Stonewall Then & Now

This weekend we celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots that took place in 1969 and are credited with launching the modern gay rights movement. However the gay rights movement, or homophile movement as it was known then, began much earlier.

The earliest known gay rights organization in the United States, The Society for Human Rights, was founded in 1924 in Chicago but was shut down by the police after only a few months. Little else is known about the early pioneer of gay rights.

The first sustained gay rights organization was The Mattachine Foundation, organized in Los Angeles in 1950 by Harry Hay and seven other gay men and all were thought to be either communists or radicals. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went from village to village advocating against social injustice. In 1951, the organization began sponsoring discussion groups to raise consciousness among gay men. For many, this was the first time in their lives they could openly share their feelings and experiences. In the early 1950s these discussion groups began to spread throughout the U.S. They even began to organize social events and fundraisers as well as publish newsletters. Their newsletter, named One, is the earliest known gay publication. In 1951 Mattachine adopted two major purposes: it called for a grassroots effort to challenge anti-homophile discrimination and it also called for building a positive homosexual community and culture. Besides raising consciousness through its discussions and publications, Mattachine began to legally challenge the entrapment of gay men by law enforcement officials and even began to question political candidates on the homosexual rights issues.

In 1953, when U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy started his communist witch hunts, an article linking Mattachine to communism shook up the group. Many of the group's members were upset that their organization might be linked to communism so the more conservative members of the organization took over, the original founders resigned and the name of the organization was changed to The Mattachine Society. The goals of the revamped organization changed from claiming a minority status and building a thriving gay community to assimilation of homosexuals into mainstream society. Their form of activism was to represent homosexual men as no different from any other white, middle-class men. Homophiles were portrayed as being non-threatening and upstanding members of the community and only differed in what they did in the bedroom. And though the organization provided moral support for homophiles, it was unsuccessful in changing public opinion and folded in the mid-1960s.


In 1967 the first student gay rights group was started at Columbia University by student Stephen Donaldson, who labeled himself a bisexual. After facing harassment and discrimination for being honest about his sexual orientation he formed a Mattachine-like group, the Student Homophile League, that promoted gay rights. The SHL attracted negative attention from the media, however it inspired other groups to form in the country's universities. In 1968 a second gay rights university group was started at Cornell University by Jerald Modenhaurer who proclaimed that “the mere presence of such an organization will help to stimulate a more honest, healthy attitude about homosexuality.”
Despite all the hard work and determination of these groups, it took the death of a singer/actress and a little bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City to bring gay rights to the forefront of American conscience.

In the '60s police raids on gay bars were commonplace. Many such bars were controlled by the mob and others operated illegally without liquor licenses. The State of New York routinely cancelled liquor licenses of bars that catered to gay and many more were raided because they attracted the homosexual community. In New York City at that time, it was illegal for a person to wear the clothing of the other gender and it was illegal for two men to dance together.


Tensions were high early in the morning of June 28, 1969 in a small bar known as Stonewall Inn. One of the homosexual community's favorite divas, Judy Garland, was buried earlier that day and many homosexuals decided to convene at the Stonewall Inn to memorialize her death. The crowd gathered was not one to be messed with that night.  Stonewall Inn was an easy target for the police since it operated without a liquor license, had ties to organized crime and had almost naked go-go boys as entertainment. The Stonewall Inn was a frequent hangout for Black and Latin gay men, many of which were drag queens and transgendered. Stonewall was also frequented by gay men who worked on Wall Street.


Usually, because of mob ties, bar owners were warned ahead of time of a raid by informants inside the police department, but not this time. At 1:20 in the morning, eight police officers entered the bar with a warrant to cease all sales of illegal alcohol. The customers were forced to show identification and names were being taken as they were removed from the bar. Many were arrested. The crowd outside became angry and violence erupted. Bottles and rocks were thrown at the police. A parking meter was even used as a battering ram by the protesters. People were being thrown into the police van or dragged back into the bar by the police and beaten up.

