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PRIDE MONTH

Explained: The Stonewall Uprising And How June Became The Pride Month For LGBTQ Rights Movement

It's the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, also called the Stonewall Riots, believed to have led to the larger LGBTQ rights movement. 
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Balloons in the form of the word PRIDE

Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune via AP

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28 JUN 2022 

The police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 28, 1969. It was reportedly running without a liquor licence.

It was a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. Gay bars were places where gay, lesbians, and others in the queer community socialised away from public harassment. The Stonewall Inn was one such place.

On June 28, 1969, the police arrested the employees for selling alcohol without a licence and assaulted some of the patrons there. It was the third such raid on the bars in the area, according to the Britannica Encyclopaedia.

However, the Stonewall Inn raid was different. People did not retreat or scatter as in the past. Rather, they began to jeer and jostle with the police as they put bar patrons in vans, as per Britannica. It adds that people threw beer bottles and debris at the police, forcing police personnel to barricade themselves behind the bar and call for reinforcements. As the police barricaded inside, around 400 people rioted outside and set the bar on fire.

It was the first of the confrontation with the police, which continued till July 3, 1969.

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The National Geographic noted, "It took hours for officers to clear the streets. The next night, thousands came to the Stonewall Inn to taunt the police. Clashes broke out again that night and sporadically in the days that followed."

Stonewall catalysed LGBTQ movement

There are multiple versions of the events at the Stonewall Inn, but all versions agree that the incident led to the larger the LGBTQ rights movement.

Michael Fader, a person present at the scene, was quoted in a book as saying that there was no going back from there.

"There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn't," Michael was quoted as saying in the book Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution.

The Britannica noted, "Although there had been other protests by gay groups, the Stonewall incident was perhaps the first time lesbians, gays, and transgender people saw the value in uniting behind a common cause."

It further noted that there was a wider socio-political context to the incident.

"Occurring as it did in the context of the civil rights and feminist movements, the Stonewall riots became a galvanizing force," noted Britannica.

The rights movement became fierce with Stonewall

While homosexual organisations had been around in the United States since 1950s, they largely catered to the middle class and the majority of queer people didn't find their place there, said Aaron Lecklider, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He termed Stonewall Uprising a "grassroot liberation".

He told Newsweek, "The grassroots liberation that emerged in and around Stonewall upended earlier efforts to fit in and perform good citizenship, drawing on the energy of a highly public revolt to join with revolutionary feminists, Black nationalists, and working-class revolutionaries in envisioning a better world.

"This was not the first time gay people had thrown in their lot with radicals. Many, including some of the architects of the 1950s homophile movement, were highly active in the Depression-era Communist Party. But the idea that gay people were better off dismantling the society that rejected them rather than begging for acceptance had finally entered into the mainstream currents of American culture."

Britannica also noted that Stonewall paved the way for new generation of radical groups such as the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA).

"In addition to launching numerous public demonstrations to protest the lack of civil rights for gay individuals, these organizations often resorted to such tactics as public confrontations with political officials and the disruption of public meetings to challenge and to change the mores of the times. Acceptance and respect from the establishment were no longer being humbly requested but angrily and righteously demanded," as per Britannica.

 
The First Pride Parade

The first Pride Parade was held in New York City on June 28, 1970 to mark the first anniversary of Stonewall.

By all estimates, there were 3-5,000 marchers at the inaugural Pride Parade in New York City, according to the Library of Congress.

Initially, the slogan was decided to be "gay power" rather than "gay pride", according to Britannica. Initially, it was a once-a-month parade in June, which evolved into a month-long affair over the years.

It adds that Gay Pride, or LGBTQ Pride, generally came to be celebrated in the United States on the last Sunday in June but the day expanded to become a monthlong event over the years.

Over the years, the Pride Month began to celebrated beyond the United States. Now there are parades, performances, and demonstrations during the Pride Month to mark the LGBTQ rights movement across the world.

50 years on, New York police apologize for Stonewall riots

Catherine TRIOMPHE,
AFP•June 6, 2019


The Stonewall Inn, the site of 1969 riots that launched the gay rights movement, is a National Historic Landmark
The Stonewall Inn, the site of 1969 riots that launched the gay rights movement, is a National Historic Landmark (AFP Photo/Angela Weiss)


New York (AFP) - New York's police chief apologized Thursday for the first time for a crackdown on the city's gay community during the notorious Stonewall riots, winning praise from LGBTQ activists ahead of the 50th anniversary of violence considered to have given rise to the Gay Pride movement.

"I do know what happened should not have happened," said police chief James O'Neill. "The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple. The actions were discriminatory and oppressive and for that I apologize."

The June 1969 riots, sparked by repeated police raids on the Stonewall Inn -- a well-known gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village -- proved to be a turning point in the LGBTQ community's struggle for civil rights.

The police chief made the comments during a briefing on safety measures for the city's Pride Month, the annual celebration for the city's diverse LGBTQ community. His remarks triggered a long round of applause.

In 2017, O'Neil, like his predecessor William Bratton, said an apology over police behavior at the outset of the Stonewall violence was not necessary.

But a number of people have called in recent days for the police department to apologize, including the speaker of the city council, Corey Johnson, who is himself gay, and the organizers of Gay Pride.

"I think it would be an important step toward further healing and reconciliation," Johnson said in a radio interview Wednesday.




- 'Stonewall Forever' -

After Thursday's comments from the police chief, Johnson tweeted: "We appreciate this apology. Thank you @NYPDONeill. This is so wonderful to hear during Pride."

On June 28, 1969, members of the gay community protested against a raid on the Stonewall Inn on New York's Christopher Street.

The LGBTQ community was fed up with repeated police raids on their gathering places under the pretext that these establishments had violated liquor laws.

Hundreds gathered outside the Stonewall Inn that night, some throwing bottles and stones to shouts of "Gay Power."

