We’re Here — 40 years later

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Frank Rich's Sunday essay in the NY Times is about gay rights and Stonewall, and it goes without saying it's worth reading.

A couple of sentences struck me:

After the gay liberation movement was born at Stonewall, this strand of history advanced haltingly until the 1980s. It took AIDS and the new wave of gay activism it engendered to fully awaken many, including me, to the gay people all around them.

This is true, but goes deeper than I think Rich realizes. He was, after all, a theater critic for Time magazine during the 70s, after which he took up the same role for the New York Times.

It's worth thinking about that for a bit. A man writing about the theater in America in the 1970s and 80s could not possibly have been a stranger to gay people. So what, exactly, did the new wave of gay activism enlighten him to?

Simply asking that question implicates the unique role - or non-role - that lesbians and gay men played in the minds of Americans prior to Stonewall. And it shows why Stonewall - and the earlier Black Cat riots in L.A., and other uprisings of the time - were not only necessary but inevitable. We were, in fact, there, all along, but existed in a parallel universe of indeterminacy; somehow not quite real -- or, at least, not the same sort of beings as everyone else.

The events at Stonewall and the Black Cat bar occurred roughly simultaneously on opposite ends of the country, and apparently had no direct connection to one another. Each was a reaction to its own form of local police harassment, the kind of thing we'd gotten used to over the years. But their similarities can't be ignored. Without anyone making any conscious decision, the injustice and the isolation -- the lack of any formal role in the society -- boiled over. Stonewall and Black Cat were fundamental assertions of our existence. It would take another quarter of a century for us to find the articulation those protesters could have used: We're here, we're queer, get used to it.

But they didn't need slogans to make their point. They showed up, and in those days that was plenty. Some of their stories are now available at a place few of them could ever have imagined: AARP has a section devoted to Stonewall.

Tomorrow will be an important anniversary, both to look back and to look forward. But Frank Rich inadvertently reminds us that we should think a bit about the trip from there to here - the journey from citizenship without rights to, well, whatever we can obtain through the grace of the political branches.

3 Comments for “We’re Here — 40 years later”

  1. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Frank Richâ??s Sunday essay in the NY Times is about gay rights and Stonewall, and it goes without saying itâ??s worth reading.

    Hmmm. I took one look at the headline — 40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans — and thought: “Mr. Rich’s essay is not to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown aside, with great force.”

    (If you think you’re a second-class citizen, that’s 98% of your problem right there — and it’s unlikely that the federal government can do much to really help you.)

    P.S. I did read the whole column, and was not favorably impressed with the spokes-gays that Rich quoted — “We want a president who will make that go away.” Ech.

  2. posted by David Link on

    Well, I certainly couldn’t disagree with your last line. I feel pretty much the same way about spokesgays as I feel about spokesmodels. Neither was a very big advancement for humanity.

  3. posted by RonSanchez on

    Throbert, throwing able-bodies solders out dishonorably because they are gay is the very definition of second-class citizen.

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