<strong>The long read</strong>: A police raid on a gay bar New York led to the birth of the Pri movement half a century ago – but the fight for LGBTQ+ rights go back much further than that
Contents:
- PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
- 18 ANTI-GAY GROUPS AND THEIR PROPAGANDA
- A DOZEN MAJOR GROUPS HELP DRIVE THE RELIG RIGHT’S ANTI-GAY CSA
PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
* radical lgbt groups *
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.
Wh a sgle lifetime, homosexualy has moved om beg a crime and a psychiatric disorr, punished the US by imprisonment, chemil stratn, social ostracisatn and a lifetime as a registered sex offenr, to a socially and legally regnised sexual inty. 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.
18 ANTI-GAY GROUPS AND THEIR PROPAGANDA
A small terie of groups now prise the hard re of the anti-gay movement * radical lgbt groups *
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. 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.
A DOZEN MAJOR GROUPS HELP DRIVE THE RELIG RIGHT’S ANTI-GAY CSA
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.
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.