The Stonewall Riots

A Documentary History

Marc Stein

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781479895717
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

On the occasion of its fiftiethanniversary, the most important moment in LGBTQ history—depicted by the people whoinfluenced, recorded, and reacted to it. June 28, 1969, Greenwich Village: The New York City Police Department, fueled by bigoted liquor licensing practices and an omnipresent backdrop of homophobia and transphobia, raided the Stonewall Inn, a neighborhood gay bar, in the middle of the night. The raid was met with a series of responses that would go down in history as the most galvanizing period in this country's fight for sexual and gender liberation: a riotous reaction from the bar's patrons and surrounding community, followed by six days of protests.Across 200 documents, Marc Stein presents a unique record of the lessons and legacies of Stonewall. Drawing from sources that include mainstream, alternative, and LGBTQ media, gay-bar guide listings, state court decisions, political fliers, first-person accounts, song lyrics, and photographs, Stein paints an indelible portrait of this pivotal moment in the LGBT movement. In The Stonewall Riots, Stein does not construct a neatly quilted, streamlined narrative of Greenwich Village, its people, and its protests; instead, he allows multiple truths to find their voices and speak to one another, much like the conversations you'd expect to overhear in your neighborhood bar. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the moment the first brick (or shot glass?) was thrown, The Stonewall Riots allows readers to take stock of how LGBTQ life has changed in the US, and how it has stayed the same. It offers campy stories of queer resistance, courageous accounts of movements and protests, powerful narratives of police repression, and lesser-known stories otherwise buried in the historical record, from an account of ball culture in the mid-sixties to a letter by Black Panther Huey P. Newton addressed to his brothers and sisters in the resistance. For anyone committed to political activism and social justice, The Stonewall Riots provides a much-needed resource for renewal and empowerment.

PART I

BEFORE STONEWALL, 1965–1969

1

GAY BARS AND ANTIGAY POLICING

IN THE YEARS LEADING UP TO THE STONEWALL RIOTS, bars, bathhouses, clubs, and restaurants were central institutions in LGBT cultures and communities. Gay bar guides listed thousands of sites where LGBT people could express their genders, enjoy their sexualities, and experience social connections. Large cities typically featured dozens of gay-oriented businesses; smaller cities and towns might have one or two. Many gay bars were predominantly or exclusively white and male; others had more diverse patronage; a smaller number were patronized primarily by women and/or people of color. Some bars welcomed gender transgressors; others excluded them.

In the 1960s, gay bars, bathhouses, clubs, and restaurants faced numerous challenges. Straight men targeted them with acts of hate and harassment. Local police conducted raids, demanded payoffs, and engaged in sexual entrapment practices (in which undercover officers enticed men to commit sex crimes and then arrested them). Organized crime owned, operated, and exploited many gay bars. State liquor regulators acted against businesses that served “homosexuals” or permitted “disorderly,” “indecent,” or “lewd” behavior on their premises. In spite of these challenges, many gay commercial establishments were popular and profitable.

The eighteen documents reprinted in this chapter focus on gay bars and antigay policing from 1965 to mid-1969.

• DOCUMENTS 1–2, published originally in homophile magazines, address gay bars as social and sexual spaces.
• DOCUMENTS 3–10, also taken from the homophile press, highlight anti-LGBT policing and resistance to police practices.
• DOCUMENTS 11–15 provide further examples of resistance.
• DOCUMENTS 16–18 are excerpted transcripts of state court rulings on gay bars.

DOCUMENT 1

Lily Hansen [Lilli Vincenz], “Bridge to Understanding”

Eastern Mattachine Magazine, Nov. 1965, 20–221

. . . I went alone to a gay bar the other night for a glass of beer and to people-watch. As I was contemplating the clientele, both straight and gay, one of two handsome young men at an adjacent table smiled at me. When I returned the smile, he and his friend came over to me. “Are you male or female?” were the first awkward words I heard. Since I had taken them for gay boys, I was amused. “Isn’t it obvious that I am female?” I asked. “In this place one can’t be sure,” came the cautious reply.

