SOAP II

Saturday, February 4, 1984
The Concert Hall

Following the success of the first Soap dance, the GCDC held their second dance in remembrance of the 1981 bathhouse raids, Soap II, in February 1984. 

Although police never raided a GCDC dance, their presence was regularly felt by organisers and participants. Undercover police officers would infiltrate GCDC dances, looking for drugs or other infringements in an effort to shut down the dances.

"We had some police going undercover checking us out. We always got through it okay. The police never closed us down but we knew they were in there looking around, to see what they could drag us down with. This is in that same time period as the gay bath raids. The police were definitely against the gay community as a whole, they saw us as some alien force that needs to be squished. Having the police in there was like having a snake around your feet. You just didn’t know what was going to happen. They were just really monstrous, 52 division. The plain clothes officers were just like mafia, they'd look for anything at all. We had a liquor licence and we posted it behind the bar and that’s one way we would know they were there because they would go up and look at the liquor licence. If the liquor licence was not right, they were going to close the dance down on the spot, right away. It’s just the way it was. I have dreams where I can’t find the liquor licence, ‘Where is it? I know it’s somewhere, I just can’t find it and it has to go on that way otherwise I’m going to be in so much shit, the thing will be closed down.’"

- Rob Stout, GCDC Organizer

The GCDC had volunteers who would work as security at the dances. One of their roles was to discourage patrons from bringing in outside liquor or drugs that could give police reason to shut down the dances. However, the security methods employed by the GCDC were, at times, contentious. In 1983 the GCDC briefly switched the security system; instead of volunteers, they employed “specially trained” security. At a subsequent GCDC meeting, the Right To Privacy Committee (RTPC) raised concerns about the change in security methods, noting that “patrons are looked at as ‘potential troublemakers’” and that one Security member wore a “white shirt emblazoned with the fascist SS symbol of Nazi Germany.” One dance attendee reported being “trailed” by security at the dance, and informed organisers he was “highly insulted,” requesting an apology. Although this patron was not granted an apology, GCDC organisers abandoned this problematic security system, returning to the previous volunteer-run system. The GCDC was the only group the Masonic Hall permitted to provide their own security force.