Pride Month and The Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights
Origins
June 28th,1969 marked the beginning of the six-day Stonewall uprising after the police raid of a popular gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in New York City. At this time, members of the same sex were banned from dancing with one another, or having any sort of sexual interaction and many gay bars were forced to operate wtihout a liquor license due to this. Laws like these gave the police an excuse to raid established gay bars, a very common occurrence at the time, during which they often used excessive force. It was because of this that gay bars were illicit and often, as in the case of the Stonewall, run by the Mafia.
Protesters in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots.
While raids were routine events at the Stonewall, this one was met with unusual resistance from patrons and employees, “The turning point came when the police had difficulty keeping a dyke in a patrol car. Three times she slid out and tried to walk away. The last time a cop bodily heaved her in. The crowd shrieked, ‘Police brutality!’ ‘Pigs!’ A few coins sailed through the air…escalated to nickels and quarters. A bottle. Another bottle. Pine says, ‘Let’s get inside. Lock ourselves inside, it’s safer.’” said Howard Smith in his account of that fateful night in Full Moon Over the Stonewall. Customers with identification slowly left to go outside to join the steadily growing crowd while the employees and more obvious lawbreakers such as “crossdressers” remained inside.
Said “crossdressers” were ordered by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine to be detained and several were caught and arrested. Resistance continued until around 4 am when crowds dispersed. Word of what happened at Stonewall sparked outrage across the city and by the evening of June 28th, thousands of protesters had gathered at Stonewall and the surrounding area. Protests continued throughout that week with another outbreak of violent protests occurring that Wednesday, July 2nd. A myriad of subsets of the LGBTQ+ community played major roles in the planning and execution of the Stonewall protests. Many of said communities were made particularly vulnerable to arrest and police brutality due to a specific law then-present in New York City’s penal code that made it illegal to wear fewer than three items of clothing of an individual’s assigned sex. Breaking this law meant you were subject to arrest and incarceration on the charge of “sexual deviancy.” It was for this reason that two drag queens were arrested at Stonewall.
Trans activists and drag queens, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, were both veterans of the Stonewall Uprising. Both went on to help lead the LGBTQ+ movement in New York.
Despite these arrests, “Many new activists consider the Stonewall Uprising the birth of the gay liberation movement. Certainly it was the birth of gay pride of a massive scale” said Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker in The Gay Crusaders. However, this was not an isolated incident, “Back then every night was Stonewall, that was our life.” said Jay Toole in an interview with the New Yorker. Some have described the Stonewall Riots as “the Rosa Parks moment of gay rights.” It drew support for the cause and would eventually spark change across the nation. When Stonewall occured, consensual sex between two people of the same sex were illegal in every state except Illinois. Weeks after Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed with the issues of bodily autonomy ie: sexual liberation, freedom from the draft, women's reproductive rights, freedom to take drugs without the threat of incarceration, economic freedom, as well as anti-racism in mind. GLF would grow to be an international organization and lead to the creation of the radical lesbian group, Lavender Menace. It would also ally itself with other activist groups such as the Black Panthers, help to organize the first pride, and create the newspaper, Come Out! which focused on LGBTQ+ issues.
The first pride was held on the first anniversary of Stonewall, June 28th, 1970, the main organizer was the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee (named for the street on which the Stonewall Inn is located). Their stated purpose was to “…commemorate the Christopher Street Uprisings of last summer in which thousands of homosexuals went to the streets to demonstrate against centuries of abuse….from government hostility to employment and housing discrimination, Mafia control of Gay bars, and anti-Homosexual laws” as was stated in their fliers. This march had an estimated turn-out of anywhere between 3,000 and 15,000 people. Although specific legal change (ie: marriage equality and the right to serve in the military) was the stated goal, the overturning of larger systems of oppression was the main purpose.
Legislation
In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association first listed homosexuality as a mental illness and the following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower placed a ban on gay people, or, as he called them, “people of sexual perversion,” from serving in federal jobs. This ban would remain in place for the next two decades. Initially, Illinois was the leader in gay rights legislation with the decrimminalization of sodomy in 1961. Conversely, New York City had particularly harsh laws concerning homosexuality, largely due to the large LGBTQ+ subculture that existed in the city, which allowed constant displays of police brutality to be directed at the community.