“This is a weird place,” commented one boy as he sat down next to me. “I don’t find it so at all,” was my appropriate answer. As I explained, when they came here, they had known it was a homosexual bar. Such an impartial reply was apparently suspect. “How come you fix your hair that way?” I was asked as they gave my no-longer-recognizable pixie cut the once-over. “One might mistake you for a Lesbian.” Should I give myself away? “I am a Lesbian,” I admitted and braced myself.

They hadn’t expected candor. But they had always wanted to talk to a homosexual. . . . They confessed that homosexuals were a complete riddle to them; neither could imagine how anyone could find the same sex attractive. They wanted to know whether the entertainer was a girl or boy; why some boys like to dress up as girls; why some Lesbians wore such (to them) uncomplimentary clothes and haircuts. And which of the customers in the bar was gay—this one, that one, and what about that one? I tried to answer their questions discreetly—while discouraging them from pointing with their fingers. They were quite young (one was celebrating his 21^st birthday) and wavered between an eagerness to learn more about the subject, bewilderment, and contempt. One of them was tempted to call the waitress over with “Hey, butch”—but fortunately was stopped in time.

Their questions and comments demonstrated how confused they were. To a certain extent I could have sympathy with their incredulity, awkwardness, and embarrassment at not knowing how to react to a situation with no precedent. (After all, isn’t it dampening to a straight man’s ego to invite a girl over to his table, only to have her reply, “No, thank you. I’m waiting for a girl”? This had happened to one of my audience earlier.)

The contrast between heterosexual and homosexual attitudes stood out sharply in my mind as we talked. These uncomprehending persons in their effort to understand must have felt like astronauts floating in an inscrutable universe. Occasionally their sense of tact was definitely suspended—as if not applicable outside heterosexual respectability. Some people think “anything goes” when they are among what they consider social nonentities and outcasts—like homosexuals, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, etc. And yet, these boys would have thought twice about being loud-mouthed in even a Negro bar.

Sometimes they were coarse, but often they bent over backwards not to offend me with their questions and voiced surprise that they didn’t embarrass me. How did I become a Lesbian? Did I plan to be “cured”? I tried to explain that I didn’t consider myself sick and that a change to heterosexuality was no longer an issue—since in my opinion the most important thing about an individual was not his sexual orientation but the kind of human being he was and the degree of self-fulfillment he had achieved. Was this bit of philosophy too complicated? They didn’t know what to say and had to “think that over.”

I listened to their experiences with homosexuals who had approached them. They listened to my distinctions between solicitors and molesters who happened to be homosexual and the average, decent homosexual, who doesn’t infringe on the sensibilities of others any more than the average heterosexual person. Naturally I educated them about the Mattachine Society and described our pickets. They had never heard of the homophile movement and it seemed ludicrous to them at first that the concept of civil rights was applicable in this area. Yet they finally agreed that homosexuals were a minority just like Negroes.

By the end of the evening they had become quite enthusiastic about me and apparently wanted to show me off. They expressed their intentions to have me meet their friends. . . . As a willing guinea pig I accepted the future offer, not without the ulterior motive of using this opportunity to advance the cause for a more enlightened approach to homosexuality. As a token of their esteem, they took me to a very nice restaurant and offered me “anything on the menu.” When we finally parted, it seemed that through mutual recognition of our common humanity a glimmer of understanding had made communication between the heterosexual and homosexual view of life possible.

Will I ever see them again? Who knows—but one thing is certain: they will no longer be so ready to regard homosexuals as categories to be ridiculed. This is not to say that all their misunderstandings and fears had dissolved in an aura of benevolence and brotherhood. They did not lose their skepticism. But, through personal contact, they have begun to see the homosexual as other than a contemptible or dangerous outsider.

DOCUMENT 2

Clark P. Polak, “On Gay Bars”

Drum, Feb. 1966, 12–152

Some facts about gay bars are almost too obvious to require mention: they are highly profitable; a disproportionately small number are owned by homosexuals; the gay bar is the only consistently and readily available homosexual gathering place; and they can be, but are not invariably, good places for sexual assignation.

Other factors are less well known. . . . There are probably more gay or semi-gay bars in any given larger city than even confirmed barniks are aware of, no less frequent; nationally, police policy towards gay bars appears to be one of containment (“Leave them alone and they won’t scatter and we will know where to find them when we want.”); few homosexuals go to bars with “making out” as their prime motivation; and the percentage of homosexuals who frequent bars regularly is quite small. . . .

