Fifty-Seven Years Ago Today

Originally posted June 27, 2009

It was fifty-five years ago, a lifetime to some of us, a minute to others, but it marked a turning point for what would become the LGBTQ+ community. It wasn’t the first time our community fought back—there was the Cooper Do-nuts Riot in 1959,  the Dewey's Restaurant protest in 1965,  the Compton's Cafeteria riot in 1966, the Black Cat Tavern and New Faces, The Patch in 1968, among other—but Stonewall marked one of the loudest times that gay men and trans women stood up en masse and said, ‘No. We will not be treated like this any longer!’

The weekend of June 27-29,1969 began what is the modern-day gay movement. To be sure, there were gay and lesbian activists before that weekend, but the confrontation between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City lit a fire in the hearts of the LGBT community like it had never been done before.

And like any good story, there is controversy surrounding the Stonewall Riots; there are arguments and differences over what happened, how it started and how it ended. But the fact that we all need to remember is that it did happen, and it should continue to be a rallying cry for the LGBTQ+ community today, as we continue the march toward equality in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of America.

Friday, June 27, 1969: the world was mourning the death of Judy Garland. Could it be that the death of one of the most famous gay icons was what sparked the fire of the modern-day Gay Rights Movement? Many people have speculated that Garland's death did indeed push the gay community into the streets of New York that night, but it was also hot in New York that night, and some say it was the heat that fueled the crowd into action, into reaction. I think maybe it was both, Garland's death and the hot summer night; or maybe it was just that the gay community had finally had enough of being told what to do, what not to do, and how we should live our lives. Whatever the reason, it was enough. Finally, enough.

In the early morning hours of June 28, police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a small bar located on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, as they had done on other occasions. Although mafia-run, the Stonewall, like other predominantly gay bars in the city, got raided by the police periodically.

Typically, the more "deviant" patrons—the queens and butch lesbians, especially if they were black—were arrested and taken away, while white, male customers looked on or quietly disappeared. The bar owners would be levied an insubstantial fine—a sign of police corruption and collusion between bar owners and police—allowing them to reopen for business the following day.

On this night, the charge at the Stonewall was the illegal sale of alcohol. The raid began as they always did: plainclothes and uniformed police officers entered the bar, arrested the employees, and began ejecting the customers one by one onto the street. For some reason, however, the crowd that had gathered outside Stonewall, a somewhat campy and festive crowd, began to cheer as the patrons were pushed out of the bar. But soon the mood changed; it was Judy Garland's death, or the summer heat, or the fact that the summer of 1969 was a particularly busy one for police raids on gay bars. Or maybe it was watching drag queens and lesbians being pushed and shoved and kicked into paddy wagons. Whatever it was, the on-lookers lost their patience. No one really knows who threw the first punch; some say it was a drag queen, some say it was a rather butch-looking lesbian. But someone defied the police that night; someone had finally had enough.

The crowd, now numbering several hundred, exploded. People began hurling coins at police officers, then they moved on to rocks and bottles, whatever they could grab. The police, at first stunned that the normally docile and shamed homosexuals would react in such a fashion, soon began beating the crowds with nightsticks. This group, however, was too angry, and was not going to be pushed around, or down, any longer; the police officers were forced to take refuge inside the Stonewall.

As news spread throughout Greenwich Village the crowd grew ever larger; many residents, some gay, some not, ran down to the Stonewall Inn to join the fight. Lighter fluid was squirted inside the bar and someone tried to light it; others grabbed a downed parking meter and used it as a battering ram against the front of the Stonewall. Someone began chanting "Gay Power!"

The riot-control police unit arrived to rescue the trapped officers and break up the demonstration, though it took over an hour before the crowd dispersed. To taunt their attackers a group of drag queens began to sing at the top of their lungs:

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees!

That first Stonewall Riot ended the morning of Saturday, June 28, but the fight was far from over. That night a second riot broke out and the crowd now numbered in the thousands, filling the streets in the name of Gay Pride. They marched to the Stonewall Inn and waited for the police to arrive; and they did, in the early morning of Sunday, June 29.

For over a week, though in smaller numbers, protests and demonstrations continued in Greenwich Village. There was finally a sense of what could be accomplished by banding together, by being out, by being seen, by being heard. By being angry. It was a new day.

A month after the riots, the Gay Liberation Front [GLF] was formed. Radical and leftist, the GLF was one of many politically focused lesbian and gay organizations formed in the days following the riots. The number of lesbian and gay publications skyrocketed as well, which led to an even greater sense of community. The LGBT community was no longer strictly marginalized in United States society. Now, out and proud lesbians and gay men were developing their own communities in cities across the country.

