[Cooper:] The timing of the attack on Pulse Nightclub during gay pride month has many people on edge for obvious reasons. The massacre has prompted the FBI to issue intelligence bulletins to gay clubs in the Orlando area, the aim to just heighten awareness. Were told there's no credible specific threat of an imminent attack. The fact is though past attacks on gay nightclubs haven't been proceeded by threats. When hit strikes tends to catch victims off guard. Randi Kaye tonight looks back.
[Randi Kaye, Cnn Justice Correspondent:] This was the scene back in 1973. The Upstairs Lounge, a gay club in New Orleans, Louisiana in June that year, an arsonist poured lighter fluid on the stairs leading to the club then rang the doorbell. Flames swept inside some fled others got trapped by windows covered in bars. The bartender reportedly helped 20 people escape but unintentionally locked the fire escape door so the fire wouldn't spread, trapping everyone else inside.
[Ronnie Rosenthal, Survivor:] Everybody was screaming. Everybody was just like so confused. Several people had jumped out of windows hurt fatally or hurt.
[Kaye:] 32 people died. By the time firefighters got inside, bodies were piled up at windows, many left unclaimed, victims who had never come out to family members. Family members were then too embarrassed to bury them. Police reportedly never actively pursued the case, no one was ever charged in the attack. In 1980, a New York City gay bar became a target, the suspect reportedly aimed and fired his oozy at men standing in line at the Ramrod Bar. One man died instantly another died at the hospital others were left bleeding and wounded on the sidewalk.
[Jim Levin, Gay Activist:] They say that we should wait, we should just be quiet, moron people.
[Kaye:] Before the shooting, the gunman reportedly said, "I'll kill them all, the gays, they ruin everything." The suspect was found not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect and put in a secure psychiatric hospital. He died last year. In Roanoke, Virginia, the Back Street Bar came under attack in September, 2000.
[Unidentified Male:] He was randomly shooting, he was that that simple and, you know, several people were hit and I guess everybody was scramming to try to get out of the way.
[Unidentified Female:] The suspect had conversations yesterday along the lines of wanting to find some gay people and shoot them. And his arm was up like this. The gun was pointing down and he just started firing.
[Kaye:] One man was killed, six others we're wounded. "The Washington Post" reported that the suspect always hated his last name which happened to be gay and the taunting that came with it. He was sentenced to four life terms. In Seattle, the Neighbors Nightclub was another terrifying scene. A man had chosen the busiest night of the year, New Year's Eve, to set fire to the club as revelers rang in 2014, flames appear just after midnight.
[Unidentified Male:] And we saw a smoke, we can feel the heat and make in the ceiling.
[Kaye:] Staff and clubgoers got to fire out quickly and everyone more than 700 people escaped. The suspect claimed he didn't remember setting the fire, but the judge concluded he had done it because he disliked gays. A friend had reportedly told investigators that the suspect had once said homosexual people should be exterminated. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.
[Cooper:] We watched Randi's reporting, given to what happened here, you might be tempted to say, will hate endures. And yes, it does, what happened Sunday morning is the latest proof. But here's what's different in 2016. Take a look at this photo, It's taken Sunday at the Los Angeles, gay pride parade, just hours after the killings at Pulse. That's the chief of LAPD standing next to the mayor who's holding a sign of "Support for Orlando" and there at the gay pride parade. Joining me now on the phone is Andrew Sullivan, contributing editor at New York Magazine. It is different now, Andrew when you think about the generations of gay people who've been attacked at gay clubs, gay clubs which used to be raided by police, and it was the only place gay people really can congregate, and it was illegal for them to congregate and even dance together. To you, what is the progress? What is the difference?
[Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine, Contributing Editor:] Well, someone, if you think of still well in 1969, you had a bunch of cops raiding and rushing a bar in order to arrest the gay people inside it. And in 2016 you have a bunch of cops rushing a bar to save the gay people inside it. And that's a, you know, that's a huge difference. Also as we know, what happened to those people in the Austin fire or in the shooting in New York in 1980. They were quickly forgotten. No one talks about them. People almost embarrassed. Sometimes their families wouldn't even pick up the body. And now we have a recognition at least that we are human beings, and especially in a moment like this, and in a place like this. If you take, you know, when you think about it, when you think about this young Latin men and I saw their pictures and read their profiles that the people who'd been murdered, when you think about their lives and you realize that of all the places they could have felt safe, this was probably the safest place they knew. And this man went into that almost sacred space and laid waste to them in the most horrifying way because they're gay or they were gay or he thought that they were gay. And yeah, go on.
