Party and prott: the radil history of gay liberatn, Stonewall and Pri | LGBTQ+ rights | The Guardian

Contents:

• INSI THE FIRST PRI PARA—A R PROTT FOR GAY LIBERATN
• REMEMBERG THE 1970 CHRISTOPHER STREET GAY LIBERATN DAY MARCH
• LGBTQ HISTORY MONTH: THE ROAD TO AMERI'S FIRST GAY PRI MARCH
• PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
• GAY RIGHTS
• WNS THE BIRTH OF PRI: FOOTAGE OF THE FIRST GAY LIBERATN DAY MARCH (1970)
• GAY PRI
• FIRST GAY LIBERATN DAY (GAY PRI MARCH) NEW YORK CY
• HOW ACTIVISTS ORGANIZED THE FIRST GAY PRI PARAS

INSI THE FIRST PRI PARA—A R PROTT FOR GAY LIBERATN

” The same day, a small group of San Francisns marched down Polk Street, then had a “gay-” piic that was broken up by equtrian and other New York groups had spent months planng the Manhattan event wh the help of anizers like Brenda Howard, a bisexual activist who had cut her anizg teeth durg the anti-Vietnam movement of the late 1960s. The Stonewall Uprisg wasn’t the only prott durg that time (nor was the most tense, that signatn go to the Snake P rt), though 's remembered today as a turng pot the LGBT civil rights weekend brgs another 50th anniversary, this time of the para—the first gay rights march, held on June 28th, 1970, and now a centerpiece of Pri weekend New York Cy. And if we hadn't done that, nobody would remember the Stonewall today, ” said Karla Jay, a former women’s and genr studi profsor at Pace Universy, and the first woman chair of the Gay Liberatn says that wh a few days of Stonewall, flyers were already circulatg llg for a new kd of movement that wasn’t pole, and wouldn’t stay the shadows.

Each week’s feature will clu imag om the New York Public Library’s LGBTQ week, we look back at the untry’s first gay pri march — held New York Cy on June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rts — and what led up to that historic Saturday morng on June 28, 1969, police staged a raid at the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-n gay bar New York Cy's Greenwich Village neighborhood. The sign the wdow reads: “WE HOMOSEXUALS PLEAD WITH OUR PEOPLE TO PLEASE HELP MAINTAIN PEACEFUL AND QUIET CONDUCT ON THE STREETS OF THE VILLAGE — MATTACHINE” Diana Davi / New York Public LibraryJt a few days after the Stonewall Rts, gay activist Frank Kameny load up a b wh fellow activists and head down to Philalphia for the fifth “annual remr” picket prott outsi Inpennce Hall.

“I thk that was probably Frank’s first realizatn that this was a new orr, thgs were changg, ” Farman days after the "annual remr, " on July 6, 1969, the New York tabloid The Daily News ran a homophobic article about the Stonewall raid by Frank Lisky, tled “Homo Nt Raid, Queen Be Are Stgg Mad.

REMEMBERG THE 1970 CHRISTOPHER STREET GAY LIBERATN DAY MARCH

”Activists Lda Rhos, Arlene Khner, and Ellen Davi / New York Public LibrarySoon after the 1969 "remr", four activists — Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Lda Rhos and Ellen Broidy — cid to attend a regnal “homophile” nference and “propose that the staid ‘annual remrs’ of homophile pickets at Inpennce Hall Philalphia, held every July 4 for the prev five years, be replaced by a march New York Cy, " Farman men were members of the Homophile Youth Movement Neighborhoods, and the women members of Lavenr Menace. The march stretched 15 blocks — three quarters of a e — at s longt, The New York Tim march end Central Park's Sheep’s Meadow, where the Tim wrote marchers "gathered to prott laws that make homosexual acts between nsentg adults illegal and social ndns that often make impossible for them to display affectn public, mata jobs or rent apartments. Pl Hoton reported the Los Angel Tim on the “hour-long, e-long procsn” down Hollywood Boulevard: “Sunday eveng had many thgs — joyo monstrators for sexual rights and digny, some sual attire, others briefs, ‘queens’ drag, ‘fairi’ wh paper wgs, clowns, leather-jacketed motorcyclists, a lbian on horseback, a python, whe hki, Amerin flags, hilar and somber signs and chants, a float pictg a homosexual nailed to the cross.

