My husband and I recently had a vacation/business trip to the United States. For the vacation portion we went to Honolulu and Maui. The business was conducted in Los Angeles and Seattle.
It might surprise you to know that I had a number of chatty conversations with a variety of people in all those locations. Upon learning where we were from it was amazing the number of admiring comments I would get because of Canada’s equality in Marriage and leadership in Human Rights Canada has taken. At first I took these compliments with pride, but then something started really bothering me. Much of the battle for equal rights we have achieved in Canada originated in the USA. The problem is that country of such promise and inspiration for the common person has been hijacked from its path of freedom and justice. I say that because that is what the great majority of the Americans I met told me.
The beginning of the modern Gay and Lesbian civil rights movement can really be traced back to the Stonewall riot in New York City. On Saturday morning, June 28, 1969, not long after 1:20 a.m., police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. As this was another of many such raids, the patrons had had enough. Resistance broke out across the crowd—which quickly overtook the police. Stunned, the police retreated into the bar. Heterosexual folk singer Dave van Ronk, who was walking through the area, was grabbed by the police, pulled into the bar, and beaten. The crowd’s attacks were unrelenting. Some tried to light the bar on fire. Others used a parking meter as a battering ram to force the police officers out. Word quickly spread of the riot and many residents, as well as patrons of nearby bars, rushed to the scene.
Throughout the night the police singled out many transgender people and gender nonconformists, including butch women and effeminate men, among others, often beating them. The riots repeated nightly over five days, peaking on the third night. On the first night alone 13 people were arrested and four police officers, as well as an undetermined number of protesters, were injured. It is known, however, that at least two rioters were severely beaten by the police. Bottles and stones were thrown by protesters who chanted “Gay Power!” The crowd, estimated at over 2000, fought with over 400 police officers.
The riots created the perfect environment for the creation of the Gay Liberation Movement. By the end of July the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed in New York and by the end of the year the GLF could be seen in cities and universities around the country. Similar organizations were soon created around the world including Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
The next transformation towards gay and lesbian rights started with an American politician and gay rights activist. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco, California. He and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978; his assassin was supervisor Dan White. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on the grounds of diminished capacity and sentenced to seven years and eight months, a sentence widely denounced as lenient and motivated by homophobia.
After the sentence, the gay community erupted into what became known as the White Night Riots. As soon as the sentence was announced, word ran through the gay community with groups of people walking quickly to the Civic Center and by 8:00 PM, a sizable mob formed. According to the documentary, "The Times of Harvey Milk", the enraged crowd started by screaming at police officers, calling for revenge and death. Then, riots began to break out with the mob setting ablaze a number of police vehicles, disrupting traffic, smashing windows of cars and stores, buses had their overhead wires ripped down, and physical violence resulted against the outnumbered police officers.
After the riots, the humiliated police showed up in force on Castro Street without authorization, and soon proceeded to enter the Elephant Walk Bar at the corner of 18th and Castro, smashing the place up and bashing heads of stunned patrons and employees. Several people required hospitalization, and the resulting lawsuits cost the City a fortune.
Not long after, resistance to persecution flowed to Canada. On February 5, 1981 Metro Toronto Police raided various bathhouses, arresting 306 men, in the largest Canadian mass arrest except for the October 1970 FLQ crisis. Extensive property damage was inflicted by police. For added public humiliation, the "found-ins" were herded into the streets in towels to be processed. The names of those arrested are publicized by the police and local media, destroying several lives.
A major demonstration was held at Yonge and Wellesley the next day by hundreds of Toronto queers and their supporters, closing down the street. Activists started working, and the group Gays and Lesbians Against the Right is formed. Twenty five years later we live in a very different place.
I believe that the rights and freedoms I currently have are a result of the bravery of my Brothers and Sisters in America. For this I am forever grateful. Anything I have done could not have been accomplished without the sacrifice of these men and women over three decades ago. The struggle continues in the USA, as recently as two weeks ago the homophobic state of Alaska passed a resolution to take to vote a state law that would ban extending benefits to the same sex partners of public employees.
After Harvey Milk was assassinated voice recordings were left behind that were to be played in the event of his death. One of the tapes recorded him saying "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."
God Bless America.
