The dream of gay equality: what the 40th anniversary of Stonewall means

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which ushered in the modern gay rights movement. We should celebrate it as we would any other civil-rights landmark.

The uprising is named after a bar, the Stonewall Inn, in New York City. On June 28, 1969, the police raided the bar, and the patrons exploded in fury.

Forty years ago, to be gay was to be treated like a criminal.

The FBI and police tracked “known homosexuals.” The post office recorded addresses where pro-gay materials were received. Acts of intimacy between consenting adults in their own homes were criminal offenses in 48 states.

Bars were often the only places lesbian and gay people could gather without fear of reprisal. Meanwhile, liquor regulations often prohibited bars from serving gays. People who wore clothing deemed inappropriate for their gender could be arrested. Bars known to have gay clientele were frequently raided by police.

But when the police arrived at the Stonewall Inn for what was supposed to be a routine raid, the patrons blocked officers from loading prisoners into a paddy wagon and stopped the raid.

That resistance led to six nights of upheaval and touched off an explosion of activism. As early as the 1920s, a few people had worked for change. There was a burst of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizing in the 1950s and early 1960s, but the modern movement didn’t ignite until Stonewall.

“Suddenly new possibilities and expectations were in the air,” historian Martin Duberman writes in his 1993 book, “Stonewall.” “People began to dream about something other than getting from one day to the next with a minimum of discomfort.”

Within weeks, new political organizations had been founded. In little more than a decade, the structure of the modern movement had been built.

Since then, police raids have thankfully passed into history. The laws that once criminalized being lesbian, gay or bisexual have been overturned. Bans on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity have been passed in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in six states.

I came out as a lesbian a decade after Stonewall. I was 27 and scared to death. My greatest hopes were that I could live openly without being fired, shunned by my family or beaten to death by someone.

I didn’t expect society to treat me with decency. The possibility of being able to marry was beyond imagining.

Today a new generation — the second to come of age since Stonewall — thinks my old dreams are inadequate, and they’re right. These heirs of 1969 expect nothing less than full equality.

The patrons of the Stonewall Inn would be proud.

Diane Silver is a former political activist who writes the nationally syndicated column, Political IQ. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.