Editorial

Gay history is American history

Posted

In 1969, the Stonewall Inn was a hole-in-the-wall gay bar, a plain, two-story structure operated by the Mafia.

No one would have suspected that this obscure little bar, a meeting house of society’s rejected and forgotten, would launch a national movement that culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision on June 26, 2015, recognizing gay marriage as the law of the land.

But the Stonewall Inn did just that.

On June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the bar, which led to spontaneous, violent riots that captured the nation’s attention amid a season of civil rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. For the first time, the question of gay rights was considered by the larger society. Today the riots are often referred to as the Stonewall Uprising, or the Stonewall Rebellion.

The bar is now a National Historic Monument, one that we should recognize and remember during October, National LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender) History Month, which included National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11.

For millennia, gays and lesbians lived in the shadows. From ancient Rome through the Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, they feared for their lives in a Europe dominated by the so-called alpha male.

Stonewall began to change all of that. June 1969 was the first time that members of the LGBT community took a stand to proclaim that they had had enough. They were also people –– with hopes and dreams and talents. Demonstrations spread to other parts of North America and Europe, resulting in the first Gay Pride parades a year later in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. At first, the parades were a commemoration of the riots. As time passed, they increasingly became part and parcel of gay culture. They became celebratory events.

Thus the gay pride movement was born.

The spread of AIDS among the gay community in the early 1980s transformed “gay lib” from a loosely organized movement for social acceptance into a highly organized political movement fighting to save the lives of gay men who started dying of the disease by the thousands. In January 1982, a group of men met in New York to form Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which began to care for, and more importantly, advocate to save the lives of gay men. At the time, the federal government barely acknowledged the existence of AIDS. President Reagan refused to even mention the disease.

In 1987, ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, took to the streets to demand change and force the federal government to get serious about fighting the epidemic. A million people marched on Washington demanding change. Finally, the government joined the war on AIDS and the Centers for Disease Control changed the way it vetted and approved drugs, allowing life-saving medication to reach AIDS victims and save lives.

The LGBT community learned an important lesson from the AIDS crisis: that the only way to attain its civil rights was to organize and fight for them. Hundreds of gay rights groups, like the Empire State Pride Agenda in New York, demanded an end to discrimination in housing, in the workplace and in the military. SONDA, the Sexual Orientation and Non-discrimination Act, became law in New York only in 2002, 31 years after it was first introduced.

On Dec. 22, 2010, President Obama signed legislation to repeal the federal government’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, thus allowing gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans to serve openly in the military without fear of reprisal.

In July 2011, the president announced that the federal government would no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court then ruled DOMA unconstitutional in 2013, despite a right-leaning court.

Then came 2015, when the court finally ruled gay marriage legal in a 5-4 decision. “No longer may justice be denied,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority decision.

It’s tempting to believe that all is well now. We certainly want to believe that. That, however, is not the case. Society is nowhere near as cruel as it once was to members of the LGBT community, but gays and lesbians still face widespread discrimination. Many teenagers are still taunted. Many job applicants are overlooked.

Shockingly, while the right of LGBT folks to marry is protected by the Constitution, there is no protection against discrimination at the federal level. In many states, you can still be fired or denied an apartment simply because of your sexual orientation.

That is why we need a National LGBT History Month. A Missouri high school teacher named Rodney Wilson came up with the idea in 1994. He believed gay history was an integral part of American and even world history and should be taught in the schools. GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Education Association all endorsed the project.

So, this National LGBT History Month, take a moment to reflect on how far we have come as a society –– and how far we have to go.