Madonna is dead and gays are terrorists (the Stonewall Riots and the origins of Gay Pride)

Picture this: Madonna just died. The power gays were all at her funeral, and you and your friends, who all watched it on TV, really just need a drink to take the edge off.

image from futuremusic.com

But gays aren’t so free. In fact, the government is putting known homos on terrorist watch lists, and most of America sees no problem with this. Also, you’re not out at work because it’s common practice to fire known homosexuals. And drag is illegal. Thankfully, straight guys are still wearing skinny jeans, so you can still show off the results of all the squats you did at the gym.

You only have one bar that allows dancing. It’s owned by the mob, and it’s totally underground. It’s a fucking pit, but it’s all you've got. And your fruit fly (I really hate the term fag hag)… she can’t get in.

You’re drinking. They’re playing Madonna hits. One of your friends is sobbing.

Out of nowhere, the music is cut, and the lights come on. Someone behind you slurs, “Ugh, another raid.” You know the drill, so you and your boys line up against the wall with your IDs in your hand. But one of your friends keeps patting his pockets. He doesn’t have his ID. One police officer is going down the line, and a female cop is hauling drag queens and transsexuals into the bathroom to “verify their sex” to see if they get arrested. Your friend is in total panic mode because they usually take men with no ID to jail.

Everyone exhales in relief when the officer just tells him he has to leave.

You, being a good friend, decide to leave with your friend, and on the way out, you notice a crowd gathering. There are more police outside. And about 10 feet away, you notice a lesbian in handcuffs struggling with the police. You don’t know her name, but you’ve seen her week after week on the Scene. An officer hits her with a club. She looks at the crowd, and, for a half second, directly at you. She screams, “Why don’t you guys do something!”

Why don’t you.

image from boulevardier4eva.wordpress.com

This sounds weird, but this is more or less how things went down at the Stonewall Riots. But instead of Madonna, it was Judy Garland who had just been buried. All kinds of ridiculous laws were in place, including that cross-dressing was illegal and that women had a quota of 3 “feminine” articles of clothing. I was tired of my vague familiarity with the origins of Gay Pride (and the constant chiding of older and more cultured gays), so I finally looked it up. Here’s a basic rundown.

The Mob owned Stonewall, and police, who were paid off weekly, did regular raids of the club. There was no running water behind the bar (clean glasses?), no fire exits, and people reported that the toilets running over was no rare occurrence. To get in, you had to talk to a bouncer through a peep hole. If he didn’t recognize you, or if you didn’t look gay enough (looking gay could get you arrested, btw), you weren’t getting in. There was a $3 cover in exchange for 2 drink tickets (to this day, The Hangar in the West Village has a curtain at the entrance and gives a drink ticket with their $5 cover on weekends).

Garland’s funeral was on a Friday, and about 1:30am, police came to raid Stonewall. Things didn’t exactly go as planned, and one of the patrol wagons hadn’t shown up yet. A crowd started to gather. The police were harassing and brutalizing a lesbian on the street who was actually putting up a fight. She turned to the crowd and said, “Why don’t you guys do something!” When an officer picked her up and shoved her into the back of a wagon, the shit hit the fan, and the crowd went off.

Police ended up barricading themselves inside the bar with the drag queens and transsexuals they had detained. People started throwing bottles, bricks, and trashcans at the door. Someone even rammed it with an uprooted parking meter!

image from broadwayinchicago.wordpress.com

When reinforcements finally showed up, they basically formed a moving human wall to clear the streets. And how did they gays respond? Kick lines. Yes, lining up in front of the police, doing high kicks, and singing parodies. This only incited more police violence against them.

The conflict went on til about 4am, and in the aftermath, people saw an immediate chance on Christopher Street: people were out in the open, displaying their homosexuality.

The next morning, Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant distributed thousands of leaflets calling for gays to boycott mafia-run bars and own their own establishments. We didn’t even own our own underground bars (at least not many of them)!

On Saturday night, there was another riot, but this time, it was more of a takeover of all of Christopher Street. People were smashing police cars, rocking busses, and blocking traffic the whole night.

There was tension between the conservative gays, who wanted to show that homosexuals were just like the rest of society, and the radicals, who wanted action immediately. In an annual picketing demonstration in Philadelphia the following week, conservative activists were outraged when Rodwell got couples to hold hands during the demonstration. But they got more press than any previous year.

image from theboweryboys.blogspot.com

On June 28^th 1970, the first gay pride march took place in NYC to commemorate the first anniversary of the Riots. And there was no violence. The New York Times covered the march on its front page, and The Village Voice, which protesters almost burned down after their unfavorable write-up about the Riots the year before, had a favorably report as well. It really blows my mind how brave those first marchers were to be out on the streets demonstrating at that time, not knowing how they’d be received by the general public. In his proposal, Rodwell stated:

That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged-that of our fundamental human rights-be moved both in time and location. We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.

image from about.com

So this parade that we all celebrate and get drunk for and run around in our underwear for has some really solemn roots. Don’t get me wrong: I want everyone to be loud, push barriers, and show their non-conformist pride! But remember that those of us in big cities enjoy a lot of privileges that gays in other parts of the country and other countries don’t have.

So have a happy and safe Pride this weekend. And after you sober up, write a congressman. Give money to a gay project (iamfromdrifwood.com is one of my favs). Because 1969 wasn’t so long ago, and the fight for equality isn’t over.

Okay, I’m not even gonna act like I was the least bit intellectually or academically responsible with this: I looked it up and paraphrased from Wikipedia. But homo-neurotic.com recommends the 82-minute documentary Stonewall Uprising, playing at Film Forum at 209 W Houston St, NYC through June 29^th.

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