Every year during June, I remind myself of why we celebrate Pride Month in the LGBTQIA+ community. Did you know that the reason we celebrate is due to a five-day riot in the 60s? Let's take a quick look back at the history of the gay rights movement:
Stonewall
In 1969 the New York City police department raided the Stonewall Inn, which happened to be a gay bar and a place to sleep for homeless gay youths in that area.
Around that time, the police raided establishments that catered to LGBTQ+ people while stating that the reason for doing so was that just having LGBTQ+ people gather would be considered “disorderly.”
Thirteen people were arrested during the Stonewall Inn raid, and the police beat up many more. In the arrest records, many of these people were arrested under the state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute. Officers would take suspected trans men/women and drag queens aside to check their sex.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? There are now 72 anti-LGBTQ+ laws across 20 states that have been passed in the United States, with 266 more in various stages of being passed. We will return to this, but let's step back to 1969.
The Stonewall raid was not the first raid, but it was the tipping point from years of abuse from the police. People were fed up.
Instead of leaving the bar during the raid, the patrons stayed outside to protest. The crowd outside of the Stonewall Inn quickly grew into hundreds of people watching the police “aggressively manhandle” more and more people. The History Channel’s article about the riots states that at one point, an officer hit a lesbian woman over the head as he forced her into the police van.
Decades of abuse and dehumanization of the LGBTQ+ community justifiably led to multiple days of rioting and protests that finally gained national media attention. The Stonewall Riots weren’t the start of the gay rights movement, but they did spark that flame nationwide for the LGBTQIA+ community to come together and fight for the fundamental human rights we expect in America (and worldwide).
One year after the Stonewall Riots, thousands of people marched down the streets of New York City. We look back at this march in 1970 as our first Pride Parade.
We're still here
So now you understand the history of why we celebrate Pride Month. We are quickly heading towards a new tipping point, as we saw in 1969, and the LGBTQIA+ community is known for fighting for their (our) rights.
Pride Month has always been and will continue to be, a riot.
