Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 1993 02:12:07 EST
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject:    Re: Stonewall in perspective

In article <1993Jan15.154040.1001@tc.cornell.edu>
shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:

>In article <1j5hgcINN3m8@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>
>ST402341@brownvm.brown.edu (Gary Byma) writes:

>> It strikes me that the early post-Stonewall years were
>>less about gay liberation than about total sexual abandon.

>Try reading some history.

Our newsfeed is still dealing with Jan. 15th, so apologies if someone
has commented on this.

I have lived in NYC since 1959 and have yet to read any gay history
which strikes a very familar chord.  Most of what passes for "history"
has been written by people who have extracted the politics of the
late Sixties and early Seventies from the matrix of gay life and
consequently made that period look hotly political.

Sorry, but gay politics was a flash in the pan back then.  New York City
had suffered a very tight anti-gay harrassment policy under
Mayor Wagner.  When Lindsay became mayor in 1965 there were three
quick reversals in public policy which turned gay life in NYC
around.  The State Liquor Authority code, which made "congregating
homosexuals" in licensed premises a reason for license revocation
(and was the primary reason that gay bars were run by the Mafia
 in collusion with the police) was revoked.) Thus, gay bars were
de facto legal.  Police entrapment of gay men by vice squads was
suspended.  An executive order forbade discrimination against the
hiring of gay people in the City government and this was
the beginning of many "out" professionals in NYC business life.

These changes are certainly not consistent in extent with what we now
would term "gay rights", but their effect was very powerful.  Gay
businesses of all sorts began to flourish - in Greenwich Village
and elsewhere in Manhattan - gay social life was very open and
there was a widespread sense of security after the long Wagner years.
Gay life was very public.

However, homophobia did not die within the police department overnight.
And, the mayor being a liberal Republican did not have good relations
with the police department.  Though the degree to which to cops loosened
up was rather surprising in my estimation.  A MAJOR problem was that
Inspector Pine in The Village, the local police biggie, was an ardent
homophobe....if not for him Stonewall and the Snake Pit raid after
that might never have taken place.

The raids on both of these places were part of a city-wide policy
to close ALL *unlicensed* premises, most of which were also open long
after the legal closing time in the city.  Raids on these places
occured in black neighborhoods and in Hispanic neighborhoods --
where these establishments catered to strait folks.  And they also
hit the same illegal premises which catered to gay people, e.g. -
The Stonewall.  These were not raids on legitimately operated gay
bars and restaurants.

The homophobic Inspector Pine was delighted to have an opportunity
to harrass gay people in The Village.  I think what happened is that
the customers at The Stonewall were quite simply full of piss and
vinegar after almost four years of fairly wide open night life and
the Civil Rights marches and the anti-war sentiment made cops the
natural target of hostility in those times too. (Between the Selma March
and the 1968 police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago
the police had become a focus of a great deal of disillusionment,
and that feeling was very strong in NYC which was very pro-Civil
Rights and very anti-war.)  Pine ran the Stonewall raid as a crude
police bully affair and the times were right for gay people to
feel safe enough to lash out.

The idea that gay people were so desperate that they had no choice
but to riot is baloney.  If the riot was about anything, it was
about holding on to what we felt we had - not about getting something
we didn't have.  The next two or three nights changed the complexion
of things considerably though.  The cops (and Inspector Pine) freaked
at the idea that they were defied by fairies and then a lot of
non-gay interests decided to get physically involved simply because
they were anti-police, e.g. - the Black Panthers.  From that point
on Stonewall was being given a lot of political tone, and by
the time of the Snake Pit raid in the following March  there certainly
was something you could call gay politics.

In the months following the Stonewall riots and then more intensely
after the demonstrations following the attempted suicide of Diego
Vinales as a result of the Snake Pit raid in March of 1970,
some gay people began to organize groups for ongoing
protest.  The first of these was the Gay Liberation
Front, a left-leaning organization that sought out confrontation and took
stances which were provocative.  It sought allies among the Yippies
(radical hippies) and even the Black Panthers (who were strongly
homophobic!)