Since 1970, marches have taken place in New York City—and all over the world—every year on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In June 1994, hundreds of thousands of people converged on New York to celebrate Stonewall's 25th anniversary. In 1999 the United States government proclaimed the Stonewall Inn 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.

Stonewall, while not the first protest, is our Plymouth Rock. It's where the gay community landed and came together and began the march toward equality. Stonewall was our first glimpse of a new world where we weren't alone, we weren't all that different, where we belonged.

It makes no difference how it started. The death of an icon; the summer heat; a sense of frustration. It makes no difference who started it; drag queens or lesbians; coin tossers or rock throwers. The difference is that it happened.

As I said, no one really knows who started the riot, or how it all started, but we do know that a great deal of the credit goes to Marsha P. Johnson, a drag queen who frequented the Stonewall Inn, and fought back and fought for our community before some of us were even born.

Fifty-five years ago today.

As we have seen this past year, in states around the nation, and in the Supreme Court, no rights, no laws, are safe with this radical rightwing GOP. And while the Supreme Court justices say they won’t come for LGBTQ+ rights, or marriage equality, we know them to be deceitful as they have come for our trans brothers and sisters. What we once thought was settled law could be lost to us unless we stand up, speak up, shout out, show up and CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.

The march goes on …

I Didn't Say It ... Happy Pride!

Sting, musician, on what the gay community has done for straight men:

“Thanks to the gay community, we [straight] men can actually follow our feelings and demonstrate our affection for each other without being afraid. The generation before us, our fathers, they would shake hands and that would be it. There would be no hugging or affection.”

Straight men could learn a lo from gay men about being open and loving with one another.

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Caleb Shomo, frontman for the rock band Beartooth, coming out as gay:

"There's been a lot of speculation surrounding my personal life as of late, and I feel compelled to set the record straight before it affects those I love any further … I am a proudly gay man. This is something I've been unpacking and reckoning with in my life for quite some time now. It's been difficult to navigate the feelings surrounding the subject and figure out what to do with this fact. I spent a decade burying feelings with alcohol, and honestly, when I decided to put it down and focus on exploring why I felt this way for so long, it's been a direct path to me reconciling with my sexuality in hopes that it will eventually lead me to experiencing self-love. One thing I decided before I wrote a single note or lyric of the upcoming album is that whatever happens, I will express myself wholeheartedly and fully. I encourage anyone who's struggling with who they are to give yourself grace. Do the hard work instead of burying it down as deep as you physically can thinking it will change like I did. Holding these things in only hurt you and those around you. Love you all, and hopefully this is a step in the right direction to loving myself one day.”

Welcome out, Caleb! And please accept as our gift to you, the Official Coming Out Toaster Oven™ and your own copy of The Gay Agenda.

No matter how long you took to get here, you’re welcome; you’re among family.

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Fleur Shomo, Caleb’s wife of 14 years, opened up her husband’s coming out:

“I will always want to love, protect and support Caleb. I have cared more about his well-being over the years than anything else in the world. To see the confusion and pain he went through and the highs and lows and wanting to help but now knowing how. You never want anything more for your person than for them to just be ok. I am the only person that is having to deal with the duality of this situation, to support him whilst losing everything has been incredibly hard to figure out. You can love and support your person through the hardest time in their life, whilst also be completely demolished and lose yourself at the same time... Our nearly 14 years of marriage was wonderful and full of so much fun, adventure & love. Nobody will know anything about our marriage like we do. And no one can ever truly know what depths of love exist between two people unless they are those people. I already miss it & my husband more than anything. Our story was a good one. And now it is done.”

My heart breaks for Fleur but also weeps for her strength and ability to still love her husband, even as this chapter of his life, and their lives, comes to a close.

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Willie Nelson, country singer, on his life and gay people:

“I’ve known straight and gay people all my life. I can’t tell the difference. People are people where I came from.”

It’s just that simple.

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Meryl Streep, actor, on her The Devil Wears Prada co-star Stanley Tucci during his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony:

"You can't even call Stanley a national treasure anymore because I've just been around the world, and truly, the affection hurled at him globally, he's just marinating in it. And it's impossible not to love Stanley Tucci. Urbane, sly, funny, bitchy, and generous and curious and so elegant. Stanley has an elegance to his heterosexuality. His undeniable heterosexuality, which is formidable. Not that heterosexuality is better than any other kind of sexuality. It's just that elegance—real, unforced, natural, unstyled elegance—is sometimes harder for straight men. His soulfulness is evident in the most elevated characters and also in the lowdown characters. It's a thing he can't lose, no matter if it's a priest or a prosecutor or a pervert or Puck or Paul Child, he always finds something true and surprising in every man that he plays. He transforms character acting into leading man material."