To be sure, a small percentage of persons regard the gay bar solely in terms of potential sexual gratification—and these individuals are often those who hold bars in lowest esteem—while it is clear that the wide majority is mostly satisfied with the social aspects of bars and take sex as the cake’s extra frosting. Some sexual contacts are made here, but the majority of persons leave alone many more nights than they leave with a partner.

Sexually, the world of the bars is that of the “one night stand” and short term affairs. Carnal pleasure is offered and accepted without obligation or commitment. The very nature of bars . . . mitigate[s] against all but chance and casual encounters. The amount of frustration this engenders in individual homosexuals would appear to depend on how clearly they understand gay bar ritual and how well they have been able to divorce themselves from the conventions of heterosexual morality.

Those who continue to believe in the heterosexual sanctions against promiscuous behavior and those who would like to find permanence in relationships that are almost by definition transitory are apt to consider bars and their own participation in bar activities both degrading and frustrating. Those who accept the socio-sexual advantages of bars on the terms in which they are offered often find bars a pleasant and more or less satisfying diversion. . . .

The homosexual’s relatively sophisticated acceptance of sex has shifted priorities to the excitement of “the chase.” The actual consummation of the sexual act many times shares the limelight with the positive pleasure derived from cruising. It is not so much that the search is unending, but that it is an enjoyable end in itself. . . .

Facts notwithstanding, the “bizarre happenings” in gay clubs is a favorite topic of reformers who are encouraged into anti-homosexual crackdowns by the traditional reluctance of bar owners to resist harassment and by public sentiment which is staunchly intolerant of displays of affection among homosexuals.

Public antipathy to gay bars was confirmed by a group of California sociologists who polled 353 middle income adults and discovered that 64.3% agreed that the “licenses of gay bars should be revoked.” Such studies tend to support the view that the public will, at this time, tolerate only the abstract concept of homosexuality, while rejecting homosexuals as human beings. . . .

To the heterosexual out-group, gay bars, by their very existence, loom as a threat to the social order. The homosexual is, of course, viewed as a child-savoring, sex-starved degenerate and any large gathering of them increases the amount of panic. It is for this reason that gay bars are seldom located in straight, residential areas and are generally found in the more sophisticated or deserted sectors of cities. Business and theatre centers are generally regarded as acceptable for they are away from the inspection of the average heterosexual.

Bars are often a gay no-man’s-land existing with the by-your-leave of an unseen constabulatory. Even in cities where the same bars have existed, virtually without interruption, for a large number of years, there is a lingering expectation that the next door opening might bring the police. Homosexuals often believe that the gay bar in their town stays open only by “paying-off” the local authorities. There are times bar owners are the source for such rumors to both assure their patrons that the establishment is a safe place to visit and to support otherwise unjustifiably high prices. Pay-offs other than the standard gratuity most bar and restaurant owners pay the police, however, are almost non-existent.

There is undoubtedly a high degree of sexual frustration in homosexual life—both in and out of gay bars—and the pulp fiction image of the closing-time panic over not having a partner is a partially accurate one. It is also exaggerated. Bars provide a maximum amount of sexual and social pleasure with a minimal expenditure of time and money. It is just as true to say that there are always sad and lonely people in bars as it is to say that there are always happy and socially involved people in bars. The gay bar is really a public party without any of the social disadvantages of a private party. There is no obligation to spend time with those persons found uninteresting and no prearranged protocol for leaving, being pleasant to the host, etc.

Whether the customers come “just to let their hair down” for an hour or so, or are new in town and taking a look at what the city has to offer, or are sulking in a corner, or are joking and discussing the myriad topics that occur in social settings among friends, or lost in thought, or cruising, or biding time between trains, or are there with no awareness of and less care about why, they are making highly satisfactory use of what has grown to be an international institution.

DOCUMENT 3

Kay Tobin [Lahusen], “After the Ball”

The Ladder, Feb. 1965, 4–53

Dozens of police swarmed in and around California Hall in San Francisco on New Year’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. Before Stonewall, 1965–1969
• Part II. Stonewall
• Part III. After Stonewall, 1969–1973
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Suggestions for Additional Reading
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author