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(Image source: GFXtra.com)
If it's June - and it is - it must be LGBT Pride Month. All over the world, members of sexual minorities will take to the streets to celebrate our lives, our families and friends, our damned good fortune that we've made it this far, and that we can have a blast while doing all this.
The idea of Gay Pride originates, just as do other ubiquitous global sensations like Coca-Cola, the Big Mac and the summer blockbuster, right here in the good old U. S. of A. Specifically, right here in my hometown, New York City, Babylon on the Hudson.
So what's all the fuss about?
LGBT Pride is many things to many people, unsurprisingly for a community as dazzlingly diverse as ours. But it all started in Greenwich Village, the bohemian enclave on the West Side of Manhattan, nestled between the canyons of Wall Street and the slaughterhouses of the Meatpacking District. As the sixties ended, America was in turmoil; the civil rights movement had won its first victories, the war in Vietnam was devouring the nation's young men, in the process damaging beyond repair the faith of a generation in the institutions of government, while in the Golden State, young men and women, liberated by the pill, experimented with their bodies and, with generous helpings of new and interesting narcotics, their minds.
All this ferment had passed by the 'homophile' bars in the Village, until one night, everything changed, in a seedy little bar on Christopher Street frequented mainly by hustlers, butch lesbians and drag queens: the Stonewall.
In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a group of gay customers at a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn, who had grown angry at the harassment by police, took a stand and a riot broke out. As word spread throughout the city about the demonstration, the customers of the inn were soon joined by other gay men and women who started throwing objects at the policemen, shouting "gay power."
Police reinforcements arrived and beat the crowd away, but the next night, the crowd returned, even larger than the night before, with numbers reaching over 1000. For hours, protesters rioted outside the Stonewall Inn until the police sent a riot-control squad to disperse the crowd. For days following, demonstrations of varying intensity took place throughout the city.
In the wake of the riots, intense discussions about civil rights were held among New York's LGBT people, which led to the formation of various advocacy groups such as the short-lived Gay Liberation Front, which was the first group to use the word "gay" in its name, and a city-wide newspaper called Gay. On the 1st anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the first gay pride parades in U.S. history took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and near the Stonewall Inn in New York.
The Stonewall riots inspired LGBT people throughout the country to organize in support of gay rights, and within two years after the riots, gay rights groups had been started in nearly every major city in the United States.
This is what the big deal is all about: that an oppressed people finally stood up and said, enough. All else flows from that moment in time and space. We remember, and we're not going back into the shadows.
In june 2011, it seems we are light years removed from those heroes at the Stonewall. Just like the Virginia Slim woman, we've come a long way, baby.
But is there a reason to slack off, to just guzzle a cosmo or five and be content with the acres of well-oiled flesh displayed on thoroughfares across the nation and the world?
No, there's not. Not until we are all equal, all our children are safe and loved, and all of us can be as downright unremarkable as those nice straight people down the street. When we don't have to march any more, our job will be done.
Happy Pride to all, and please share your stories from Pride in comments. The floor is yours.
(Diary by MBNYC)