Soon they were advotg nothg ls than “gay liberatn” nscns-raisg groups to fundraisg danc, protts outsi hostile newspapers to refug for homels trans and queer people, this surge LGBTQ+ anisg took many forms, and as the first anniversary of the rts me to view, some the muny began discsg how bt to mark what was beg regard as the “Bastille day” of gay rights. The roots of that bate go back to s earlit days, and suggt that Pri and the Stonewall rts have always been part of a ntent battle for inty and ownership – a battle that has helped produce the very ia of what beg a lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr or queer person might Stonewall rts were not the birth of the gay rights movement.

LGBTQ HISTORY MONTH: THE ROAD TO AMERI'S FIRST GAY PRI MARCH

Seven years before that, when police had raid Coopers, a donut shop the cy ntled between two gay bars, LGBTQ+ patrons had attacked officers after the arrt of a number of drag queens, sex workers and gay had been a gay rights movement the US among people scribg themselv as “homophil” sce the late 40s. Hirschfeld’s scientific approach, bed wh his sympathetic treatment of LGBTQ+ people – he was himself homosexual – had been key velopg the ia that their shared experienc uld be unrstood not jt as discrete sexual (and crimal) acts, nor as psychiatric illns, but as a legible sexual and genr inty, which uld be afford civil rights.

) The Mattache Society had radil roots activism, takg on the anisatnal stcture of cells and central anisatn favoured by the Communist well as publishg magaz for gay men, and supportg victims of police entrapment, the society had wir polil aims, cludg to “unify homosexuals isolated om their own kd” and to “te homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethil homosexual culture parallelg the cultur of the Negro, Mexin and Jewish peopl”. Such aims would bee key to the ncept of “gay pri” some two s two s, however, would be among the harst for LGBTQ+ people US history, as the greater visibily of the homosexual inty led to a nservative backlash, and a moral panic the media that was palised upon by policians. Ironilly, sackg 5, 000 feral employe and thstg them out of the closet, the red-baers provid a new hort of activists for the homophile movement, such as the army map service astronomer Frank Kameny, who voted the rt of his life to the LGBTQ+ e.

PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI

After he was forced to appear before the Hoe Un-Amerin Activi Commtee, Hay was expelled om the Mattache Society, now a growg anisatn of a few thoand men, and he wasn’t the last radil to be thrown homophile movement began to tackle “subversive elements” and orient self around rpectabily.

In 1966, the Mattache Society challenged this policy wh a “sip-” at Juli’, a Greenwich Village bar that was popular wh gay men, but was attemptg to shake off s homosexual bars equently flouted this law, explog legal loophol and payg off the NYPD while chargg their LGBTQ+ ctomers high pric for watered-down drks.

Dpe his own rervatns about the place, Mattache activist Dick Lesch, wrg jt a month after the rts, acknowledged how Stonewall was more than jt a dance bar, terg for those “who are not wele, or nnot afford, other plac of homosexual social gatherg”. When, ncerned by the ongog unrt, members of the society pated on the board-up wdows of the Stonewall “WE HOMOSEXUALS PLEAD WITH OUR PEOPLE TO PLEASE HELP MAINTAIN PEACEFUL AND QUIET CONDUCT ON THE STREETS OF THE VILLAGE – MATTACHINE”, their ll went unheed.

GAY RIGHTS

As the Eastern Regnal Conference of Homophile Organizatns me together for a meetg November 1969 to discs the followg year’s Annual Remr, Rodwell wonred whether a memoratn of the rts – one whout a drs or other rtrictns, and that uld be mirrored across the natn – might not be more suable. At the same time, there were tensns around the excln of trans people, many of whom scribed themselv as queens and transvt, the language of the LGBTQ+ scene at the time, even while still intifyg themselv as “gay” umbrella, which brought people together for the e of liberatn, failed to acknowledge the different experienc of those who sheltered unr , or addrs the power imbalanc wh .