I know Stanley Tucci is a heterosexual male, but because he’s, as Meryl says, ‘sly, funny, bitchy’ he fits into a gay man’s idea of a certain kind of man … well, he’s my idea of a fabulous gay man … and also a Husband-In-My-Head.

And Carlos is fine with that!

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Bobservations

I do love a good text exchange with Carlos since he uses Siri and she has quite a time with his accent. Once he ended a text with “Gracias” and Siri translated it to “Gracious.”

The other morning the text exchange went like this:

Carlos: “Craig is coming over to paint the shoe border or whatever you call it and then he’s going to install it.”

Bob: “Okay.”

Bob: “And it’s shoe molding.”

Carlos: “Well, mowed your shoes.”

Bob: :That makes no sense.”

Bob: “For the love of god man, can you speak English.”

I feel like Lucy trying to understand Ricky!

This Tale of Tuxedo is from March 2010 and is entitled Tell Me....................

..........am I a bad parent because I gave my cat a leopard pillow?

Let me get this queer … if you pull the peeled paint out of a reflecting pool, you get arrested but if you smash windows, savagely beat officers at the Capitol Building, and smear your feces on the walls you get a pardon and perhaps a payout.

Oh, and if you tear down a government building without a permit … 

I don’t eat fast food; I have but I haven’t in years. So imagine my surprise when one day last week I found myself in line at McDonalds for no apparent reason …

This is American Policing in Black and White

BLACK AND UNARMED

Amadou Diallo 23, standing in front of his building, MURDERED by police, 41 bullets

Sean Bell 23, leaving his bachelor party, MURDERED by police, 50 bullets

LaQuan McDonald 17, walking away, MURDERED by police, 16 bullets

Jayland Walker 25, traffic stop, MURDERED by police, 90 bullets

WHITE AND ARMED

Vance Boelter 57, murdered 2 people, ARRESTED, 0 bullets

Dylan Roof 21, murdered 9 people, ARRESTED, 0 bullets

James Holmes 24, murdered 12 people, ARRESTED, 0 bullets

Payton Gendron 18, murdered 10 people, ARRESTED, 0 bullets

Tell me again, how race has nothing to do with it

Apparently there are some people calling the DC Reflecting Pool the Straight of Warm Ooze.

James Burrows once said that if Will & Grace made just one young kid less homophobic, then his whole career would have meant something. He died last week at 85 and I dare say his career meant something.

He didn't just direct an episode of Will & Grace here and there, he directed every single episode, putting two openly gay characters into millions of American living rooms when network TV still treated that as a gamble. And it was a gamble. When NBC executives complained that the pilot had too much gay content, Burrows shot back:

"If not here, then where?"

The show stayed exactly as it was. 

RIP Mr. Burrows

Aaron Shandel hails from South Africa and was discovered while catching waves in his hometown of Cape Town and if you caught him, Would You Hit It?

Architecture Wednesday: Alaska Buildings Warehouse Loft

On the top floor of the Alaska Buildings, a former industrial warehouse in Bermondsey, south-east London, you’ll find this lofty two-bedroom apartment that has been impeccably reimagined but retains its sense of history.

Set behind secure gates the Alaska Buildings make an arresting first impression as they are two former factories—one built in 1869, the other in 1932—that closed in the 1960s and then converted into apartments in the 1990s.

Entry is to the main lobby, with 24-hour concierge service and a large stone bar area for residents to gather for the annual summer, Halloween, and Christmas parties organized by management, Opposite the concierge desk is the post and parcel room, as well as a storage room for tenants.

This apartment is on the top floor, accessible via staircase. The apartment’s front door opens to a central hall. To the left is an impressive, open-plan reception room with kitchen, dining and sitting area. A soaring vaulted ceiling with exposed timbers lends an ecclesiastical quality, while steel framing reflects the building’s industrial origin. Two arched, south-easterly warehouse windows draw in abundant natural light and are complemented by additional skylights.

The kitchen runs along one side of the space, with black metal doors and reeded glass that echo the industrial theme and contrast well with the white countertops. A large central island provides space for casual dining though there is space for a proper dining area. Stairs ascend to a mezzanine where a custom-made bookcase conceals a large storage area accessed via a secret door. 

At the back of the apartment is the generous principal bedroom with an adjacent dressing area fitted with built-in cabinetry and a refined en suite bathroom finished with mosaic tiles and brass fittings with bathtub and shower. A second double bedroom lies just off the front door and has a concealed desk nook and a shared bathroom with walk-in shower.

The apartment includes a secure and allocated underground parking space and is available for £1,000,000 AKA $1.35 M USD.

As always click to emBIGGERate …

The Modern House

Meme Dump ... Happy Pride