Police reinforcements were called in and a dozen people were arrested, kicking off a week of rioting but also marking the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.

New York is staging a series of events and rallies to mark the anniversary this month, culminating on June 30 with WorldPride, billed as the largest gathering of LGBTQ people in the world.

More than three million people are expected to attend those events in New York, police said.

The Democrats running the most populous US city are eager to show the Big Apple is still a pioneer in defending LGBTQ rights.

Last month Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would erect a statue to two transgender women who participated in the protests and fought for LGBTQ rights. De Blasio said it would be the first such statue in the world.

The city is also working to designate as historic moments sites that are significant to the history of New York's gay community, such as the former home of the novelist James Baldwin and Caffe Cino, the city's first gay theater.

In 2016 then president Barack Obama declared the Stonewall Inn to be a national historic landmark, the first such monument of its kind honoring LGBTQ rights.

A website called Stonewall Forever was recently brought online, featuring photos, letters and witnesses' audio accounts of the riots. It also asks visitors to download their own recollections of those seminal days.

NYPD apologizes for 1969 raid on Stonewall Inn gay bar
Commissioner James P. O'Neill apologized Thursday on the New York Police Department's behalf for officers' actions in 1969 clash with gay patrons during a raid on the Stonewall Inn.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LGBTQ

Stonewall, Before and After: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany

Alex Wermer-Colan interviews Samuel R. Delany

MY FAVORITE AUTHOR


JULY 6, 2019

Author photo: Tom Kneller; art director: Spencer Singer

SAMUEL R. DELANY (born April 1, 1942) is one of the most — if not the most — important science fiction writers and critics alive today. As documented in the feature-length documentary The Polymath (2008), Delany’s work as a teacher, thinker, and writer stretches the boundaries of literature and criticism. Over his long and generative career, Delany has not only written such classics of science fiction as Babel-17 (1966), Nova (1968) and Dhalgren (1975), but also such hybrid works of memoir and criticism as Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999). While he’s currently working on a new project to create an illustrated children’s book, Delany is also the author of what he calls in this interview “the last pre-Stonewall work of gay fiction,” Hogg, a novel so obscene that Maurice Girodias, the famous publisher of Lolita, said it was the only book he refused to publish solely because of its sexual content (drafted by 1969, Hogg was not published until 1995). Delany’s fiction and nonfiction has always been dedicated to defamiliarizing what his society takes to be “normal”: in his speculative fiction and memoir writing alike, Delany gave voice to dispossessed perspectives, charting previously unimagined territories of social relation through a queering of language, thought, subjectivity, and speculative world-building of all kinds. While Delany became celebrated at an early age by the science fiction community (winning his first Nebula Award at the age of 24), in the post-Stonewall period, as his writing became increasingly radical, he often found himself writing at the margins of the SF genre in his queering of the genre. In the new millennium, Delany is often celebrated as a godfather of the gay literary community, but his open and indefinite self-expressions likewise remain compartmentalized, separate from their deep connections with his lifelong investment in the science fiction genre.


When I first met Delany (informally known as Chip) over a year ago, he had only recently sold his archive and book collection to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. In the years prior, Chip had undergone not only a bout of prostate cancer but also four displacements and relocations, finally parting with his beloved apartment in the Gayborhood of Center City, Philadelphia, to settle with his partner, Dennis, in the Fairmount neighborhood, across the street from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If leaving his longtime Upper West Side New York City apartment was difficult enough, the transition away from his regular Philly coffee shop, Greenstreet Coffee, was perhaps even harder. Downsizing and giving away the majority of his library, of course, was hardest of all for a writer who has lived in and through literature. Over the last year, I’ve gotten to know Chip at a pivotal period of his late career, at the age of 77, as he takes stock of his life from a new vantage point. While Chip might be expected to have one eye fixed on the future, and the other freighted with almost a century of memories, anyone who meets Chip can’t help but be struck by his presence, his openness and trust, the attention and generosity that he offers to strangers, acquaintances, and old friends alike. In our conversations, he has always been candid with me, maybe more revealing than he has been in many of his nonfiction writings, including his memoir The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village (1988), and his interviews (including those collected in Conversations with Samuel Delany [2009] and Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary [1999]).


The following conversation springs from Chip’s reflections on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in the summer of 1969, stirring up memories as diverse as his childhood summer camp, his most obscene novel, and his mother’s stroke. While this first interview may introduce as many questions as it gives answers, it is only the first in a series to be published by LARB, covering a wider range of subjects that concern Chip at this crucial time, not only in his life and writing, but in the politics of his country, and in the future of this planet. In the interview, Chip often answers questions indirectly, departing from my prompts in surprising and revealing ways. While this digressive style of narration and Chip’s slippery use of language produce roundabout answers, his style has always traced a spiral. If Chip’s parents appear in the background of his story at the start, by the end of the interview, Chip opens up about his relationship with his mother unlike he has before. Along the way, Chip gives substance to his lifelong artistic and scholarly interrogation of the politics of identity, bringing into relief the marvelous resistance of our lives and experiences to solidify themselves into anything as stable as a fixed self and a unified vision. For Delany, Stonewall was not a transformative moment, but a symptom of a larger metamorphosis in American culture, one deeply connected to his own childhood, when he met Stormé DeLarverie as a camp counselor, long before she became famous for allegedly throwing the first punch at Stonewall. Here, Delany reflects on his past mentors, his role models, and his own parents, as he reconsiders the subtle and complex ways his identity and his writing have transformed over time, before and after Stonewall.


Stormé DeLarverie performing in drag as the Master of Ceremonies in “The Jewel Box Revue” in 1960s Harlem.
ALEX WERMER-COLAN: In anticipation of the 50th anniversary, what do you remember of the Stonewall riots? What was the event’s significance to you?

