Stonewall gay riots

Was anyone at the infamous Stonewall riot gay riots?
Just reading the fascinating history behind it.

Next month June 28 will mark 22nd Anniversery.

It happened on june 28th 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

[jinks]

In Birmingham Today and tomorrow the rememberance of these riots are enacted in the Pride Parade and festival in and around the Gay quarter...... http://www.birminghampride.com/


sorry I'm late see you there.....

http://www.nightingaleclub.co.uk/userfiles/Image/template/bannerad.jpg

[thonglor55]

As I recall the trigger for the Stonewall riots was the police trying to move on some drag queens who were mourning the death of Judy Garland. Those who despise cross-dressing forget how much we owe those brave "girls".

Thonglor your right actually,apparently a lot of gay people attended the Judy Garland funeral only to be bashed by the Police on exit. :whdat:
Wow,things that happened in the past !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Rich poor drag butch gays stood together"

[kittyboy]

Sorry to Burst your Judy Garland bubble but my reading of some of the oral histories of the Stonewall Riots indicates that Miss Garland's recent demise had no relevance to the Stonewall Riots.

The drag queens and trannies (they were the heroes or heroins -fuck is that the right spelling?) finally got pissed off enough to stand up to the police harrassment they had endured for years.

It makes for a better story and plays into some powerful stereotypes that in the anguish of the moment over the loss of a gay icon (Judy Garland) the overwrought fags fought back at the insensitive cops who did not understand the loss that the gay community had just suffered.

Sorry, the story is much more prosaic. The weather was hot and the butch dykes, drag queens and trannies were not in the mood to be pissed on again.

Thanks kittyboy,interesting...probaly right too.

[springco]

Yes, I remember the Stonewall. I used to go there all the time. It was an illegal, unlicensed bar, where you had to knock on the door and a small hole opened where the doorman would size you up before letting you enter. One of the nice things about the Stonewall, like so many other bars in NYC at the time, was that you would find teenage boys there in addition to guys of all other ages. It was a great mix of people from all social strata as well. In fact, one of the drag queens that triggered the riots was 15 or 16 years old, but the "proper gays" of today don't like that fact rubbed in their holier-than-thou assholes. Harry Hay and Larry Kramer have called attention to this in their writings.

One of the most notable things about the gays of the 1960s was their amazing diversity and almost without exception there was a solidarity among us. Today, among gays, everyone is at each others throats.

When John Stamford first started Spartacus Guide, it reflected this diversity of sexuality among gays. This is not true after Bruno Gm├╝nder took it over. All the great gay bookstores are gone too. Intermale in Amsterdam, just closed this past January. Glad Day in Boston is gone. So is Volker Janssen in Berlin which became a bore after Janssen sold it. Likewise for Glad Day in Toronto after its original owner, J. M. sold that. Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia is a shadow of what it once was but still has some good titles and tries hard but is only lackluster at best. Oscar Wilde Memorial bookstore in NYC was run by a bunch of gay Nazis and I am glad they finally went out of business, the bastards. One exception continues to be Calamus Bookstore in Boston. It's owned by a brilliant guy who faces horrible odds to survive in a climate abject stupidity and ignorance among gays today.

[kittyboy]

Yes, I remember the Stonewall. I used to go there all the time. It was an illegal, unlicensed bar, where you had to knock on the door and a small hole opened where the doorman would size you up before letting you enter. One of the nice things about the Stonewall, like so many other bars in NYC at the time, was that you would find teenage boys there in addition to guys of all other ages. It was a great mix of people from all social strata as well. In fact, one of the drag queens that triggered the riots was 15 or 16 years old, but the "proper gays" of today don't like that fact rubbed in their holier-than-thou assholes. Harry Hay and Larry Kramer have called attention to this in their writings.

One of the most notable things about the gays of the 1960s was their amazing diversity and almost without exception there was a solidarity among us. Today, among gays, everyone is at each others throats.

When John Stamford first started Spartacus Guide, it reflected this diversity of sexuality among gays. This is not true after Bruno Gm├╝nder took it over. All the great gay bookstores are gone too. Intermale in Amsterdam, just closed this past January. Glad Day in Boston is gone. So is Volker Janssen in Berlin which became a bore after Janssen sold it. Likewise for Glad Day in Toronto after its original owner, J. M. sold that. Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia is a shadow of what it once was but still has some good titles and tries hard but is only lackluster at best. Oscar Wilde Memorial bookstore in NYC was run by a bunch of gay Nazis and I am glad they finally went out of business, the bastards. One exception continues to be Calamus Bookstore in Boston. It's owned by a brilliant guy who faces horrible odds to survive in a climate abject stupidity and ignorance among gays today.

I remember the good old bad days when we would lower our voices a bit when we said "gay" as there was social stigma attached to it. In an odd sort of way I liked the "Gay Community" when we were more social outcasts. I had much more of a sense of solidarity and community with other gays and lesbians.

Maybe I am getting older but as gays and lesbians have gone mainstream and become much more acceptable and accepted in society...I sort of miss the bad old days.

