The Deadliest Attack on Gays Before Orlando Was Treated Like a Joke

“Where do you bury the ashes?” the joke started.

“In the fruit jar.”

“Did you hear about the weenie roast?” went another.

They were jokes made in response to what was the deadliest attack on gays in American history until the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando last week: the UpStairs Lounge arson in 1973 that killed 32 people.

“It was a record none of us wanted us broken,” said Frank Perez last Sunday night at a vigil of nearly 300 people for the 49 victims in Orlando. Many of the mourners were from the New Orleans’s LGBT community who gathered on the Mississippi River levee near the Governor Nicholls’ Street wharf in the French Quarter.