SAMUEL R. DELANY: I was very happy. I heard that it happened; I was living in San Francisco, and I got a phone call, and, you know, there was a big to-do in New York.


Turns out there was a woman named Mary Davies, who was a summer camp counselor in this wonderful summer camp I went to called Camp Woodland. She was a friend of my family’s. Her mother had run a gift shop on Amsterdam Avenue right around where we lived. She and her mother didn’t get along very well.


Mary was my favorite counselor at summer camp when I was 11 or 12. And clearly she was a lesbian. We had a social dance scene, and all the girls were supposed to wear dresses, and Mary was just not a dress girl. I remember her saying, you know, when she finally consented and wore a dress, “I have the feeling I look very funny in this thing.” I remember thinking she did! She just looked more comfortable in jeans, and she had a very mannish haircut. On visiting day, my parents came up, and as I said, they knew her, they had known her as a little girl, and my father said: “Why did you cut all your hair off like that, young lady?” And she said, “Oh I was in the barber chair, and I fell asleep, and he went on cutting,” which, you know, was her standard response. People were always asking her such questions. Anyway, my father was very unhappy that she had gone through this sort of transition.


Then, when I was 17, I discovered there was something called “The Jewel Box Revue,” which was a drag show that used to travel around, and it used to play at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. It was the only drag show anybody ever talked about. My uncle and aunt had been to see it. In fact, they were the ones who came over and told my parents, told us all about it, and how great, how clever it was. “The Jewel Box Revue” did not use lip-synching — the performers all used their own voices, which was also quite new, although I didn’t know it at the time. It was the first drag show I’d ever seen, so I assumed they all weren’t lip-synched.


So I went to see the drag show. And the master of ceremonies of the drag show was presented as a man named Stormé DeLarverie. And then at the end, the master of ceremonies would take this thing off holding his hair back and shake his hair out and you’d realize he was a woman. And the gimmick for “The Jewel Box Revue” was, “We’re 25 men and a girl.” You’re supposed to figure out who is the real girl. And who is the real girl? The master of ceremonies, who had a nice baritone voice, was singing, was also an entertainer.


Years later, my mother and the downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Horn, whose kids had also gone to Camp Woodland, were talking about “The Jewel Box Revue,” which had returned to the Apollo Theater at 125th Street in New York. And my mother said, “You know, that’s Mary, that was Mary Davies, who was a counselor up at the summer camp.” And I realized I knew Stormé DeLarverie. And I suddenly realized this is not a person who is far away from me, this is somebody I sat next to on the piano bench, who helped me write a cantata and sat beside me at chorus rehearsal at Woodland — someone who had been very close to me.


Cut to Stonewall.


Stonewall happened when I was 27, so a decade later. And who was the person who was supposed to have thrown the first punch at Stonewall? Stormé DeLarverie!


Now if you look it up online, you can’t find the name Mary Davies. She just dropped that. I guess she just didn’t want to have anything to do with her family. Her mother told my mother it was an older female camp counselor who had corrupted her, and I gather Mary wasn’t having any of it. I used to go into her mother’s gift shop and buy little gifts for people. Her mother was a very tasteful, very feminine woman. The point, of course, is there are Wiki articles and interviews with Stormé online. But there’s no mention of Mary Davies. They mention that she was born in New Orleans, that her father was white, and her mother was, you know. Stormé was a fairly light-skinned black woman, like me, you know, but she definitely thought of herself as black. And she was one of the people who actually started “The Jewel Box.” It was a very different kind of thing. First of all, it had black and white entertainers! It was an integrated thing.


So when you think of Stonewall, do you think of Mary Davies and Stormé DeLarverie?


No, I didn’t know Stormé had anything to do with it, until five or six years after the fact, when I learned she was right there throwing the first punch! And I was very happy, you know.


But now all you read about Stormé DeLarverie is the Stonewall riots. Her involvement with “The Jewel Box Revue” is quite secondary. The other thing is she doesn’t want to take credit for what happened. She’s a fundamentally modest person. She said all she did was haul off and hit one policeman who hit her.


And I’ve been in contact with a guy who does a lot of work at Woodland, talking about Woodland; he doesn’t remember Mary Davies at all. But I always wondered how Woodland got ahold of her, or how she got to Woodland.


Woodland was the first time I got a chance to experiment with sex, you know, straight and gay, and discovered I was, you know. I mean, I knew I was gay from the time I was 10, but I did wonder whether I could, you know, perform heterosexually. And would it change me? Would I get to like it and become “normal”? Because you knew, you knew you were different.


When you were at camp did you feel like Mary Davies was aware, trying to be supportive of you because …


I’m sure she was. People used to tease me. I used to very much like dancing, and I had something called a dancer’s bounce, or at least that’s what my very good friend, Wendy Osserman, used to say, when we used to practice dancing together. She took ballet, and she would teach me all the ballet steps, and then I actually took ballet for a while, believe it or not. I wanted to be a dancer, and a choreographer, and do all those things, as well as be a singer, and an entertainer. But people used to tease me about my walking all the time. And Wendy would say male dancers all do that. So even then there was that … Anyway, I don’t think I have it anymore. I don’t know, and I don’t care, to be perfectly honest.


You were living in San Francisco when the riots broke out in New York City, and it wasn’t until five years later that you found out about Mary Davies’s connection to it. But when you first heard about the Stonewall riots, what was your reaction?


Well, my response … I call my novel Hogg, which was written just before the Stonewall riots — the first draft, a handwritten version, was completed in 1968 — I call Hogg the last pre-Stonewall gay novel written in the United States.


What do you mean by that?


I was very angry at the world for the way it treated gay men and women, and I did not have much hope for it. The way, even in places like New York and San Francisco, we let them walk all over us: I had been arrested two or three times in New York and once in London for indecent public exposure, which was what they got you for, if you used the public urinals for the bulk of your cruising — which I did.


