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Before and After Stonewall
Part 2 of a 3-part series
This series of three articles is a celebration
of the 20th anniversary of Stonewall, the
1969 rebellion that changed forever the way
lesbians and gays would see themselves. The
theme for this year's gay and lesbian pride
celebration is Stonewall: Reasons to
Remember. We have a lot to remember, a lot
to be angry about, a lot to cry about and a lot
to give thanks for. Within this series, which
spans pre-1940 until the present, we hope
you will learn something you didn't know
about your history - the history of being gay
in America.
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During the 1940s and up until the 1960s,
psychiatrists and the medical profession in
general were theorizing that people who
engaged in homosexual practices suffered
from the "disease" of homosexuality. They
were sick, and the condition must be curable
if the right treatment was provided.
"Enlightened" thinking held that if
homosexuality was an illness, its victims
should be treated as victims, rather than
degenerates or criminals. Parents could, and
- did, commit their gay children to asylums for
"adjustment therapy" ranging from hypnosis
and aversion therapy through chemical and
electroshock treatments, lobotomy, and even
castration or hysterectomy.
Meanwhile there was the wartime
experience of all those young men and
women from different backgrounds and
circumstances meeting each other and
learning that, if they survived the war, they
didn't have to go back to their old lives. There
were new friends to introduce them to new
kinds of people - and there was the GI Bill to
give them the minimal economic
independence they needed to escape the
confines of family or community expectations
and strike out in directions of their owa
It may be no accident that both Henry Hay,
founder of the Mattachine Society, and
Barbara Gittings, who launched the New
York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis in
1958 (DOB), were the children of parents
who lived and worked abroad before
resettling in the United States, which
Europeans have long regarded as a bastion of
bigotry and prudishness.
Hay actually came out publicly to all his
acquaintances at Stanford University as early
as 1931 - twenty years before the group he
began as Bachelors for Wallace in 1948 began
to call itself the Mattachine Society (1951). In
a time when many of her lesbian colleagues
used pseudonyms, Gittings used her own
name, both as founder of the NY chapter of
DOB and as editor of the lesbian publication,
The Ladder (1963-66). In 196 2, she was one
of the first lesbians ever to present herself on
TV, when she was interviewed as DOB
president by Paul Cowles in Los Angeles.
Neither the Mattachines nor the DOB
originated in New York-both started in San
Francisco. Transcontinental flights were not
the routine affairs in the 1950's that they are
today, and the East and West Coast branches
of both groups evolved separately. Prior to a
1953 convention in Los Angeles attended by
about 500 Californians, Henry Hay ran the
Mattachines according to structures adapted
from the American Communist Party.
Hay and the others withdrew from the
society in 1953, fearing McCarthy and the
communist witchhunters would bring down
the whole edifice by asking them the question,
"Are you now, or were you ever a member of
the Communist Party?"
From 1953 onward, Hay maintains that the
society cared more about "appearing
respectable" than about "being self-
respecting." In fact, the entire "homophile"
movement, both gay and lesbian, stressed
outward conformity to social norms and
sought the advice of respectable "experts,"
rather than looking for the truth within
themselves, themselves in the Establishment's
image.
It was Frank Kameny, founder of the D.C.
chapter of the Mattachine Society in 1961,
who brought lessons learned from the Civil
Rights movement to bear on gay attempts at
emancipation and launched what would
become the activist movement for Gay Rights.
His assertion that "homosexuality is not a
sickness," and that the "experts" had no real
evidence whatever on which to base such a
claim, was still, in 1961, a very radical idea.
With the possible exception of ONE, Inc.,
whose magazine attempted to shake gay and
lesbian readers out of their resigned attitudes,
other gay organizations still behaved as if they
believed they must first win the respect of the
straight world before they could begin to
respect themselves.
As late as 1964, they thought it dangerous
and unwise even to allow people to think of
their meetings as social in nature. Appear
ances, outward behavior that was acceptable
to society, were still viewed as crucial while
they educated each other, and outside society,
to the point where they could be tolerated in
spite of their deviant sexual orientation.
In 1966, however, when feminist Rita
Laporte became president of the NY DOB
and Barbara Grier transformed The Ladder
into a lesbian-feminist publication, that began
to change. Beginning in the mid-60's, the
women's rights movement and ideas from the
counterculture and the New Left also fueled
the activist drive, and spurred a separate but
related women's liberation movement as well
as the evolution of the Radicalesbians, pre
Stonewall harbingers of Lesbian Feminist
Liberation, Inc.
Despite the unresponsiveness of the old
homophile groups, or perhaps because of it,
younger gay men and women were ready for a
fight, and proud of their radicalism. The
climate was ripe for change.
The flash point occurred June 27,1969, on
a Friday night, when a routine police raid on a
gay bar in New York City's Greenwich
Village, the sort of harassment they frequently
engaged in with impunity, turned into major
gay history.
Instead of submitting meekly to arrest, one
lesbian patron fought back, an angry crowd
gathered, bottles and cobblestones flew and
someone set fire to the bar - with the police
still trapped inside. Reinforcements got them
out, but the first gay riot in history continued
for two nights. By July, the Gay Liberation
Front had been formed in New York, and
within a year there were gay liberation
organizations on college campuses and in the
major cities everywhere in the country. The
gay emancipation movement at last had
ceased to be a topic for erudite discussion and
had hit the streets, where actions were saying
what words had so long failed adequately to
express.
-George Sinclair
Celebrate 20 Years of Activism
with
The Atlanta Lesbian and Gay Pride
Committee
June 24,1989
March from the Civic Center at 1:30 PM
Rally at Piedmont Park from 2-10 PM
Pride Day '89
The Day Your Closet
Hinges Will Explode
Atlanta Lcsbiaa-G^
Aide Week
Support Your
Pride Day
at These Benefits
Sunday, June 11, 1989
"Sorority Girls From Hell"
the video hit of the year
returns to Bulldog & Co. as a benefit for
the
Atlanta Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee
3PM Untill
T-shirts will be on sale!
Sunday, June 18, 1989
The Drummer Contest
at the Inman Park Trolley Barn
For More Information Call 662-6748
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