Stonewall: Gays Come Out Into History

AmericanHeritage.com

When the police raided New York City?s largest gay bar 37 years ago today, on June 27, 1969, they weren?t expecting any resistance. They had raided the Stonewall Inn countless times before, and usually the patrons, fearing that arrest would make their sexuality known, would submissively file out. But tonight was different?and what happened sparked a revolution.

There was an ?electricity going through the people,? one witness said. Patrons fought back, and for four days Greenwich Village was alive with protesters clashing with the police and crying ?Gay power!? Stonewall became a rallying point for gay-rights activists, and they transformed the raw energy of the riot into a new political movement. It was, in the words of the novelist Edmund White, ?our Bastille Day.?

It sent a message: Gays were tired of living in fear. In 1953 President Eisenhower had signed an executive order that prohibited the employment of gays by the federal government, connecting it to ?security threats? such as Communism and ?sexual perversion.? After that 1,500 federal employers had been fired, and 6,000 had resigned rather than be investigated.

Homosexual sex between consenting adults was illegal in all but one state. In New York City gays could openly socialize only in parks or in Mafia-run clubs like the Stonewall, and gay men in Greenwich Village were often harassed by the police. It was an ?attempt to impose police-state conditions onto a homosexual ghetto,? writes David Carter in his book Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. Sylvia Rivera, a transvestite who lived in Greenwich Village, recalls, ?We would always dream that one day it would come to an end. We prayed and we looked for it. We wanted to be human beings.?