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At 10 pm on July 1, a police detail described by the ACLU's Peter Simonson as "a SWAT team in full battle regalia" went storming into Pride Gym, a men's health club and spa at 1803 3rd Street NW in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A regularly scheduled Saturday night after- hours party had begun an hour earlier. State and local police were accompanied by fire inspectors and licensing personnel.

Spokesman Peter Olson of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety (DPS) later told reporters that the raid occurred in the course of an alcohol crackdown. Officials say the police used "standard force."

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Staff and patrons disagree. About 40 men, some in their 60s and 70s, some naked or wearing only towels, were made to lie face down on the floor while officers bound their hands behind their backs with plastic handcuffs. Witnesses recall derisive and abusive language. Unverified reports that a man in a leather harness was led into a room and photographed by a laughing female officer have elicited cries of " a gay Abu Ghraib."

Pride Gym owner Dave Bedford, who was not working on the evening of July 1, arrived at the after-hours party shortly before the raid took place. "I went into shock," Bedford says. "I was just coming in from the hot tub area, and there they were. I was told to hit the floor. They cuffed me, and a young female cop stood over my head with a semi-automatic rifle. They stepped over me and kicked in a door without even trying the lock."

Bedford, 65, was placed in a squad car, then released. One customer was arrested; five more were cited for drinking at an unlicensed establishment. Gym manager Ron Cordova, 27, who had hosted the party, was arrested on a felony charge of unlicensed sale of alcoholic beverages. The charge was based on the presence of beer and wine at a supper event where patrons paid an $18.50 door charge. Police had been able to gain legal entry using a warrant for Cordova's arrest, since merely being near alcohol violated the terms of his probation following a drug conviction.

Gays = high crimes?

Police detectives grilled patrons about the availability of drugs, especially ecstasy, on the premises. Bedford and others say they were asked repeatedly about child pornography. Officers seemed especially interested in locating the club's nonexistent stash of kiddie porn, or in catching patrons in possession of such material.

"There was nothing to trigger that line of thinking," says Simonson, executive director of the New Mexico ACLU, "except the idea that at any gathering of homosexual men, child pornography must be part of the deal."

The club's library of standard, legal gay adult videos was confiscated. The club's computers were also seized, along with backup software. In addition to membership and financial data, the main computer contains surveillance camera recordings, including views of the actual raid. As long as these recordings remain in the hands of police, official accounts may be difficult to challenge.

Fire marshals found enough minor code violations to shut the club down temporarily. Bedford says the club, a ten-year-old operation with a membership list of about 100, was back up to code within 24 hours. It was not permitted to reopen, however, until July 10.

The raid seems to have been the upshot of police interest in the Pride Gym's ad on the back page of the Alibi, Albuquerque's weekly alternative paper. Print ads have touted the gym's Friday and Saturday "Hot After-Hours" parties since October 2004. Despite claims from DPS that the mere existence of such parties suggested the presence of alcohol, the Pride Gym's advertising has been devoid of any reference to alcoholic drinks.

Two undercover officers scouted the establishment prior to the raid. Bedford believes they attended the club's recent Pride Fest. In their subsequent report, the investigators luridly describe men having sex, and state that "sending us into this place again puts us or any other undercover officer in danger of sexual assault and/or great bodily harm and/or injury."

Many are convinced the raid was precipitated by the investigators' exposure to gay men having consensual sex in private, a spectacle that has-- since 2003, when the US Supreme Court voided state sodomy laws-- been making guardians of the public morals heartsick with helplessness.

Licensing or fire-code crackdowns are tried-and-true pretexts for shutting down establishments where men meet for sex. The Pride Gym raid recalls such incidents as the October 1999 raid on Boston's Safari Club, closed for drug and alcohol violations after officials found two butyl nitrate vials and an empty vodka bottle on the premises.

The ACLU is expected to represent Pride Gym in civil rights aspects of the case, and perhaps on some of the criminal charges. Peter Simonson calls the raid "aggressive in the extreme" and "outside the bounds of constitutional propriety."