From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Stonewall and Gay Pride
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 00:59:09 GMT


As the old saying goes, you can't fight City Hall, so I
suppose I will have to be content merely to mention my
disappointment in much of what I've been reading about Gay
Pride celebrations and the recognition of the Stonewall
resistance action.

When you get right down to it, Stonewall is *the* event in
the last 30 years -- in any country, as far as I am aware --
that catalyzed what we now celebrate in our Gay Pride
events, whenever and wherever they are.  Indeed fighting
City Hall is in large measure what it's all about, as I see
it.

I'm also somewhat deflated by learning -- I think the
evidence is pretty strong -- that nationalism is more
important in the minds of some of our reporters than is
recognition of our *common* situation.  I can understand
such reactions in terms of various realities about the
United States, many of which I abhor as much as anyone does.
But at least in my own heart, the resistance at the
Stonewall is *far* more important, as a symbol, than such
reactions.

To be sure, there are important and significant precedents
in the traditions of nearly all countries that are highly
relevant to our struggles, irrespective of our own
nationalities.  Still, Stonewall fixes a point in history
that well serves *all* people in these struggles, whether
they live in Europe, Australia, Asia, or the Americas.

In some ways even more surprising and somewhat discouraging
is the claim that many of today's LGB people don't know a
thing about Stonewall.  1969 is not *so* far in the past
that I can easily understand not knowing at least the key
facts about it and its place in our history.

Of course, Stonewall was not the beginning of what we used
to call gay liberation, and there is an important history
that runs throughout the 20th century, here and in other
countries.  But in many ways, the temperament and mood of the
late 60s and early 70s represent the fullest flowering of
socially progressive tendencies in our society, and
Stonewall is in our context arguably the most powerful
symbol of those tendencies.

People will do what people will do, and I don't propose to
spend much of my waning energies on keeping such views
before the eye of the cohort here or elsewhere.  In some
ways, our Gay Pride events, now very usefully enlarged to be
more inclusive, for all their great energy and manifold
enjoyments, seem to me actually to diminish our attention to
serious historical and political matters.  Saying this takes
nothing away from the benefits of visibility on a grand
scale, nor from the many virtues of the parades, speeches,
demonstrations, and just plain fun it all affords.

The diversity to which we give frequent supporting voice is
probably large enough and flexible enough that those who
wish to focus mainly on the large-scale, public celebrations
can easily do so without seriously diminishing or diluting
the efforts of those who feel that historical milestones of
great symbolic significance are especially important.  These
are not so much either/or or mutually exclusive emphases as
they are contrasting manifestations of awareness, interest,
style, education, background, and such-like things.

The (annual, it seems) acrimony between San Francisco and
Los Angeles on the matter of dates probably doesn't really
have that much to do with Gay Pride _per se_; those two
cities have been at each others' throats for a very long
time.  But I'll take sides on *that* another day.

<> You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are
<> doomed if you don't try.
<> -- Beverly Sills
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
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