Gay Liberatn Front | gay rights anizatn | Branni

Contents:

• PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
• GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• UNTEND NSEQUENC: THE LEGACY OF THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT
• THE GAY LIBERATN MOVEMENT
• GAY RIGHTS
• THE HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN
• INSI THE FIRST PRI PARA—A R PROTT FOR GAY LIBERATN
• HISTORY HAS OVERLOOKED THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT’S ROLE STONEWALL … UNTIL NOW
• GAY LIBERATN FRONT
• STONEWALL AND ITS IMPACT ON THE GAY LIBERATN MOVEMENT
• THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT'S SOCIAL REVOLUTN

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

Image source, NY Daily News Archive / GettyImage ptn, Tensns rose on the street after the raidWhen half a dozen police officers raid a Mafia-n gay bar on a hot New York night 50 years ago, ltle did they know their actns would spark a movement that rhaped the liv of generatns to didn't throw a brick that night.

GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

An hour earlier, the police had raid the bar Greenwich Village for the send time that week, but this time on a Friday night at 1am when was 200 ctomers - lbians, gay men, transgenr people, naway teenagers and drag queens - were thrown out on to Christopher Street.

UNTEND NSEQUENC: THE LEGACY OF THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT

Gay people were ed to nng om the police, but this time they were the on on the advance and the men uniform on the gay rights movement didn't start that night but was vigorated by what happened the hours and days after the first was thrown. Two years later, about 100, 000 people took part a natnal march on Washgton - probably at that pot the biggt gatherg of gay people of the anti-sodomy laws were stck down the 1980s, makg homosexualy effectively legal, although was s before gay marriage beme a ferally-regnised right 2015.

"Image source, Getty ImagImage ptn, The Natnal March On Washgton filled the famo mallIt wasn't the first gay uprisg agast the police - as the LA Tim recently relled, the police were pelted wh donuts 10 years earlier - but was the most nsequential.

THE GAY LIBERATN MOVEMENT

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. 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.

GAY RIGHTS

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.

THE HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN

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”.

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

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.

HISTORY HAS OVERLOOKED THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT’S ROLE STONEWALL … UNTIL NOW

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 .

GAY LIBERATN FRONT

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.

STONEWALL AND ITS IMPACT ON THE GAY LIBERATN MOVEMENT

In recent years accatns have been ma that Pri has bee part of a “homonatnalist” project, where the victori won by LGBTQ+ activists sce the 50s, the face of wispread opposn and hostily, are now portrayed as evable products of a natnal culture. 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.

THE GAY LIBERATN FRONT'S SOCIAL REVOLUTN

Leonard Fk Photographs, The LGBT Communy Center Natnal History ArchiveMark SegalEarly member of the Gay Liberatn Front and marshal of the first Pri marchThe Christopher Street Gay Liberatn Day March was as revolutnary and chaotic as everythg we did that first year after the Stonewall rts. ” Today, my origal marshal’s badge is on display the JayEarly member of the Gay Liberatn Front and Radilbians and -anizer of the first march New York and Los AngelIt was a near miracle that the first Christopher Street Wt Para Los Angel kicked off at all on June 28, 1970. For one day, we were victor agast the Ed Davis of the world, and no one seemed “dismod” the FkelsteJohn KyperEarly member of Boston’s Gay Liberatn Front and an anizer of Boston’s first Pri ParaWe held our first march Boston 1971 — a year after New York.