I finished a handwritten version of Hogg, which more or less filled some five notebooks, when, a couple of days or possibly even a couple of hours after, I got a phone call that a riot had started in New York the night before at a place on Waverly called the Stonewall Inn. I had been to it two of three times the previous summer; it was about a block away from my doctor, Dr. Otaviano.


I had had a very easy life, living in Greenwich Village, but the gay bars were still being raided, with warnings for the steady customers. Much was made of the fact that Judy Garland’s funeral was held on the first night of the riots, inspiring a pretty feisty bunch of queens to fight back, when the police tried to herd them into the paddy wagon. For the next three or four days, the whole gay underclass of the country on both coasts heard about the riots that went on for several days in New York City.


I went back to San Francisco, stayed back and forth between Natoma Street and a commune on Oak Street, whose backyard looked into the San Francisco Buddhist Center. A friend of mine, Paul Caruso, who kept the Natoma Street flat, pointed out that there were five notebooks I’d left in a closet. When I took them out, I found they were the handwritten drafts of my novel, Hogg, which I had completed just before hearing about the Stonewall riots. I rewrote Hogg at the Albert Hotel while I was working on Dhalgren. Eventually Hogg and Dhalgren both went to London, and I finished both there — and also a first draft of Trouble on Triton — and returned with them to New York.


So what happens after Stonewall?


Well, when Stonewall happened, the Gay Liberation Front formed around it, and the Gay Activist Alliance formed out of that. That was when the big “come out of the closet” thing swept the country, you know, the notion that [coming out] was a political strategy. If we are all out of the closet, they cannot blackmail us anymore. So, you let everyone know.


Did you feel as if you’d already “come out” before Stonewall?


Well, yes, I’d certainly had my first sexual experience with a guy, which is the old meaning of “coming out.” I’d gotten married to Marilyn Hacker when she was 18 and I was 19. She knew I was gay. We’d been friends since the first day at Bronx High School of Science. We had experimented sexually, and she’d recently gotten pregnant. During the conversation we had when we decided we were really going to get married, standing at a subway station waiting for train, I said, “Well, you know I’m gay,” and she said, “Of course I do. You’ve taken me cruising with you.”


By the time of the Stonewall riots, did you feel as if you had written as a public figure and published books that were openly gay?


I was always dropping in little coded things, and that became stronger and stronger as time went on, you know, in stories like “Aye, and Gomorrah,” which was my first published story for Dangerous Visions (1967) (which was supposed to be, you know, something about something dangerous). And then “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” (December 1968) was a story that hinges on an S&M gay relationship, although the words are not said. But you figure that’s what’s got to be going on, what must have had to have happened between the narrator and the young singer Hawk, who has all these scars on him.


Is Dhalgren your first published science fiction book that has explicit sex that the reader couldn’t avoid interpreting as queer?


Yes, it was my first novel. My first science fiction novel in which you have a hero who is having sex with men.


When it was published in 1975, did it change your perception of yourself as a public writer?


Well, yeah. It was a very controversial novel. People were saying Bantam will go out of business if they publish more novels like this. Harlan Ellison famously got to page 350 and threw the book across the room.


On the other hand, the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who although he had about five children, was as bisexual as I was … I don’t think of myself, I never thought of myself as bisexual. I thought of myself as gay. But I eventually realized that’s what you want: you want a gay relationship. And it had to do with safety. I could perform with women. But I didn’t feel … you know, men made me feel safe.


Since we first started talking, you’ve said over and over that what you fear most for your work is queer erasure.


Yes, exactly, the science fiction community is not, and was not especially back then, a gay-friendly organization.


Paul Di Filippo, who is a science fiction reviewer, shared with me a recent French article on sex and science fiction, and I said: “It’s all very good, but there’s no mention of Joanna Russ, and they don’t make anything of the early stuff by Sturgeon, you know, the famous story for which he was blacklisted, and almost thrown out of the science fiction community, called ‘The World Well Lost.’”


There was an editor who, when Sturgeon submitted it to him, started a phone call campaign, saying, “We must not publish any Sturgeon ever again, this is immoral, blah blah blah.” A feisty little guy, an editor named Ray Palmer in the SF magazine, Universe — I never met Ray, and I don’t know what his sexuality was — took it upon himself to publish this story anyway. He did pride himself for publishing things nobody else would publish.


It became an instant classic, because it was the first time someone had done a story — this was well before Stonewall, in 1950, when I was eight years old — that was sympathetic to gay people, to gay men. I broke out crying when I read it at age 12. And I just thought, that is the most wonderful story I’ve ever read. There’s hope.


How have you felt it’s changed since your writing?


I don’t know. Now there is such a thing as gay science fiction.


Do you still fear queer erasure though?


Well, yeah. I don’t fear it. I see it happening.


You’ve also talked to me about how you never told your parents about your sexuality. Was that difficult for you? Or was it freeing?


Yes, I never had the chance to tell my parents. My father died, was dead, by that time. I was writing The Motion of Light in Water, a memoir about my life until the time of Stonewall, and I literally said to myself, “Well, if you’re going to write this, you’re going to need to sit down and have the conversation with your mom.”


I was pretty sure by that time that my mother knew I was gay. I mean, she knew I had already lived for seven and a half years with another guy named Frank Romeo. And she would have us up for dinner, or to Sunday morning breakfast. And as I have said many times, the problem with my mother was, when we broke up, my mother’s thing was like, she still wanted to keep him coming over: “Well, we can still have him over even if you’re not living together. He’s still a nice guy.” [Laughs, imitating a kid complaining:] “Mom!”


There was this Broadway play, a very powerful Broadway play, called As Is (1985), which was one of the first gay plays about a gay couple. My mother thought it was impressive, so she took me to see it and I thought it was really interesting. We talked about it without talking about how it related to me personally, which was kind of how she wanted to deal with it.


