The spirit of Stonewall

The Artdog Image(s) of Interest

I moved the posting schedule around some, when I realized that June 28 is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Like the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the 50th anniversary of Stonewall Means Something. As Ben Power put it in The Rainbow Times, "Stonewall was the flashpoint that gave painful birth to the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement"

In honor of the occasion, I've been diving into history. It's given me a new perspective on the spirit of Stonewall. It's also given me a new respect (read that awe) for the courage of the folks who threw punches at the Mafia-controlled NYC police outside the Stonewall Inn that morning

Small side note: I set this post to go live at 3:00 a.m., the time the police raid that started the riot reportedly began.

In the course of my life I've been friends and/or acquaintances with enough smart, funny, amazing, creative people who get classified within the LGBTQIA+ rainbow to realize they're really not abnormal-in-a-negative-way at all. Nor are they as rare as some would have you believe.

Unusual, yes. Frequently. It's one of the things I love best about these friends: their creativity.

A man named Vin Testa celebrated outside the Supreme Court in 2015, when the court ruled that the Constitution protects same-sex marriage. Photo by Zach Gibson/New York Times.

But one thing's certain: my friends would be far less free to be their smart, funny, amazing, creative, unusual selves if there hadn't been massive strides made since Stonewall. Sadly, however, despite the fact that we now have marriage equality and an openly gay man is in the top tier of Democratic Presidential contenders, we do not live in an LGBTQIA+ friendly world.

Most of the societies that contributed children to the great experiment that is the United States of America were repressing and hating and killing LGBTQIA+ people just as virulently and for a far longer time period than we enslaved black people. 

Nor are we doing enough to make it clear once and for all that we repudiate those attitudes. Lately, we seem to be losing ground! But this is not the time to quit.

May the spirit of Stonewall rock on!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Queer Projections, for the "Take a moment to remember" photo/design, and to Zach Gibson and the New York Times for access to the photo outside the Supreme Court.