Criminality is in the eye of the beholder - The mob facilitated the New York gay bar scene

'Respectable', 'progressive' New Yorkers wanted to suppress homosexuality for the homosexuals own 'good'.  So the mob stepped in to provide them with places to go and meet in safety.  Today 'progressive' and 'respectable' opinion believes that you shouldn't drink, smoke, take drugs, own guns   and so on and so forth unless some guild member or government apparatchik says so.  In every case when the progs and respectables get together to 'save' us, cruelty and violence ensues.  And more often than not, the mob is on the side of the Angels.

Al Capone was just a bad guy, Elliott Ness was the bad guy.  Hattip Carpe Diem.

4. Never Underestimate the Profit Motive – Gay bars used to be either illegal or at a minimum, a business subject to relentless harassment. As far back as the 1930s, it was the mob that gave homosexuals a place to mingle, hook up and eventually coalesce as a movement — by running the New York City’s underground gay bars. Where most New Yorkers saw deviance, the Mafia saw profit.