So anyway, with Motion of Light in Water, while I was in the midst of writing the first version, my mother had a major stroke, and she lost all her language, all her speech. All she could say — and it was not complete — was: “I know, I know, I know” [in a reassuring voice]. For the next eight years, that’s all she ever said.


She could write endless letters, but she couldn’t make words out of them. And she would write with her left hand, and she was right-handed. Or the other way around, I can’t remember exactly. But she would write endless strings of letters under the impression that she was writing something we could understand, or that she could still write, with just one capital letter after another, ABAQS … and so on. She couldn’t think in language anymore. So that was very hard, very hard. The doctor told us she had lost as much of her brain as you could lose and still be alive. She was diagnosed with both aphasia and apraxia. She was completely paralyzed on one side. She couldn’t understand anything. Literally she could not, there was the inability … you would say, “Tap once for yes, and two for no.” And she would go: [Chip taps at random]. She knew she was supposed to tap, but had no notion of what it meant. She had no command of meaning. That was very frustrating.


Was it more difficult because of what you were going to tell her?


Well, yeah, I was going to say, “Mom, look, I’m going to be writing about some of this, and…” — now it couldn’t happen. Everyone was talking about “the conversation with mom or dad” because, by this time, it was after Stonewall, in, oh I don’t know, ’87 or so.


Did you think she would take it well?


At one point, Marilyn tried to do that. When Marilyn and I broke up, she was now suddenly gay and living with another woman, to my total surprise. She tried to tell my mother she was gay, but my mother told her: “I don’t want to hear about this.” And Marilyn was very surprised.


Marilyn’s attempt to tell my mother didn’t work. There was a lesbian couple living down the hall, two women who used to have these yelling and screaming matches, and my mother and I would talk about them. You know, she’d say, “I hope one of them isn’t getting hurt!” Again, with no acknowledgment that there was perhaps anything else going on.


So your mother said that she didn’t want to know, but when you went to tell her, her only words were, over and over for eight years, “I know, I know, I know.” Was that a strange irony for you?


Well, I never before now made that connection. What I’m sure she meant was, “I know how difficult this all must be for you.” But those were the only two words she ever said.


In the end, my mother’s death was not such a big transition point — her stroke in July 1987, when she basically ceased to be someone who could take in information about the world and put it out in any but the most basic way, is the real transition point.


And my most intellectually complex project, Return to Nevèrÿon, overlaps that (with Trouble on Triton as its prologue).


How does Return to Nevèrÿon touch on that moment in your life? Is there any way in which you felt freed in the 1990s to write in new ways, not only after Stonewall, but also after your mother’s stroke?


While I think of the stories as social and having to do with my immediate life, they don’t have much to do with my family per se. That was something that my sister shouldered, which left me free to write about what I was writing about, which was my own personal life that my mother was, if anything, no longer a part of. I saw her when she’d been transferred from the nursing home to the hospital, where it was fairly clear she was going to die soon.


But, again, I don’t have a sense of her death impinging on my writing in any way. When my sister and I were leaving the cemetery after the funeral, my sister commented, “Sam, that is the end of eight awful, awful years,” and I remember thinking, yes, she was right, and I had been unfair for shoving so much of it off on her, even though she seemed willing to accept the burden, and it made it possible for me to go on writing during that period. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, there is one sequence where I took my friend Arlie to visit my mom in the nursing home. (I can’t even remember the name of the nursing home, though I used to try to go out and visit her every two, three, five weeks. It was at the very end of the Canarsie Line, and after that, you had to walk another six blocks.) Her room was up on the eighth, ninth, or 10th floor, where people in her condition were kept. Arlie and I took her for a walk in her wheelchair, we all sang together, and got ice cream. And she did like music and ice cream.


That’s, at this point, about as much as I can say.


You mention during an interview in The Polymath that you felt very angry with your father throughout much of your life, and that when you approached him to speak your mind, he died shortly thereafter. You said in the documentary that you still felt repressed in some ways about your anger. How do your feelings about your father compare to your feelings about your mother and yourself?


I think when I got together with Frank Romeo, I got together with someone who was very similar to my dad. And when I got together with Dennis, after seven and a half years with Frank — and another few years because I noted that children didn’t do well when their parents took partners when they were between eight and 14 — I got someone who was still anxious the way my dad was, but not anywhere nearly as strong. And that’s worked out well.¤


Alex Wermer-Colan is a writer, editor, and translator. His work has appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, The Conversant, and Lost & Found. 

Andrew Porter • 7 months ago

Thank you for the interview. Although I've known Chip for literally most of our lives—

I first met him when we were both barely out of our teens—

this was still highly informative. Here's my photo of Chip, with author Lin Carter 

at the right, from 1966:
Copyright © Andrew Porter

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Man charged with hate crime for destroying LGBTQ Pride flags at Stonewall National Monument

Claire Thornton
USA TODAY

A Colorado man has been arrested for allegedly removing and destroying LGBTQ Pride flags at New York City's Stonewall National Monument, which commemorates iconic uprisings in the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights.

Patrick Murphy, of Denver, was charged with a hate crime and "criminal mischief" after he allegedly removed and "broke" multiple transgender Pride flags that were displayed on the fence surrounding Christopher Park, New York Police Department Detective Ronald Montas told USA TODAY. Murphy, 25, was arrested Monday, Montas said.

The attack, one of several police are investigating, happened during LGBTQ Pride month, which occurs every year in June to commemorate the Stonewall Inn uprisings for LGBTQ rights, which began on June 28, 1969.

Murphy pleaded not guilty, according to court records.

"It is preposterous to conclude that Patrick was involved in any hate crime," Robert C. Gottlieb, Murphy's attorney, told USA TODAY. "The evidence will clearly show that whatever happened that night involving Patrick was not intended to attack gays or their symbol, the gay Pride flag."