[Cooper:] I think a lot of people who are not gay or lesbian in this country or even around the world may not understand the role a gay bar can play and young gay person's life in particular. And I think we all are as gay people, we all remember the first gay bar we have already went to and then suddenly being in a place where you could look somebody else in the eye without fear of attack, where you saw yourself in their eyes and them returning your stare. And you could meet people. Some of my closest friends are people I met in gay bars when I was much, much younger. It there is a role that these bars play in particularly in young gay people's lives.
[Sullivan:] Yeah, I mean, I met my husband on the dance floor, I mean, we meet each other there, and when we grow up, and then we come out, when we come of age from the experience that first liberation, that's where we feel it. That's where we feel the freedom, sometimes for the first time, sometimes around people that we don't have to hide anything from. And so, I think there were a lot of gay people are experiencing this week and I feel it kind of sinking in, if that they come into that sanctuary and they destroyed it, well, they robbed it of its innocence. And you know, that's to me we're not going back there. I hope we all go back there and stay there. But it means something horrible has been done to our psyche and to our community. And it breaks a lot of people's hearts to understand that we in the people would then suddenly trying to politicize it, or exploit it in some way. It's just, it just the poem and just look at the faces of people who were the victims of this.
[Cooper:] The other thing I think some people may not understand, is why, why do you need a gay bar to go to, to meet other people and have a sense of safety. And I keep thinking coming back to trying to explain to people, you know, how many times do you actually see gay people on the street holding hands with each other? How many times do you actually see gay people in an airport, kissing each other goodbye or hello just like everybody else? Even as far as things have come in this country, there are still many places were we have to edit ourselves in public spaces on the streets.
[Sullivan:] Yes, and of course there's always the threat of some violence hanging in the background if you are to do that and these places are definitely its safer places to do that. And that is a huge thing as well here, although again it's night and day compared to 20 years ago or 30 years ago, it's really is.
[Cooper:] Sure.
[Sullivan:] But that makes this all the more poignant and also of course, this man himself was clearly had some complicated issues with sexuality. This is not easily fit into the template of a sort of radicalized ISIS members attacking random people. This is someone also obviously dealing in some way with his own demons. And now way that this was someone that was on that part of us, some within us to destroy this out of and the source was again people don't focused on the source of that is religion. It is what our faith has been telling us about our worth and equality as gay human beings. And especially fundamentalist is wrong and I obviously the vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims do not feel in any way like this about gay people. That the ability of a few to use religion in this way to attack a group of people, specifically to the this group of people, and this is an attack on gay people and on homosexuality itself. We've got to come to terms with the religious origins of some of the hatred and tackle it in our own community in our state community and churches and definitely within Islam itself.
[Cooper:] I was talking to a council woman here who was saying that, you know, there was a church service where faith leaders who previously had not spoken and, you know, positively in any way about gay and lesbian people were embracing gay and lesbian people, and she saw that is a sign of progress. We've seen politicians who've traditionally have not spoken in a positive way about gay and lesbian Americans and the fought for against, you know, a gay equality and equality for that and marriage equality, coming forward, being very public. Do you think that's a good thing?
[Sullivan:] It has to be a good thing, Anderson. I mean, anything that gets people to see the humanity of these people. Sometimes it is a horrifying fact that it takes to see human beings gunned down in their own safe space to realize, "Man, these people are human too." Of course the deaminization of these people is wrong and of course things I've said in the past, was done in the past, does isn't, wasn't as sensitive to them as human beings, it needs to be corrected. So I, you know, you could and your right to hold people account their past but we have to also welcome them if they're truly allies again in the struggle.
[Cooper:] Andrew Sullivan, it's always good to talk to you. I appreciate you being with us. Thank you. Up next, another tragedy, another grieving family just down the road from here at Disney World. The latest when 360 continues.