It wasn’t until the 00s, though, that rporate sponsorship began to overwhelm Pri, as more fundg led to larger and larger events, which LGBTQ+ people are now often charged to the late 90s, some US activists created Gay Shame rponse to Pri’s mercialisatn, an event that foced on anisg around wir issu that affected the whole LGBTQ+ muny. Dpe the radil LGBTQ+ anisg that took place rponse to the Aids crisis – where Pri paras beme a loc for awarens-raisg protts – many more-radil activists felt that, wh creasg rporate volvement, the event was beg taken over by liberal activists wantg to assiate queer liv to beg a “mol mory”, wh marriage and ary service beg a symbol that gay people particular had “ma ”. Gay assiatnists want to make sure they’re on the wng si the cizenship wars, and see no need to nont the legaci of systemic and systematic US opprsn that prevent most people livg this untry (and everywhere else) om exercisg their supposed ‘rights.

WNS THE BIRTH OF PRI: FOOTAGE OF THE FIRST GAY LIBERATN DAY MARCH (1970)

This is te, of urse – but then the same uld be said for the US’s close regnal ally, Sdi Rsia, both fascists and relig fundamentalists have found attempts to anise Pri march a potent rallyg ll, mobilisg wispread homophobic feelg by claimg that homosexualy is, sence, a rptg import om the wt. In Poland, natnalist and nservative policians have found electoral benef siar statements; only last year Jarosław Kaczyński, lear of the lg Law and Jtice party, scribed LGBTQ+ activism as a “foreign imported threat to the natn” e of such rhetoric across the world, and the history of European exportatn of homophobic laws, means that attempts by liberal, pro-LGBTQ+ mentators the wt to pict other untri as somehow naturally backwards is often dangeroly unterproductive for LGBTQ+ people those untri. Army service World War I, Gerber was spired to create his anizatn by the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, a “homosexual emancipatn” group ’s small group published a few issu of s newsletter “Friendship and Freedom, ” the untry’s first gay-tert newsletter.

Ernment signated Gerber’s Chigo hoe a Natnal Historic Pk TriangleCorbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, gay rights movement stagnated for the next few s, though LGBT dividuals around the world did e to the spotlight a few example, English poet and thor Radclyffe Hall stirred up ntroversy 1928 when she published her lbian-themed novel, The Well of Lonels.

Addnally, 1948, his book Sexual Behavr the Human Male, Aled Ksey proposed that male sexual orientatn li on a ntuum between exclively homosexual to exclively Homophile Years In 1950, Harry Hay found the Mattache Foundatn, one of the natn’s first gay rights group. ”Though started off small, the foundatn, which sought to improve the liv of gay men through discsn groups and related activi, expand after foundg member Dale Jenngs was arrted 1952 for solicatn and then later set ee due to a adlocked the end of the year, Jenngs formed another anizatn lled One, Inc., which weled women and published ONE, the untry’s first pro-gay magaze. Post Office, which 1954 clared the magaze “obscene” and refed to liver Mattache Society Mattache Foundatn members rtctured the anizatn to form the Mattache Society, which had lol chapters other parts of the untry and 1955 began publishg the untry’s send gay publitn, The Mattache Review.

GAY PRI

That same year, four lbian upl San Francis found an anizatn lled the Dghters of Bilis, which soon began publishg a newsletter lled The Ladr, the first lbian publitn of any early years of the movement also faced some notable setbacks: the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn listed homosexualy as a form of mental disorr followg year, Print Dwight D. ”In fear of beg shut down by thori, bartenrs would ny drks to patrons spected of beg gay or kick them out altogether; others would serve them drks but force them to s facg away om other ctomers to prevent them om 1966, members of the Mattache Society New York Cy staged a “sip-”—a twist on the “s-” protts of the 1960s— which they vised taverns, clared themselv gay, and waed to be turned away so they uld sue.