It was exciting at gay pride parades to have the fundementalist christians show up and scream that all faggots were going to burn in hell...Now we have corporate sponsors advertising their products and trying to get gays and lesbians to spend money on their products....sigh..I miss the burn in hell crowd..it seemed much more fun to have someone hate you than to have someone try and part you from your money.

(Note to self...check the mirror..to see if I have turned into an old crank...if so probably not much can be done at this point.)

[Thai Dyed]

I remember the good old bad days when we would lower our voices a bit when we said "gay" as there was social stigma attached to it. In an odd sort of way I liked the "Gay Community" when we were more social outcasts. I had much more of a sense of solidarity and community with other gays and lesbians.

Maybe I am getting older but as gays and lesbians have gone mainstream and become much more acceptable and accepted in society...I sort of miss the bad old days.


Two things about what you say. I think you are overestimating gay acceptance today. Just a few blocks from Stonewall a gay guy was horribly beaten about two months ago. This is in the middle of a "gay ghetto". And this is hardly unique. I think people who believe they can act openly today even in the middle of the West Village in NYC are living in a fools paradise. You have to watch your ass where ever you are. And the world of gay hatred in very much alive in any area where you leave the more enlightened big cities. You still better speak in those places in hushed tones if you value not being beaten up.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03 ... ntle-giant (http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-30/news/29381906_1_anti-gay-epithets-stitches-gentle-giant)
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/30/ ... h-village/ (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/30/man-beaten-in-possible-anti-gay-hate-crime-in-greenwich-village/)

The second thing I want to mention is that in the 50s and 60s in any city in America, even the smaller sized ones, you could find sex partners in droves at any bus station, or railroad station, even on main streets and on nights the stores were open late. This was a veritable gay paradise almost anywhere you went, and you could count on a trip to the bus station or railroad station to be able to find some gorgeous thing to have sex with. I hate the fact that we have been further ghettoized by being driven into bars and circumscribed districts limited to big cities. And I'm not about to settle down to a totally boring monogamous situation in which I resemble the nice straight couple who live down the hall. And as the above article makes it clear, even in the middle of the gay ghetto surrounding Christopher Street in the West Village, you are at risk right now.

OK, so in the 50s and 60s, we didn't even use the word "gay", but we had sex almost anywhere we turned. If you want to learn the history of this, don't listen to the fakes today who call themselves gay historians. Read the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality which was compiled by genuine scholars. Read the late John Money, the brilliant Johns Hopkins sexologist who wrote about two hundred years of rampant homosexuality on the streets of Baltimore, a place many used to call, up to the mid-70s, the Tangier of North America. One of Dr. John Money's last essays before he died in 2006 was titled "We are Entering the New Sexual Dark Ages". Things just ain't so honky-dory.

[kittyboy]

I remember the good old bad days when we would lower our voices a bit when we said "gay" as there was social stigma attached to it. In an odd sort of way I liked the "Gay Community" when we were more social outcasts. I had much more of a sense of solidarity and community with other gays and lesbians.

Maybe I am getting older but as gays and lesbians have gone mainstream and become much more acceptable and accepted in society...I sort of miss the bad old days.


Two things about what you say. I think you are overestimating gay acceptance today. Just a few blocks from Stonewall a gay guy was horribly beaten about two months ago. This is in the middle of a "gay ghetto". And this is hardly unique. I think people who believe they can act openly today even in the middle of the West Village in NYC are living in a fools paradise. You have to watch your ass where ever you are. And the world of gay hatred in very much alive in any area where you leave the more enlightened big cities. You still better speak in those places in hushed tones if you value not being beaten up.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03 ... ntle-giant (http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-30/news/29381906_1_anti-gay-epithets-stitches-gentle-giant)
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/30/ ... h-village/ (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/30/man-beaten-in-possible-anti-gay-hate-crime-in-greenwich-village/)

The second thing I want to mention is that in the 50s and 60s in any city in America, even the smaller sized ones, you could find sex partners in droves at any bus station, or railroad station, even on main streets and on nights the stores were open late. This was a veritable gay paradise almost anywhere you went, and you could count on a trip to the bus station or railroad station to be able to find some gorgeous thing to have sex with. I hate the fact that we have been further ghettoized by being driven into bars and circumscribed districts limited to big cities. And I'm not about to settle down to a totally boring monogamous situation in which I resemble the nice straight couple who live down the hall. And as the above article makes it clear, even in the middle of the gay ghetto surrounding Christopher Street in the West Village, you are at risk right now.

OK, so in the 50s and 60s, we didn't even use the word "gay", but we had sex almost anywhere we turned. If you want to learn the history of this, don't listen to the fakes today who call themselves gay historians. Read the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality which was compiled by genuine scholars. Read the late John Money, the brilliant Johns Hopkins sexologist who wrote about two hundred years of rampant homosexuality on the streets of Baltimore, a place many used to call, up to the mid-70s, the Tangier of North America. One of Dr. John Money's last essays before he died in 2006 was titled "We are Entering the New Sexual Dark Ages". Things just ain't so honky-dory.

You are absolutely correct that thing ain't so honky-dory (as an aside I always thought it was hunky-dory but what the fuck). There are still lots of incidents of gay bashing etc...I do have to say though that things are much much better than 30 years ago when I was first coming to terms with my sexuality. You are correct things can and should be much better.