Murphy's arrest comes after several other attacks on LGBTQ Pride flags this year in New York. In February, a woman was arrested and charged with multiple hate crimes after she allegedly torched an LGBTQ Pride flag hanging from a restaurant. In April, a man was caught defecating on a Pride flag in Manhattan.

This month in California, a woman was shot and killed by a 27-year-old man who ripped down a Pride flag hanging outside her clothing shop

.

What is the Stonewall National Monument?

The Stonewall National Monument encompasses Greenwich Village's historic Stonewall Inn gay bar, Christopher Park and the surrounding streets and sidewalks where the 1969 Stonewall uprisings against police occurred, according to the National Park Service.

The monument was designated by President Barack Obama in 2016.

The fence surrounding Christopher Park, a public city park, is adorned with different LGBTQ Pride flags, some of which are placed there by U.S. park rangers. The area also includes a photo exhibit showing images of police raids, which were common at bars where LGBTQ people were suspected of gathering. At Stonewall, patrons and LGBTQ advocates rioted against police for days, demanding they be given the same treatment under the law as non-LGBTQ New York residents.

The monument commemorates "a milestone in the quest for LGBTQ+ civil rights," the park service says on its website.

Attacks against LGBTQ Pride flags on the rise

Authorities across the country have been responding this summer to a growing number of attacks targeting LGBTQ flags.

Sarah Moore, an extremism analyst with the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, recently told USA TODAY she has tracked incidents across the country where people damage, burn or steal Pride flags hanging outside private residences, restaurants and other businesses. Earlier this year, there was an online hate campaign using a hashtag that advocated for a destroy-the-Pride-flag challenge, she said.

“There's definitely been an increase in attacks against Pride flags," Moore said.

Just in August, Moore has tracked attacks on Pride flags in Newtown, Connecticut; Capitola, California; Hamtramck, Michigan; Seattle and Houston.

"We need allies more than ever," Moore said.

2020 PROTESTS

Videos Show The NYPD Clashing With Protesters At An LGBTQ Pride Event

Witnesses said it was an otherwise "beautiful" and "peaceful" gathering.

Tanya ChenBuzzFeed News Reporter

Last updated on June 28, 2020, at 9:06 p.m. ET


Erin Taylor@erinisaway
the nypd are brutalizing protesters at the queer liberation march on Pride of all days. remember that Stonewall started as a riot against the police. https://t.co/IvD7HmLEPV08:40 PM - 28 Jun 2020
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Multiple first-hand accounts and viral tweets said the NYPD used excessive force on people participating in the Queer Liberation March on Sunday, the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and the final day of New York's planned Pride celebrations.

Two witnesses told BuzzFeed News they saw police running into crowds, using pepper spray, and beating protesters with batons near Washington Square Park — only about a 5 minute walk from the historic Stonewall Inn, where the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement began 51 years ago.

And while people weren't sure how things escalated, they said that it was an otherwise peaceful and celebratory gathering.

Protester Eliel Cruz, 29, recalled to BuzzFeed News the moment he realized the tone suddenly changed.

"It was very peaceful, very chill. I didn’t see much police presence. Then I saw 20 cops on bikes and a few cop cars speed up right away, so I walked a little quicker," he said.

He said he headed toward where police officers were raining down on protesters.

"I walked by five or six people on the ground who were pepper sprayed and were washing their eyes," he said, adding he saw at least 10 people on Sunday who were recovering from being pepper sprayed.

Marti Gould Cummings, who was also witness to the incident and who attended the march in drag, recalled a similar chain of events.

"I was leaving Washington square — there was a beautiful rally centering around Black trans women. As we were leaving, we noticed a commotion directly in front of us and realized it was the police," said Cummings, who is running for New York's city council.

"People were chanting 'don’t shoot' and many took a knee. The police escalated and used pepper spray and batons," they added.



Eliel Cruz@elielcruz
These cops just got ran up on people09:00 PM - 28 Jun 2020
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Cruz also said he witnessed at least one person get arrested.

"We were demanding the police release the protester, and they started to beat people ... There were more cops running toward the crowds and pushing people," he said.

Cruz said officers began to retreat when a large group of protesters linked arms to create a barricade. He said the police escalation and standoff with protesters lasted about 5-10 minutes.

Cummings recorded a selfie as they were coming out of the confrontation, demanding NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD commissioner Dermot Francis Shea answer to "why on the anniversary of Stonewall we are to this day continuing to protest police brutality," adding that "Stonewall was an active resistant against police."

Marti Gould Cummings@MartiGCummings
Hey @NYCMayor @NYPDShea on the anniversary of stonewall your cops are beating and arresting people08:45 PM - 28 Jun 2020
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Cummings later told BuzzFeed News they want the city council "to defund the NYPD by at least $1 billion and put that money back into communities most impacted by police brutality." They're also calling on de Blasio to resign.

"If the mayor continues to allow the NYPD to terrorize this city he must step down."

De Blasio had earlier in the day tweeted about his support for the Black, trans activists who have led the LGBTQ movement. His office did not immediately respond to questions about the NYPD's actions at Sunday's march.



Mayor Bill de Blasio@NYCMayor
On the 50th Anniversary of #PrideMarch and the 51st Anniversary of Stonewall, NYC celebrates the Black, trans activists who built the movement and continue to lead today. #Pride https://t.co/D2FJy0lRoh08:56 PM - 28 Jun 2020
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When asked about the videos Sunday evening, an NYPD spokesperson told BuzzFeed News they have not "been made aware of" any arrests or force from police on protesters.

"Arrest numbers will be tallied at the conclusion of the event," said Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell, an NYPD spokesperson, adding that "the NYPD does not use tear gas."

A spokesperson for the coalition behind the Queer Liberation March told BuzzFeed News they were "horrified" and "furious" to hear about what transpired.