The alliances were ill-considered, various actions and statements were
were equally lacking in forethought.  The spirit and fire of the GLF,
which had captured the attention of many gay people if not actually
turned them into followers, began to lose its attractiveness and
GLF was becoming an object of ridicule before too long.  A group
of transvestites organized as STAR (Street Transvestives Are
Revolutionaries, something like that as I recall.)  They were a
spin-off of the Gay Liberation Front.  Most gay people at the time
were not inclined to consider that drag could be anything other
than outrageous camp, so this development did not help GLF either.
Some of the street transvestites were also prostitutes and drug
addicts.  This kind of lifestyle may have made them only more daring
and outrageous, but it also made post-Stonewall politics less
appealing to many gay people.

The Gay Liberation Front didn't seem to be able to focus on any
local gay issue which would attract, unite and hold the interest
of gay people here.  I think in allying themselves with other
groups and causes they shot themselves in the foot.  If you were
anti-war, you already belonged to any anti-war group, if you were
involved in Civil Rights you were probably active in CORE, and so
on.  And if you didn't give a fuck about this stuff, they really
didn't have a gay platform with widespread popular appeal.

There were rows and much infighting in the GLF and finally a large
number of the active members broke off and founded the Gay Activists
Alliance (GAA.)  This was a more strictly gay-oriented movement that did
not look to other radical groups for allies and concentrated on gay
issues.  This group appealed to many people and did get and hold
many more followers than the GLF.  This latter organization, along
with the fascinating people of STAR, withered away shortly after
GAA got underway.  (My sense of time is very poor here, I am guessing
it was 1971 when this happened.)

GAA actually did get listened to by the politicians and gay
power was beginning - especially in Greenwich Village where there
was a large concentration of gay voters.  The GAA rented (or bought?)
an old fire house from the City for a meeting place.  It was located
in SoHo, a district south of Greenwich Village.

For several years the GAA kept up a steady barrage of publicity and
demands, though to be honest I cannot remember any specific events
or issues.  Toward 1973 (my guess) GAA really began to lose its
hold on the attention of most gay people.  They used to hold dances
in the fire house and these were popular for awhile, but then as
the gay social scene exploded and the inevitable after-hours
bars with dancing opened again, these GAA dances lost their appeal.
The fire house was too far from the gay West Village and the
atmosphere was almost too wholesome for some and too political for many.
Then too, quite a few gay people began to tire of GAA's sniping
at Mayor Lindsay, whom most gay people liked and felt they had done
well by.

I can't quite agree with Gary Byma's comment which Melinda disagrees
with at the top of this article.  There *was* a brief period from
the summer of 1969 until perhaps 1973 when something akin to today's
idea of gay politics did exist, but it really did not have a strong
hold on gay men and lesbians, and by the Seventies most gay politics
was focused on conventional groups and on lobbying.

I think where the biggest distortion comes in is in ignoring that for
most gay people the period between 1965 and the mid-Seventies was one
in which gay social life, gay businesses and gay public presence
expanded at a terrific rate and a nascent sense of community was
born.  It was during this era that an enormous number of gay-
oriented special interest groups proliferated -- sports, religious,
hobbies, etc.  During this period the most important development
was a much more complex sense of what it meant to be "gay":  That
being "gay" also happened out of bed.

Stonewall was the flashy event of those years, but it was the sheer
quantity and diversity of gay life which mattered more.
THE gay political event of the century has been the reaction
to the AIDS epidemic, and this certainly springs not from Stonewall
(except in a propaganda sense) but from the gay subculture cum
community which owes relatively little to Stonewall.  In truth, and
here Mr. Byma is close to the facts, it was derived from the tightly
knit, highly organized, social life of the post-mid Seventies
disco era more than anything else.

However, the evocative power of Stonewall matters much more than its
actual historical importance, and in this respect it is similar to
the Fall of the Bastille.

Jack Carroll
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