They were nied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Juli, rultg much publicy and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor Stonewall Inn A few years later, 1969, a now-famo event talyzed the gay rights movement: The Stonewall clanste gay club Stonewall Inn was an stutn Greenwich Village bee was large, cheap, allowed dancg and weled drag queens and homels the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York Cy police raid the Stonewall Inn. 1 / 12: NY Daily News Archive/Getty ImagChristopher Street Liberatn Day Shortly after the Stonewall uprisg, members of the Mattache Society spl off to form the Gay Liberatn Front, a radil group that lnched public monstratns, protts and nontatns wh polil officials.

Siar groups followed, cludg the Gay Activists Alliance, Radilbians, and Street Transvt Actn Revolutnari (STAR) 1970, at the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rts, New York Cy muny members marched through lol streets memoratn of the event.

FIRST GAY LIBERATN DAY (GAY PRI MARCH) NEW YORK CY

Addnally, several openly LGBTQ dividuals secured public office posns: Kathy Kozachenko won a seat to the Ann Harbor, Michigan, Cy Council 1974, beg the first out Amerin to be elected to public Milk, who mpaigned on a pro-gay rights platform, beme the San Francis cy supervisor 1978, beg the first openly gay man elected to a polil office asked Gilbert Baker, an artist and gay rights activist, to create an emblem that reprents the movement and would be seen as a symbol of pri. In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn published a report about five prevly healthy homosexual men beg fected wh a rare type of 1984, rearchers had intified the e of AIDS—the human immunoficiency vis, or HIV—and the Food and Dg Admistratn licensed the first mercial blood tt for HIV 1985.

But after failg to garner enough support for such an open policy, Print Clton 1993 passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which allowed gay men and women to serve the ary as long as they kept their sexualy a rights advot cried the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, as did ltle to stop people om beg discharged on the grounds of their 2011, Print Obama fulfilled a mpaign promise to repeal DADT; by that time, more than 12, 000 officers had been discharged om the ary unr DADT for refg to hi their sexualy. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially repealed on September 20, Marriage and Beyond In 1992, the District of Columbia passed a law that allowed gay and lbian upl to register as domtic partners, grantg them some of the rights of marriage (the cy of San Francis passed a siar ordance three years prr and California would later extend those rights to the entire state 1999) 1993, the hight urt  Hawaii led that a ban on gay marriage may go agast the state’s nstutn.

HOW ACTIVISTS ORGANIZED THE FIRST GAY PRI PARAS

In 1994, a new anti-hate-crime law allowed judg to impose harsher sentenc if a crime was motivated by a victim’s sexual Matthew Shepard ActCourty of the Matthew Shepard FoundatnMatthew Shepard, who was btally killed a hate crime 2003, gay rights proponents had another b of happy news: the U. Gay rights proponents mt also ntent wh an creasg number of “relig liberty” state laws, which allow bs to ny service to LGBTQ dividuals due to relig beliefs, as well as “bathroom laws” that prevent transgenr dividuals om g public bathrooms that don’t rrpond to their sex at birth. On November 2, 1969, jt 4 months after the Stonewall rts Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Lda Rhos of the newly formed Gay Liberatn Front proposed the first “gay pri para” which was then lled the “CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY MARCH.

Michael Evans/The New York TimJune 27, 2019When we hear of Pri march today, we tend to thk of fs and feathers, of men more than half-naked wavg om rabow-hued, Lurex-draped para floats, of Dyk on Bik who gun their motors fiance of genr norms, of wavg gay and trans celebri. They are fitas that perlate through the ci and sometim small towns of the veloped world, as well as some parts of the rt of the world, and they mark the fact that gay people exist numbers, provi documentary evince that we have more fun and are more fabulo than anyone else, that we are gay the old sense of the word. ” The piece argued that homosexualy, “is a pathetic ltle send-rate substute for realy, a piable flight om life, ” addg that “ serv no enuragement, no glamorizatn, no ratnalizatn, no fake stat as mory martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differenc taste — and, above all, no pretense that is anythg but a pernic sickns.