"We are horrified and furious at the brutal police attack on peaceful marchers using pepper spray, violent shoving, and arrests," they said. "At the exact moment that Mayor de Blasio tweeted about honoring Stonewall and the LGBTQIA+ rights movement, the NYPD completely overreacted with unprovoked physical violence - including pepper spraying their own colleagues."

"The police refuse to say exactly how many were arrested, and refuse to state the reasons for their arrest or their charges. We are concerned that the NYPD will return to Washington Square Park."

Tasneem Nashrulla contributed reporting to this story.

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Gabriel H. Sanchez · June 26, 2020

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Otillia Steadman · June 17, 2020

Tanya Chen is a social news reporter for BuzzFeed and is based in Chicago.

Pride marches across

AMERIKA incorporate politics


Participants march down Fifth Avenue at the 2024 NYC Pride March in New York City on Sunday. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

June 30 (UPI) -- Pride month celebrations culminated Sunday with parades across the world, including San Francisco and New York, where people supporting LGBTQ identities and rights, some dressed in multi-colored, elaborate clothing and costumes, marched in the streets.

In New York, thousands of Pride revelers rallied along Fifth Avenue in an event that also marked the 55th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of June 28, 1969, which sparked the gay rights movement in the United States.

"For 55 years, New Yorkers have proudly carried the banner that says, 'This is the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ movement,'" Gov. Kathy Hochul, who participated in the march, told the crowd.

"And today, we continue pushing forward, recognizing the contributions from those individuals who stood up against the tides of their time, who said that 'We have rights. We have rights to gather, to socialize, to dance, and to love who we want to love.'

The event and march were held under the theme of "Reflect. Empower. Unite," selected to highlight the importance of the city's Pride march "As the intersection of Queer liberation and joy," the organizing NYC Pride said in a statement.

The march and celebrations come amid an onslaught of Republican-led bills targeting the rights of the lGBT community. The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking some 527 such bills that have been entered into state legislatures this year.

NYC Pride Executive Director Sandra Pérez said earlier in a statement that the city's march is how the community combats "all the negativity."

"This is the celebration that brings people from every borough in the city and all parts of the world together, in joy, to share the accomplishments, talents and resilience of our community," Pérez said.

"The March is where we demonstrate the strength that comes with inclusion, diversity and acceptance."

Dashawn Usher, Miss Major, Raquel Willis, Michelle Visage, Eshe Ukwell and Baddie Brooks served as grand marshals for the event.

In San Francisco, city officials kicked off the festivities Saturday by marrying more than 200 couples as part of its annual tradition celebrating marriage equality.

Its march also occurred Sunday, with the city's Pride theme being "Beacon of love."

"Yes, San Francisco is a beacon of love, but also hope," Mayor London Breed said in a statement.

"Right now, all across this country our LGBTQ+ community is under assault, with their basic rights being threatened, and we stand strong in support of this incredible community. Today is about celebrating the love that bonds individuals together and serves as the heart of the work we have ahead of us here in this City and across the nation."

There were also large Pride marches in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago and across the globe. The Chicago march typically draws 1 million people and organizers reduced the number of floats participating in this year's festivities from 199 to 150, citing logical and safety concerns.

Biden praises 'beloved' bar's role in gay history during unveiling at Stonewall site

 Protesters gather outside at the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center grand opening ceremony in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

June 28 (UPI) -- The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center opened its doors Friday, coinciding with the 55th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a historic moment in the LGBTQ rights movement.

The visitors center, which is the first LGBTQ-centered monument within the National Park Service, is a project led by New York nonprofit Pride Live and encompasses 2,100 square feet at 51 Christopher St. in New York City.

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden traveled to New York for the opening-day celebration.

"This beloved bar became the site of a call to cry for freedom, dignity, equality and respect," Biden told the crowd. "Rebellion galvanized LBGTQ community all across the nation and, quite frankly, around the world."

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Jill Biden said, "From today on, this visitor center and monument will tell our nation's story to the teenager who comes here and discovers she isn't alone. The activist who wants to show his children what came before. And all those who wish to learn from the wisdom of the past and use it to help chart the course for our future."

Biden was joined by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Singers Katy Perry and Elton John also made appearances.

"I can say as a proud English, gay man, that this is one of the greatest honors of my life to be here today," he said. "The fight for freedom and equality is an ongoing one."

Former President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument in 2016 to commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion, a series of violent demonstrations against police raids on the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969.

The project to convert the bar into a visitors center started six years ago with Pride Live co-founders Diana Rodriguez and Ann Marie Gothard.

The center will provide educational resources on LGBTQ history and culture, such as in-person and virtual tours, lectures, exhibitions and a dedicated theater space.

Mexico shelters offer safe haven for LGBTQ migrants


By AFP
June 28, 2024


Venezuelan trans woman Victoria Davila, 23, puts on makeup to go to an appointment at the Mexican foreign ministry - Copyright AFP ALFREDO ESTRELLA

Emma Guillaume with Eduardo Jaramillo in Tijuana

Shirlei Vazquez, a trans woman, fled Guatemala after being assaulted and threatened, joining a growing number of LGBTQ migrants heading north in hopes of a better life in the United States.

In Mexico, these migrants have found a safe space at shelters welcoming people facing added stigma or violence on the long journey north due to their sexual orientation or identity.

“I had two options: die in my country or leave to find safety,” the 27-year-old Vasquez told AFP from a shelter in Tijuana called Rainbow House.

Back home she was assaulted and told she would be set on fire “for being gay.”

UN Women this month warned that LGBTQ migrants “face higher risks of significant physical and sexual violence at all stages of migration.”

This includes “unsafe shelters”, lack of access to healthcare and discrimination by border agents.

Casa Frida, a shelter in Mexico City, offers legal, psychological, social and medical support, as well as food aid and housing.

“Casa Frida is a safe space. A place of freedom for certain people, for those to be able to express who they really are,” said Angelica Guzman, a 24-year-old lawyer who does social work at the shelter.

