Where it all started. via sassy-sara @ flickr
Sunday will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City that are widely considered to be the catalyst of the modern American gay rights movement. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the popular Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village — a regular occurrence, as gay bars were an easy target for police shakedowns. Many patrons of these bars were anxious to keep their sexuality secret and would risk arrest on indecency charges if they were present during a raid, hence ensuring regular payoffs for corrupt police officers. The Stonewall raid began like any other, and this time the official reason for the police action was the illegal sale of alcohol. (One of many smokescreens employed to facilitate the raids.) The ubiquity of these kinds of police actions were marvelously demonstrated in the opening montage of the film Milk, where news clips and newspaper articles detailing arrests for “deviant” behavior show just how real the threat was of being subjected to criminal punishment simply for being gay, even in that reputedly most liberal of cities, New York. But this time, the raid did not go as scheduled. This time, the LGBT community fought back.
The gay rights movement in America before the riots was very low-key. The only association with any kind of influence was the Mattachine Society formed in 1950; they staged a “sip-in” at New York City bars to protest refusal of service to homosexual patrons. However, Mattachine was dedicated almost exclusively to the rights of white, upper-middle class gay men, and, in contrast to later out-and-proud organizations, its members frequently conducted business under aliases. The San Francisco-based Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955, was the most organized group that worked on behalf of lesbians; DOB was founded by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (Martin died last year, soon after marrying Lyon after decades spent together and before the passage of Proposition 8). Both Mattachine and DOB used conservative tactics and eschewed the more radical elements of the LGBT community that came to prominence following Stonewall.
The activist landscape changed irrevocably in 1969, when the Stonewall raid devolved into a riot. While patrons of the Stonewall Inn were being hauled out for arrest, ripples of resistance started to spread. The patrons targeted for arrest were frequently “butch” lesbians and drag queens, while the more “respectable” looking individuals were often left alone. None of this was new, but this raid was the final straw. There have been attempts of varying plausibility to explain why this one event tipped the balance, with one theory being that it was due to the fact Judy Garland died earlier that week. Seriously. Because apparently all queens go crazy when an icon dies. As Bob Kohler explains, “When people talk about Judy Garland’s death having anything much to do with the riot, that makes me crazy. The street kids faced death every day. They had nothing to lose. And they couldn’t have cared less about Judy. We’re talking about kids who were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Judy Garland was the middle-aged darling of the middle-class gays. I get upset about this because it trivializes the whole thing.” Really, is it so difficult to find an explanation here? People being systematically persecuted don’t really enjoy it. The dam finally burst, and it was bound to happen sooner or later, especially given the other civil rights movements and general unrest that permeated late 1960s America.
Instead of going quietly during the Stonewall raid, women and men started yelling throwing objects at the officers. The police were entirely caught off guard by this, as was New York at large. The gay community was not “supposed to” fight back. The riot, while not extremely violent, still lasted for hours and forced officers to take refuge inside the very bar they raided. After a while, and with the assistance of reinforcements, the crowd was scattered. But the unrest did not end there. The night of June 28, less than 24 hours later, a larger crowd gathered and protested again. Riots and protests of varying intensity continued through the first week of July. It seemed unbelievable to the rest of the city and country, as it was an accepted matter of course for so many non-LGBT individuals that gays and lesbians would just accept the discrimination handed out to them. The newspaper coverage of the event is filled with headlines such as “Homo Nest Raided! Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad!” (courtesy of the Daily News) or “Police Again Rout ‘Village’ Youths” (courtesy of The New York Times with ‘Village’ a synonym for ‘homosexual’).
In the wake of Stonewall, the entire tenor of the gay rights movement changed. Places such as Greenwich Village, and the Castro district in San Francisco, became havens for open, out-and-proud activism on a scale that had been unimaginable just a few years earlier. The first ever gay pride parade was held on the one-year anniversary of the riots, and four decades later the exact date or the month of June is still used for the pride parades for New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many more. The name “Stonewall” is a kind of shorthand for gay rights (and can be twisted, such as by an organization called Stonewall Revisited that urges gays and lesbians to choose Christianity over homosexuality). June was officially dubbed LGBT Pride Month by President Obama, following the earlier proclamation of it as Gay Pride Month by President Clinton.
It’s difficult to quantify exactly how much progress has been made in the past forty years. There have been innumerable setbacks and innumerable strides forward. For every Proposition 8 that breaks hearts, there are the actions of states such as Iowa and Massachusetts that do the right thing. Referenda in states such as Arkansas have banned gay couples from adopting. Gays are banned from serving openly in the military. Homosexuality is still a punch-line in mainstream entertainment. People can point to the fact that more public figures are “out” than could ever be imagined forty years ago (Ian McKellen, Rachel Maddow, Ellen DeGeneres, etc.), but a better barometer in my mind is the fact that there are still millions of people who think LGBT relationships, to say nothing of gay marriage, is immoral. There is still endless work to be done. Forty years out from Stonewall, there has been progress and there have been setbacks. Here’s hoping that when we reach the fifty-year mark in 2019, there will be even more progress to celebrate.
