What Life Was Like for Gay Amerins Before Stonewall

Contents:

• 'THEY BEAT YOU WH THEIR BATON': A VETERAN OF THE STONEWALL RTS AND THE FIRST PRI MARCH SHAR WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE FOR GAY AMERINS BEFORE THE UPRISG
• GAY RIGHTS BEFORE STONEWALL
• #FLASHBACKFRIDAY – THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT. [VTAGE VIO CLIPS]
• PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
• THE STONEWALL RTS DIDN’T START THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

'THEY BEAT YOU WH THEIR BATON': A VETERAN OF THE STONEWALL RTS AND THE FIRST PRI MARCH SHAR WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE FOR GAY AMERINS BEFORE THE UPRISG

1965: Philalphia – Dewey’s Rtrant S-InDewey's rtrant Philalphia, Pennsylvania as appeared May April 25, 1965, the 17th Street lotn of Dewey’s rtrant Philalphia nied service to approximately 150 people who appeared to be gay or genr non-nformg. McDarrah/Getty ImagAfter pourg their drks, a bartenr Juli's Bar ref to serve John Timms, Dick Lesch, Craig Rodwell, and Randy Wicker, members of the Mattache Society who were prottg New York liquor laws that prevented servg gay ctomers, 1966. McDarrah/Getty Imag)In sprg 1966, members of the early gay rights anizatn Mattache Society staged a “sip-”—a twist on “s-” prott— which they vised taverns, clared themselv gay, and waed to be turned away so they uld sue.

In a letter to Hirschfeld, she said: "It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are ught a world which shows so ltle unrstandg for homosexuals and is so crassly different to the var gradatns and variatns of genr and their great signifince life.

Amelia Earhart and openly gay reporter Lorena Hickok are jt two of the women wh whom former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was mored to have had closeted affairs, the latter wh whom she exchanged more than 3, 300 letters over a 30-year perd; Roosevelt and Hickok allegedly began an affair om 1932 to 1938. There has been extensive speculatn about the former first lady's sexualy over the years, however, some have argued 's irrelevant when discsg her ntributn to the gay rights movement, particularly given her posn of power.

GAY RIGHTS BEFORE STONEWALL

What began as a safe space for women to meet whout the risk of police raids at gay bars quickly morphed to a full-blown polil anizatn that created other polil offshoots cludg The Ladr—the first natnally distributed lbian publitn—which enuraged women to "take off their masks. "If you had told me s ago that the gay liberatn movement would get to this pot, where we'd go om beg arrted, evicted, fired om our jobs for beg gay to now the Supreme Court lg we n't be discrimated agast at work, I wouldn't believe you! In the Tim, John Harwood ntrasted the black and femist movements whose history go back long before the Civil War wh “the morn fight for gay rights” which he believ is “ls than a half-century old, datg om the 1969 Stonewall uprisg  New York.

Ostensibly memoratg the birth of the gay liberatn movement, Pri also pots to the outsize fluence of Stonewall as a sgular talyst for sparkg LGBTQ yet, there were activists advotg for LGBTQ Amerins s before the gay liberatn movement of the 1960s. This history has been largely fotten, bee their work was tied to a radil social movement criqug to the Cold War and the “Red Sre, ” gay rights activists ma a lculated cisn the 1950s to cut ti wh this movement and to purge this history om the story of the fight for LGBTQ rights.

#FLASHBACKFRIDAY – THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT. [VTAGE VIO CLIPS]

While that strategy might have been polilly advantageo for some, reclaimg radil queer history is sential to unrstandg the full spe of LGBTQ liv and polics the 20th 1932, leftist journalist John Ptman published “Prejudice Agast Homosexuals” his radil Black newspaper, the Spokman. “What Negro and homosexuals both sire, ” Ptman wrote, “is to be regard as human begs wh the rights and liberti of human begs, cludg the right to be let alone, to enjoy life the way most agreeable and pleasant, to live secure om terference and sult. As a Black leftist who was mted to revolutnary polics, Ptman well unrstood how prejudice stctured Amerin life, and he was unyieldg his opposn to all s reason that leftists — munists, socialists, anarchists and labor anizers pecially — ncerned themselv wh sexual polics was bee radils often found themselv shared urban spac wh gay men and lbians, notably lol YMCAs and public parks.

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

Acrdg to Jim Kepner, a gay leftist journalist, plac such as Pershg Square Los Angel were available for “public open-air bate, officially signated as a ‘ee speech area, ’ ostensibly ee om police harassment of people whose views they might fd offensive, and also popular for gay cisg.

THE STONEWALL RTS DIDN’T START THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

In fact, sexualy and munist leangs were both thgs that kept people such man was Ted Rolfs, a member of the Mare Cooks and Stewards (MCS), a radil labor unn that was well-known the 1940s for s disproportnately Black and gay membership. ” Gay men such as Will Aalto and David McKelvy Whe joed ternatnal soldiers the Abraham Lln Briga to fight fascism the Spanish Civil 1951, was out of this populist i that a group of former munists built on their experienc opposg fascism to form Mattache, an anizatn explicly advotg for gay rights.

But s fluence was no ls signifint shapg the fledglg homophile movement, an emergent terie of new anizatns sharg the goal of advancg gay rights through full-throated claims to and anti-munist nservativ voked historil nnectns between radils and gay men and lbians to discred both groups.

While earlier leftists had fold gay men and lbians to a movement advotg for the end of predatory palism, the advance of racial jtice and the liberatn of the workg class, the homophile movement sid wh those who saw gay rights as disnnected om broar revolutnary stggl. Her discharge om the ary over her homosexualy had turned her to an Tob/The New York Public LibraryPublished July 19, 2023Updated July 23, 2023Lilli Vcenz, who beme a gay rights activist the hhed, reprsive era before the Stonewall rebelln of 1969, when such a ncept srcely existed, makg a mark as a newspaper edor, documentary filmmaker and psychotherapist voted to L.

Vicenz beme, by most acunts, the first lbian to picket the Whe Hoe support of equal rights for gay people as a member of the Mattache Society of Washgton, an early gay rights prott — the first of s kd, acrdg to the Library of Congrs — and others that followed were small but brought visibily to a movement s fancy.

Vcenz beme the first out lbian to appear on the ver of a natnal gay magaze, The Ladr, a publitn produced by the untry’s first lbian-rights group, the Dghters of Bilis, acrdg to a retrospective on her life and reer by Lillian Farman, a historian of lbian and gay her scbbed, all-Amerin looks, Dr.