The 70s brought in previously unseen visibility to the LGBTQ+ community. In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko, an openly lesbian candidate, won a seat in the Ann Arbor city council, marking the first time an openly gay American would serve in public office. One landmark supreme court case in 1977 allowed a transgender athlete, Renée Richards, to compete at the United States Open as a woman. The first rainbow flag was designed by Gilbert Baker to serve as a symbol for LGBTQ+ pride, which was unveiled at a 1978 pride parade. In the subsequent year, over 100,000 people participated in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
The 80s, of course, marked the beginning of the AIDS crisis, which dealt a severe blow to the queer community. In 1981, the CDC published a report stating that one in five homosexual men had become infected with a rare type of pneumonia known as AIDS. Despite this, it would take about four more years for U.S. leaders to acknowledge the epidemic. Then-President Ronald Reagan did not so much as publicly mention AIDS until 1985, as a response to a reporter’s direct question. It was largely taken lightly prior to this, for example, in one 1982 press conference, it was referred to as “the gay plague,” which sparked laughter among reporters present. The reporter who asked the question concerning AIDS, Lester Kinsolving, was repeatedly asked by Press Secretary Larry Speakes whether he had “the gay plague.” The blasé attitude with which AIDS was treated reflects the cultural view of the queer community, especially that of the older conservative white men who, even now, maintain control of the government. It was this lack of empathy for the lives of queer people, particularly gay men, that led to a lack of funding for potentially life-saving research and made the crisis all the more severe. This meant community leaders were forced to take whatever steps they could in order to prevent the further spread of the epidemic until an adequate federal response plan was developed in 1985.
President Obama repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.
The Clinton era brought about a mixed bag of progress, particularly in the form of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a policy which allowed gay people to serve in the military so long as they kept their sexuality secret. This ultimately did little to advance the rights of the queer community in the military and over 12,000 officers had been discharged on the basis of refusing to hide their sexuality by the time it was repealed by the Obama administration in 2011. Ultimately, it took until June of 2015 for gay marriage to be legalized by the Supreme Court, which meant, although it was legal in most states at that point, it was now legal nation-wide. An excerpt from the court’s ruling read: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Present-Day Pride
Although advocacy is still a major part of pride month, as there is still a lot of progress to be made in the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights and recognition, it is also important to celebrate the progress already made. Sometimes, the most powerful kind of advocacy for a community is just showing joy, whether it be through parades, drag shows, or pride parties. The concept of queer joy is often talked about during pride month, it is the depiction and experience of happiness relating to the LGBTQ+ experience. A recent example of this is the popular Netflix show, Heartstopper, in which several queer relationships and characters are depicted positively and realistically, something that is often not found in media.
Rainbow capitalism is a prime example of how companies exploit instead of include the queer community.
However, there are ways to celebrate pride month incorrectly. A prominent form of this is “rainbow capitalism,” this is a form of facetious support for the LGBTQ+ community in which large companies show support for the cause only during pride month, when it benefits their bottom line. An example of this is the pride clothing collection that often does nothing to support the fight for queer liberation, but does pander to people wishing to show support to the community. There is nothing wrong, of course with buying a shirt that displays your pride in your own queerness or your support of others’, however, the idea that companies can profit off the community one month out of the year while the rest, they either do nothing for it, or worse, actively fight against it, is the larger issue. An alternative to this is supporting small businesses owned by real queer people. By doing this, it is possible to both increase queer visibility and support the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
If you are straight and cisgender, and you’re looking for the best way to support the community, not only this month, but year round, there are many ways to do so. Enacting change on the individual level is exactly how societal change happens, so use your privilege to uplift queer voices. Ultimately, hatred comes from a lack of understanding and empathy, while it’s naïve to think that everyone’s mind can be changed, trying to do so when given the opportunity is never not worthwhile.