<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
- ROBERT SHEEHAN DON'T WANT HIS UMBRELLA AMY CHARACTER TO BE LABELLED AS JT "THE GAY ONE"
PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI
* the gay umbrella *
Over the past week New York Cy, hundreds of homosexuals had fought police a week-long rt Greenwich Village, followg a botched police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-n bar equented by LGBTQ+ people. And secretly wh myself I cid that when I me back stati, if I should survive to e back stati, I would e out as a gay person. Followg this explosn of rage, LGBTQ+ people New York and further afield transformed the small pre-existg gay rights 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. As the gay rights movement grew, so did the march, which me to be llectively known as Gay Pri and then Pri paras. 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.
ROBERT SHEEHAN DON'T WANT HIS UMBRELLA AMY CHARACTER TO BE LABELLED AS JT "THE GAY ONE"
To relig and cultural nservativ, Pri paras are nothg ls than the public flntg of viancy, while many LGBTQ+ people regard today’s rporate-sponsored paras as havg sold out the radil, revolutnary mands of the gay liberatn movement. Those who were key to the kickstartg of gay liberatn – trans people, people of lour and workg-class LGBTQ+ people – have gaed the least om the mastreamg of the stggle.
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.
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. When gay people began anisg the US after the war, they were forced to start aga om first prcipl, wh only a vague awarens of Hirschfeld’s Hirschfeld, an early mpaigner for gay rights.