we are afraid to go out in public just because of the way we were born?" Douglas asks.

     

    This incident is just the latest high-profile incident of its kind.

     

    A Chicago taxi driver told a kissing gay couple to get out of his vehicle in October, as detailed by the Chicago Tribune.

     

    A janitor at an Oklahoma Walmart asked a gay couple to leave while they were buying cookies, according to a report by the Express-Star in Chickasha. The janitor was soon fired.

     

    A country-Western bar in San Antonio kicked out a gay couple for dancing and cited the same "safety reasons" provided by Cactus Canyon, according to QSanAntonio.

     

    Meyer says he had been visiting Cactus Canyon since he was 18-years-old. "I'm just kind of shocked," he says. "They know my face, I've been here hundreds of times and it was just really hurtful that we couldn't dance together."

    Justin Meyer and James Douglas were told to leave the Cactus Canyon nightclub after they danced together to a country song.

    Justin Meyer and James Douglas
      
    Photo courtesy of KAVU
    Justin Meyer and James Douglas were told to leave the Cactus Canyon nightclub after they danced together to a country song.
    unspecified
    news/city-life

    Flood News

    More rain brings further flood risk as Texas death toll tops 100

    Associated Press
    Jul 7, 2025 | 9:36 am
    Death Toll Rises After Flash Floods In Texas Hill Country
    Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
    Death toll rises after flash floods In Texas Hill Country

    With more rain on the way, the risk of life-threatening flooding was still high in Central Texas on July 7 even as crews searched urgently for the missing following a holiday weekend deluge that killed at least 100 people, including children at summer camps. Officials said the death toll was sure to rise.

    Residents of Kerr County began clearing mud and salvaging what they could from their demolished properties as they recounted harrowing escapes from rapidly rising floodwaters late July 4.

    Reagan Brown said his parents, in their 80s, managed to escape uphill as water inundated their home in the town of Hunt. When the couple learned that their 92-year-old neighbor was trapped in her attic, they went back and rescued her.

    “Then they were able to reach their toolshed up higher ground, and neighbors throughout the early morning began to show up at their toolshed, and they all rode it out together,” Brown said.

    A few miles away, rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain filled with snakes continued their search for the missing, including 10 girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp that sustained massive damage.

    Gov. Greg Abbott said 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.

    In the Hill Country area, home to several summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 68 people, including 28 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. Ten other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.

    The governor warned that additional rounds of heavy rains lasting into Tuesday could produce more dangerous flooding, especially in places already saturated.

    Families were allowed to look around the camp beginning Sunday morning. One girl walked out of a building carrying a large bell. A man whose daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.

    One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face as they slowly drove away and she gazed through the open window at the wreckage.

    Searching the disaster zone
    Nearby crews operating heavy equipment pulled tree trunks and tangled branches from the river. With each passing hour, the outlook of finding more survivors became even more bleak.

    Volunteers and some families of the missing came to the disaster zone and searched despite being asked not to do so.
    Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.

    President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit Friday: “I would have done it today, but we’d just be in their way.”

    “It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible,” he told reporters.

    Prayers from the Vatican
    Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared July 6 a day of prayer for the state.

    In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. The first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, saying, “I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.”

    Desperate refuge and trees and attics
    Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as rampaging floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics, praying the water wouldn’t reach them.

    At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs. Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp up the road.

    Two school-age sisters from Dallas were missing after their cabin was swept away. Their parents were staying in a different cabin and were safe, but the girls’ grandparents were unaccounted for.

    Warnings came before the disaster
    On Thursday the National Weather Service advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.

    Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

    Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said authorities are committed to a full review of the emergency response.

    Trump, asked whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that was something “we can talk about later, but right now we are busy working.” He has said he wants to overhaul if not completely eliminate FEMA and sharply criticized its performance.

    Trump also was asked whether he planned to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts.

    “I would think not. This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people there, and they didn’t see it,” the president said.

    deathsfloodingtexasweatherhill countrycamp mysticdisastersjuly 4 flood
    news/city-life
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