Word spread throughout the gay community and others showed up to defend the rights of bars and the customers. The police became greatly outnumbered and retreated back into the bar for their own safety. The mob trapped the original eight officers in the bar and tried to set the bar on fire. More police were called to the scene to handle the crowd and additional protesters kept arriving. Eventually the protesting crowd was so strong that each time police would disperse the mob a new group of protesters would re-form behind their backs, preventing them from actually breaking up the riot. Protesters continued throwing bottles and lighting fires around the Inn. Police attempted to capture some of the violent rioters. If the rioters did not act fast enough, they were pushed and shoved and even clubbed to the ground by officers. Protesters in the crowd began to scream "Gay Power!”
On the first night alone, 13 people were arrested and an unknown number of protesters were injured. It is known that at least two rioters were severely beaten by the police. The crowd, estimated at over 2,000, fought with more than 400 police officers. The hours of rioting and protesting turned into days. While less violent than the first night, the crowd had the same energy as it had on the previous night. Skirmishes between the rioters and the police ensued until approximately 4:00 a.m. There was a break of a couple of days, then five days after the raid on the Stonewall Inn 1,000 people congregated at the bar and again caused extensive property damage.


After decades of mistreatment, the gay community would no longer simmer, it had exploded in force. A few weeks later in July, the Gay Liberation Front was founded in New York to actively and publicly protest government restrictions and laws against homosexuals. By the end of the year GLF chapters had been founded in Canada, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Australia and New Zealand.
The following year, the first gay pride march ever was held. Up to 10,000 men and women marched New York City from Greenwich Village near the Stonewall Inn to Central Park on the anniversary of the riots. Additional gay pride marches were held that date in other American and European cities on the same day, the weekend before and the weekend after. The in-your-face gay rights movement had begun and the month of June officially became known as gay pride month.

The gay rights movement was in full swing and the name Stonewall became the rallying point. And though the Stonewall Inn was closed in 1969 (later to reopen) the word Stonewall became synonymous with gay rights. Though with limited success, openly gay men and women ran for and won political office and entered other realms of politics. In 1998 an LGBT-rights group in the United States formed the Stonewall Democrats (affiliated with the Democratic Party). The group was founded by U.S. Representative Barney Frank, a gay Democratic member of congress from Massachusetts. The British have a gay rights group named Stonewall. There is a Stonewall and Moose Lounge in Allentown, PA and a Stonewall Hotel in Sydney, Australia. A film produced in 1995 dramatizing the riots was called Stonewall.


In 1999, the U.S. government proclaimed the Stonewall Inn as a national historic site. The following year, the status of the Stonewall was improved to "historic landmark," a designation held by only a small percentage of historical sites.

Many additional gay rights organizations formed throughout the U.S. The Lambda Legal Defense Fund was established to protect gay individuals' legal rights. P.F.L.A.G. is a gay rights group of parents and friends of gay individuals. The Human Rights Campaign Fund was established to promote and support gays wishing to run for public office. Many additional organizations, too numerous to list here, formed locally, nationally and internationally.

Gays were even recognized as television characters. One episode of the hit television series “All in the Family” had a gay character. But the first regular openly gay character was in 1977, when the ABC television network premiered it's hit series “Soap”, which had the first weekly main character on television, Jody Dallas, played by comedian Billy Crystal.

And though gays became visible everywhere in American society, it took a new generation of straight Americans to better understand and accept the gay lifestyle to be as normal as breathing air. This was accomplished, in part, through the cable television network MTV. MTV started moving away from an all-music video format to offering original programming. One of its earliest shows was the reality show, “The Real World”, where seven strangers are put into a house to “live together and work together and have their lives taped.” When the show first premièred in 1992 it introduced Norman Korpi, the first gay housemate in the New York apartment. There have been at least a dozen other openly gay housemates on the show through the years. MTV and “The Real World” showed that gay and straight people can live together harmoniously.

It's been 84 years since that first organization, The Society for Human Rights, and next year will be the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. We've come a long way. True, many are still looking forward to gay marriage while others are looking forward to serving in the armed forces as being openly gay. Perhaps we cannot be as open about our sexuality in the smaller farming communities as we can be in the large cities, but progress is measured step-by-step and we've made giant leaps over the past few years.