'Butterfly Brigade' memories: SF survivors of anti-LGBTQ+ violence recall group's power
As we recognize Pride Month in the Bay Area, celebrations are tempered with the reality of massive amounts of anti-gay legislation peppering lawmakers' desks and the headlines. Worse, the Human Rights Campaign, an organization advocating for equality and protections for LGBTQ+ people, says last year saw an epidemic of violence, especially against the trans and gender non-conforming people in our communities.
Many survivors of violence in the Bay Area are gone, with few remaining to tell their stories. One survivor is Steven Eubanks, a former drag entertainer whose days in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood in the 1970s proved dangerous.
"It was dangerous. You didn't know when it was going to happen," Eubanks told this reporter. "People followed you to beat you up on the bus. They would say 'Let's go beat a queer.' They called us faggot all the time. People in cars. People would yell and throw things, spit at you. You don't engage, you keep going."
For a time, Eubanks says that's all he and others like him could do, put their heads down and not engage. Eubanks says police were no protection for LGBTQ+ people. He even says some police were the aggressors.
"We couldn't get police protection because we were homosexuals," he said.
So Eubanks joined a little-known group: The Butterfly Brigade.
"We took it on ourselves," he said. "We were basically drag queen vigilantes."
The group carried whistles. Eubanks said Mayor George Moscone gave him his whistle, which quickly went into service. Eubanks remembers nights when whistles sounded all through the Castro District, a cue for men everywhere to come running to save someone like them from violence.
"You could hear the whistle two or three blocks away," he said.
When I asked Eubanks what he feels when he pulls out the whistle he still carries, he began to cry.
"I feel power. Power ... I'm sorry."
Eubanks' day in the Castro telling his story quickly revealed contemporaries in his experience. A man named Paul Ellis also began to cry when seeing the whistle.
"I had one too," said Ellis, a store worker where Eubanks used to buy material for drag. "I saw somebody knocked down, mugged. They had taken his wallet, ripped his back pocket off pants, clubbed him leaving gashes on forehead."
These days, Eubanks and Ellis say renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ people and their allies could once again result in violence.
"Freedom is a fragile thing," said Ellis, "that means you can't afford to stop paying attention."