And in Juneau, at a gay pride festival last weekend, a woman wearing a pride T-shirt asked a police officer if her shirt made her a target. In Anchorage, Alaska, Police Chief Christopher Tolley will march in the city's parade, and has ordered extra officers to be on scene, not because there's been an identified threat but to show support for the LGBT community. "That change has been revolutionary in the last decade," said Sands, who is gay. Diana Sands said that is driving the shift in attitude. More people are openly gay and demanding they be treated as just another part of the larger community. Stonewall is where we go when things like this happen, said Andy Humm, host of. In the Idaho communities of Boise and Pocatello and in Missoula, Montana, officers are assigned as liaisons to the gay community. The Manhattan bar became a national symbol of gay rights after a 1969 police raid led to violent street riots. While large departments for years have been more welcoming to the gay community and many have gay officers on the force, rural, conservative states are trying to catch up, too. "I wouldn't want there to be an overconcentration of police where people are always in fear, but I do want them to know we're present if you need us," King said. He hopes LGBT leaders, working with city and police officials, can develop a plan that makes people feel secure but not "like big brother is watching." The persecution reflected views in society at large: Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder, and it was only in 2003 that a Supreme Court ruling declared state sodomy laws to be an unconstitutional violation of personal privacy.
During the raids, vice officers would beat the patrons - sometimes the targets were those not wearing sex-appropriate clothing - and arrest them on morals charges. just decades ago, and police routinely raided private gay clubs. Living an open gay lifestyle was unheard of across most of the U.S. "That's a snapshot of 40 years of progress," said Jason Marsden, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, named for the University of Wyoming gay student who died after he was beaten and tied to a fence by two men in 1998.
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On Sunday, police will march in solidarity and will have a robust presence among the crowd of 300,000 plus people. NPS.gov."Once upon a time they hit us with nightsticks, and now they're our protectors," said Gil Horowitz, 80, a retired research psychologist in New York who took part in the riots at Stonewall.Īt gay pride parades this weekend, that evolution will be on display in cities like Denver, where the first parade in 1975 was in response to police raids on gay bars and arrests of gay men. LGBTQ Activism: The Henry Gerber House, Chicago, IL. READ MORE: How Activists Plotted the First Gay Pride Parades Sources In 2016, then-President Barack Obama designated the site of the riots-Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets and sidewalks-a national monument in recognition of the area’s contribution to gay rights. The parade’s official chant was: “Say it loud, gay is proud.” On the one-year anniversary of the riots on June 28, 1970, thousands of people marched in the streets of Manhattan from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park in what was then called “Christopher Street Liberation Day,” America’s first gay pride parade.
Though the Stonewall uprising didn’t start the gay rights movement, it was a galvanizing force for LGBT political activism, leading to numerous gay rights organizations, including the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). READ MORE: 7 Surprising Facts About the Stonewall Riots and the Fight for LGBT Rights Stonewall's Legacy For instance, solicitation of same-sex relations was illegal in New York City. The 1960s and preceding decades were not welcoming times for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.Įxplore the history of the LGBTQ movement in America here. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, began in the early hours of Jwhen New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City.