Dumas: Celebrating another step for LGBT rights, 50 years after Stonewall uprising
Congratulations to my LGBT friends on their recent 6-3 victory in the Supreme Court. When I was growing up it was illegal to be gay or trans. Gay people were not only fired from their jobs, they were often brutalized and sometimes killed. Things began to change when LGBT folks began to fight back.
I remember in 1969, we were sitting in Andre’s Bar on 12th and Avenue A, Jerry rushed in and said there was a riot over in the West Village.
“The cops raided the Stonewall Inn, and people fought back.”
The Stonewall was a dive. It catered to street hustlers, gays and queens. The idea that the apolitical, passive clientele of the Stonewall Inn were fighting back against the cops was inconceivable. We had to see it.
It was like a hallucinogenic vision of war. Phalanxed in front of the bar were a couple of dozen cops. Over 100 mostly gay men, in various stages of inebriation, wardrobed in colorful attire, were gathered across from the Stonewall, chanting “Gay power” and “Freedom now.” There were choruses of drag queens doing kick lines to obscene versions of Broadway shows. At one point some folks started to sing “We shall overcome.” David and I joined in.
This was not a nonviolent civil rights demonstration. Folks were seriously angry. They were throwing anything at the police that they could find, rocks, bottles, even a few shoes. Word spread that people were being beaten inside the club. More stones and projectiles were hurled. More cops arrived. They started making forays into the crowd, which had grown to several hundred people including some of my Lower East Side straight friends in the crowd.
People from the after hours club joined the crowd. The cops didn’t discriminate. They were swinging their clubs at any heads in their vicinity. Normally such a vicious attack would have had folks running for their lives. Some did retreat. Most refused to budge. They stood boldly confronting the cops swinging fists, purses, shoes, whatever was available.
The uprising lasted until the early hours of the morning. The demonstration continued for several days. Some gay activists began to organize around the issue of resistance to police brutality and ill treatment of gays. The event became known as the Christopher Street Uprising, probably because the Stonewall Inn had a bad reputation even in the gay community.
Fifty years later we returned to New York for the world premiere of “Stonewall,” an original opera about the events of that night. I talked to Mark Campbell, the librettist. I told him I was there. He laughed and said everybody of a certain age claims to have been there. He said researching the project was difficult because of the lack of facts and reliable witnesses. No one knows who threw the first stone or bottle. He also discovered that the event had been intentionally provoked by the police department. They planned to shut down the club during the mayoral campaign. They did not expected any resistance, which explains why there was such a small contingent of police officers in the initial raid. He said that the uprising was not the result of any one person, or group of individuals. At some point someone said, “No.” Others concurred and found the courage to stand up against oppressive authority.
These were ordinary people doing a extraordinary thing. People from the least empowered segment of the social hierarchy, despised by all including some of their own fellow gays, found the courage to suppress their fears in order to stand up for their dignity. Stonewall was not a piece of valuable real estate but it was their home away from homes. It was the only place they could recognize each fully in all their beautiful humanity. They stood their ground the same way that a few ragtag ruffians did for their colonized home, against the red-coated cops, in front of the Customs House in Boston, a quarter of a millennium ago.
A few days later, we were at the Stonewall Inn, now a national shrine, along with thousands of other people. We were there to celebrate those courageous few who fought back 50 years ago. Because of their resistance, it is no longer criminal to be gay. It is OK to love who you want, marry who you want, share your life with who you want. Because of the actions of those gay activists, a new identity flowered in the community. Out of the abuse they suffered, organizations manifested which provided the framework for awareness, resistance, and finally hope. Our nation under their leadership has been able to withstand and fight back against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Because of the gay community HIV/AIDS is no longer an absolute death sentence. I smile lovingly at these joyous celebratory faces of people, most had not been born 50 years ago.
Sexual preference prejudice and gender identity discrimination has not been fully eradicated but the Supreme Court has taken us another step. We do not know who defiantly first said, “No!” We are all blessed that they did. We can’t predict tomorrow, but standing on their shoulders we can see the emergence of a truly beloved and just community.