The shelter opened in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic to accommodate the growing number of LGBT migrants in the country.

It has since expanded to Tapachula, a city near the country’s southern border with Guatemala where thousands of migrants pass through, as well as Monterrey in the country’s north.

– ‘All the courage in the world’ –

Victoria Davila, a 23-year-old trans woman who fled “risky situations” in Venezuela, has been at the shelter for two months.

“To migrate is to decide to recreate another life somewhere else,” she said, adding the decision to leave her home and family had taken “all the courage in the world.”

In her first few months in Mexico, Davila ran into similar dangers to those she experienced back home.

A Mexican employer took away her documents and forced her into unpaid sex work.

At the shelter, she found a family where she is “welcomed, embraced, respected and validated.”

“I have to show who I am and that I exist, and anyone who doesn’t like it should look the other way,” Davila said.

Sandy Montoya, a 23-year-old trans woman from Honduras, blamed authorities in the conservative Central American society for allowing discrimination against trans people.

“There have been several murders and the government has done nothing to bring justice,” she said.

Montoya arrived at her shelter in May and plans to apply for humanitarian asylum in the United States.

It can take two to nine months to book an asylum appointment with American authorities, so many migrants take jobs in Tijuana while waiting.

Davila, meanwhile, has decided to stay in Mexico City because of the openness of the LGBT community, where she has found work as a drag artist.

“The drag scene in Mexico City is great and very welcoming,” she said.

Billy Porter helps examine origins of gay rights movement
2020-10-20

© Provided by The Canadian Press

POST MODERN ZOOT SUIT AND SOMBREO ENSEMBLE 

Billy Porter is busy, pandemic or not.

He’s just appeared in a virtual play about nurses on the front lines. His series “Pose” is returning to production. He's soon to appear in the “Cinderella” remake. He’s writing a memoir — a project he calls the hardest thing he's ever done.

And starting this week, he narrates “EQUAL,” a new docuseries on HBO Max that traces the history of the LGBTQ movement through the Stonewall uprising in 1969.

Porter was born just a few months after Stonewall. He learned about that galvanizing moment for the modern gay rights movement as he grew up. Still. he says, there was a lot about the movement's earlier history that he didn’t know, and was able to learn through the docuseries.

In four episodes, the series, premiering Thursday, looks at the rise of early gay rights organizations like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis; the 20th century transgender experience; the role of the Black community in gay rights; and then Stonewall.

Porter sat down recently to speak to The Associated Press about the project, his other work, and how he’s been coping during the pandemic. (The interview has been condensed for length.)

AP: You were born just after the Stonewall uprising; do you remember when you first became aware of it?

Porter: I came out when I was 15, about 1985. The research wasn’t really at our fingertips as it is now, but we found it some way. There were some older survivors who would teach us. It was always nice to know as a baby gay that there was somebody out there who was fighting for our rights. Just as I intersect with the African American community and our civil rights. The two are aligned in many ways for me. It helps remind those of us in the fight on the regular that good is possible. And the work is eternal. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty is what Frederick Douglass says.

AP: Tell us about “EQUAL."

Porter: It was really interesting for me as somebody who knows a lot about LGBTQ history... there’s a lot of stuff in the four-part series I had not heard about before. So it’s always nice to learn something new. (It’s about) everything before the Stonewall riots. I think there’s a lot of information at the fingertips post-Stonewall, (but) there’s not a whole lot of talk about what came before Stonewall, so it’s really interesting.

AP: You recently did a public service announcement during the Emmys, basically saying that Hollywood is making an effort toward more inclusive representation, but there’s a lot farther to go.

Porter: That is the direct message for the entertainment industry. But in the macro, it’s the message for the world at large. Not just America, for the entire world. You know, it’s time. It’s time to make a change and a change for good. And it’s about people rising up and making that so. So that’s what you’re seeing right now. And I think what’s interesting about this series is that it’s about people taking charge of their lives and rising up and making sure that we live up to what our Constitution boasts, which is that all men are created equal.

AP: The pandemic has changed lives. How has yours changed?

Porter: It’s a global reset, that’s what I’ve been calling it. I’ve really been trying to make lemonade out of lemons. I’ve leaned in to my self-care work. I’ve leaned into boundaries and balance in relation to how I engage in the business and how I protect my relationships, my marriage, my family, everything. You know, I really feel like, as horrible as this is, the silver lining is that everybody is awake. And if you’re not awake now and if you don’t see it for what it is now, you never will. All of the issues have been laid bare.

AP: Your roots are in live theatre, a world obviously in crisis now. What do you you see happening with theatre?

Porter: I don’t know. We’ve never been here before. ‘The show must go on’ has always been the motto. But the show is not going on. It is very depressing to walk through New York City and midtown. I have never seen it like this. I do believe that when it’s time to come back and it’s safe to come back, people will come back. But who’s to say when it’s going to be safe?

AP: Do you see yourself performing live theatre again?”

Porter: Of course. I will always do theatre. Theater is the first love, theatre is the reason why I’m sitting here. So I will always, always return to the theatre.

AP: How about fashion. Where do you see that world going?

Porter: Fashion is art. And art always survives. Art is how civilizations heal. That’s what (late author) Toni Morrison says. Art has to reflect the time that it’s in. What that looks like, I don’t know. You know, that’s up to the artist, personal discretion and personal voice. But I know for certain that it will come back. It actually hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s been flourishing. I was just at Christian Siriano's show at his new house in Connecticut last week. And it was was breathtaking to see the political fashion art that has come out of this. It’s a direct response, an antidote to what we’re living through.

AP: You’re writing a memoir. How has that process been?

Porter: It’s a very difficult process. Yes, it is! It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. Because I’m trying to tell the truth and I’m trying to help somebody. So that means digging deep, and it’s hard.

Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press