DNDA Celebrates Pride
As Pride 2020 is wrapping up, and just having past the 50 year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, it seems timely to take a moment to remember that the path from queer shame to queer pride has been an evolution and a continuation of struggles and the progress left to us by previous generations of queer communities.
The first recognized gay rights organization was established in 1924 by German immigrant, Henry Gerber. Henry started the Society of Human Rights upon returning to Chicago after spending a few years in Germany following the end of World War One. Having experienced a thriving gay subculture and studying the work being done to decriminalize homosexuality in Germany, Henry started the first gay focused publication in the US to combat gay discrimination in the US. The organization was very short lived and only one or two issues of Friendship and Freedom were published. The organization and publication were shut down by authorities under the claim that the organization was a sex cult.
The next formally organized gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, would not form until 1950. Between the end of the Society of Human Rights and the formation of the Mattachine Society, the thriving gay community and gay publications in Germany that inspired Henry Gerber were systematically undone by the Nazis. The gay men were either forced back into the closet, sent to local jails, sent to concentration camps or were killed. The gay publications were burned. The gay community was destroyed.
After the end of World War Two, anti-gay laws were quickly passed and enforced throughout Europe and the US, as heteronormative society was a pushing for a return to “morality.” The queer community was increasingly being arrested and harassed by police in an enforcement of anti-gay morality laws. Arrests for lewd acts were common for gay men, lesbians were subject to arrest if they did not have a minimum number of feminine clothing pieces on and the transsexual community was arrested for wearing clothing that didn’t match their sex at birth. In states like New York, bars selling liquor to gay customers faced having their liquor licenses revoked. Having limited options, the queer community had to meet in Mafia run bars and clubs, as the Mafia was the only organization powerful enough to manage the constant police raids. The wealthier gay customers were frequently extorted by the Mafia, threatened with being outed.
Facing constant harassment, extortion, arrest and closeted existences, in the early hours of June 28, 2019, the queer community had had enough. What started as a routine raid of the Stonewall Inn, a mafia run gay bar serving the most marginalized in the gay community, ended with the one big spark that ignited the queer liberation movement. The drag queen, the lesbian, the trans woman, though much discussion has been had about who was the first to ignite that spark, on that night, the queer community fought back.
The Stonewall Riots lasted several nights and did not end the raids on the queer community nor end the enforcement of anti-gay morality laws. That night did not change the queer reality, but it changed the queer future. As a coalition of marginalized groups, the queer community found strength in a unified voice. During the month of June, the queer community and allies come together to remember the prideful voices of those before us, to celebrate lives lived in the open and to affirm our fight for the next generation of lives lived with Pride.