40th Anniversary of Stonewall
If you don’t know what Stonewall is, then this story on one of the rioters is must reading. I’m impressed when the human spirit asserts itself and says “Enough.” Stonewall was the beginning of the end for discrimination against gays, and 40 years later I’m still amazed at the guts shown by the patrons that night in New York City.
You don’t have to be gay to appreciate the courage of people like Raymond Castro.
“It wasn’t just gays,” said Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico and left in 1945. “It wasn’t just white gays.”“You had straight people sympathetic to gays. People of the arts. You had people who had had enough (of the police). You had Latinos, you had blacks, you had whites, Chinese, you had everything. It was a melting pot. Young, old. Fems, butches.”
Gay rights are human rights. You can’t support the latter without upholding the former.
Thomas Jackson:
What a crock. The Stonewall riot involved young male prostitudes and a bar that was their base. The riot was caused by numerous health code violations.
Human rights? This was about queer prostitution.
5 July 2009, 1:05 am