FURTHER READING
These are some of the best books I’ve read on American/NYC LGBT life, both pre, and post, and during the Stonewall era.
Stonewall by Martin Bauml Duberman
The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics
The Gay Metropolis by Charles Kaiser
Homophobia by Byrne Fone
I’ve been trying to think of a suitable comment on this post all day, and having trouble. Whenever I think about Stonewall, Milk, etc., I can’t stop my thoughts from straying to the 80s and AIDS. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to read And the Band Played On for a while now and haven’t gotten there yet. What really strikes me about those periods vs. right now is the anger. The anger is what made things change after Stonewall, and it’s what made things change in the 80s. Obama’s responding to the GLBT activists (slowly) because they’re getting angry at him. Maybe I’m just an angry person and it’s easier for me to believe in the power of getting mad over the power of being hopeful or the power of having the same reasoned debate over and over again. I don’t know.
Basically, despite my rambling, I’m trying to say: thank you for this post, I think this history is a really important one to discuss and think about.
baraquiel, you’re right about the anger. After a while, enough is ENOUGH (so said Samuel L. Jackson). I really hope that activists keep pushing for an end to ridiculous discrimination and for acknowledgement from our leaders that these issues are important and deserve attention.
I fear this anniversary will pass largely unnoticed by the population at large, because of the Jacko news. Which is sad, because it’s an opportunity for education. So thanks, SOALG!
I told s.o.l.a.g. that I loved this post in large part because I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know I didn’t know! I walk by Stonewall often on my way to work, and knew it’s history but didn’t know much about the history of gay rights.
@baraqiel: I love Obama, but he’s pissing me off with his slowness on gay rights. Maybe more anger is called for. I just hope it’s not anger provoked by a bad news, like Prop 8.
@baraqiel @ShinyObjects @Becky: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on all this. I have to admit I get tired of being told progress is slow and that patience is needed. I understand that fundamental principle, but it’s amazing how a blind eye is turned to equality when it comes to issues of sexual orientation and identification. Things are a lot better than they were in 1969, or even in 1999, but there is a hell of a long way to go.
Also, @baraqiel, And the Band Played On is a fabulous, necessary read. Randy Shilts also wrote The Mayor of Castro Street, which is the definitive bio on Harvey Milk.
Fantastic, informative post. As far as anger is concerned, social progress never occurs until the oppressed get angry.
It’s interesting how much of US individual-rights’ protection in the last century was driven by mobilization around collective identity. (I only learned about a month ago that NY Times v. Sullivan, that central free speech case, almost certainly came out the way it did because of the context: an attempt by Southern officials to shut down newspapers’ reporting on civil rights stuff through tons of libel lawsuits.)
And my sense is a lot of the ‘rights against compulsory patriotism’ stuff really originated in deference towards particular groups’ distinct traditions (Quakers, Amish). Stuff doesn’t stay in the Carolene Products Fn 4 box. And Lawrence v. Texas has some really fantastic stuff on liberty (rather than simply privacy) as a general presumption.
Anyway. I guess all I’m saying is that a lot of conservativish folks tend to see anything that looks like “identity politics” as scary, rather than seeing how important social movements are in making individual rights effective for everybody.
(Though it’s also true that identity-building can make things uncomfortable for those who don’t seem to fit … and even adding letters [GLBTQ...] doesn’t always help with this.)
Aaagh. Rambling! Okay, time to celebrate Pride at the Madonnathon. =)
I’m all about being pro-active. For those looking to get involved, visit http://www.couragecampaign.org .
@x. trapnel: Though it’s also true that identity-building can make things uncomfortable for those who don’t seem to fit … and even adding letters [GLBTQ...] doesn’t always help with this. YES. And as a “B” woman in the acronym equation, I can vouch for the trickiness of the identity politics within the LGBT community, let alone the world at large.
Thank you, S.O.A.L.G for this post. It had been a tradition in my family to go to the NY pride parade, because I have an aunt who is gay.This was my mother and my aunt’s way of exposing my brother and I to the fact that it wasn’t just my aunt or her friends who were gay, it was MANY people, and normal. Once my mother passed, I stopped going. This year, I am going. I will probably cry my eyes out, but I am going.
[...] Raid on Fort Worth Gay Bar on the Anniversary of Stonewall 28 06 2009 Today is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a 1969 riot in which patrons of the Stonewall Bar fought back against police brutality and harassment against gay people by the NYPD. A raid of the Stonewall Bar by police turned into a riot and is widely considered to have been a major catalyst for the modern US gay rights movement. Sarah.of.a.lesser.god has a good post about remembering Stonewall on The Pursuit of Harpyness blog. [...]
Baraquiel, I’d say that anger is not the opposite of hopefulness. If you’re beyond hope, you’re passive and indifferent. It’s disappointed hope that spurs the righteous anger we need to make changes, so keep that anger up! (In moderation, of course. Too much anger burns you up.)
NY Magazine just had an interesting piece on anger and the lack of it among older and younger gays and lesbians: http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2009/57467/.