Village voices

Happy Gay Xmas Eve!

Lest we forget, the reason why Gay Pride is celebrated in the US and the UK (and in many other countries) on this weekend every year is due to the events that took place 44 years ago today. The Stonewall riots are widely described as a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of New York City.

They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

• Read my article about the Stonewall riots on the 40th anniversary in 2009
• Read about the Stonewall: 40 event we attended that July

I raise a glass to our brave brothers and sisters (many of whom feature in the photos above, no doubt), who began the long, hard struggle that culminated in the legal situation in which many of us in the West exist today - where anti-gay legislation is now seen as an anachronism.

I also recognise that for us, tomorrow's Gay Pride is a celebration, a sparkling outpouring of our visibility and defiance - and a perfect excuse for a party!

Here is the gayest of gay bands to help us along - the appropriately-named Village People, with an appropriate song: New York City!

Village People - New York City

Thank Disco It's Friday - happy Pride!

Gay Pride in London 2013

"Six inch heels, seven inch wig, slinky gown and loads of attitude"

We had been looking forward to last night's The House of Homosexual Culture's landmark event Stonewall - 40 for a while. Both Madame Acarti and I have long histories in the gay rights movement, mine through several years of lobbying, petition-raising and Pride-attending (previously blogged - and badged again on the night - so I probably don't need to elucidate for the sake of repetition).



Tony (the erstwhile Madame A) has an even longer history than my own of involvement in campaigning - in deepest darkest Plymouth, he was a very early 1970s member of their own branch of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality - and he proudly wore the T-shirt to prove it. A particularly rewarding moment was when he had his pic taken alongside his (and our) hero Peter Tatchell, who remains an inspiration to us all (small town or big city queens alike) for his ceaseless efforts on behalf of our rights and our liberation.



Our host Rupert Smith opened the proceedings with a potted outline of the context against which the night was set - the 40th anniversary of a major landmark in gay history, when a hitherto insignificant New York gay bar and its punters stood up to their continued harassment by the police, and fought back. The Stonewall Riots began.

Professor Jeffrey Weeks (London South Bank University) began the evening with a very incisive exploration of whether the Stonewall "riots" were actually the foundation of everything we think of as "gay liberation". His argument, notwithstanding his own background in activism, was that yes, the events of June 1969 in America did indeed breed a new form of radical direct action amongst gay people - not least the formation of the Gay Liberation Front here in the UK, and the various attempts to make Gay Pride events happen, from the early 70s to today's glittery parade, at a time of year that commemorates Stonewall.

But he also exposed the various well-documented divisions that occurred almost as soon as movements such as the GLF arrived. Women, political lobbyists such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (as opposed to direct action aficionados), bisexuals and the Trans community soon went their own separate but distinct ways - and the rest, as they say is history.

Lindsay River (Director of user-led older LGBT organisation, Age of Diversity) followed, with her personal perspective on one of those dichotomies - the role of gay women in the rights movement. Her early loyalties torn between the budding GLF (which ironically she joined in the early 70s just as the radical lesbians all quit en masse) and her radical leftie feminism, she gave us a fascinating insight into her own evolution from those early days into the frequent attempts to get lesbianism recognised within the wider Women's Movement, and to get women's rights integrated within the gay rights movement.

Roz Kaveney - whose excellent and quotable mantra is "I was reared Catholic but got over it, was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one and am much happier than I was when I was younger" - led our understanding of Stonewall (and its repercussions) down a separate path.

Obviously trannies, TVs and drag queens have subsequently been recognised for the vital and central part they played in repelling the cops on that particular night (read my blog for a potted history), but, stung by the memory of how certain elements of this so-called "unified" gay rights movement tried to play down the significance of their presence, she read a poem she recently composed on the subject and dramatically placed the spotlight back onto those "Stonewall Girls" who were actually on the forefront of the action.

Part one of our evening concluded in an even more fittingly dramatic style as Rikki Beadle Blair, actor and creator of Stonewall the Movie (and play, which we went to see at The Pleasance Theatre before it went to Edinburgh in 2007), took the stage. In an excellent and captivating extract from his "one (wo)man show" he captured loudly, proudly, dramatically and brilliantly the (semi-biographical) feelings of a naive gay black man who relives the pride of the drag queens ("six inch heels, seven inch wig, slinky gown and loads of attitude") who led the riot, then recreates him/herself with all the pride, drama and chutzpah that they inspired in him. Superb!


Paul Burston, Michael Twaits, Jeffrey Weeks, Peter Tatchell, Ruth Hunt, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Roz Kaveney

Opening part two, Ruth Hunt (Head of Policy and Research at Stonewall), a "young dyke in a suit", as she described herself - took us through a little of what the current day lobbyists - named, twenty years after the event, in honour of the riots - stood for, and what they had achieved (quietly, maybe, without direct action, maybe) on behalf of gay people in the political arena.

She freely admitted that there were indeed critics of their, and her, modus operandi, but that she was more than well aware that in some future political climate there may once more be a need for a more radical type of protest - and that she would be ready and more than willing for the challenge should that day ever arrive.

Our star speaker was of course the tireless, splendid and iconic campaigner Peter Tatchell. His speech - welcomed with whoops of acclaim from our audience - tore into some of the shameful facts that remain about what gay people have actually achieved over the past forty years, and what in effect "second best" citizens we remain, from the perspective of equal - or even distinct - rights. Peter's utopian vision may sometimes appear to drift towards ultra-leftie "commune"-based idealism, but at the heart of the matter are some absolutely brilliant insights.

"Civil partnership" is indeed a compromise. We are supposed to accept the fact that we will never be able to marry if we want to or not, there is no option for becoming "next of kin" or gaining any of the other "advantages" that come with "civil partnership" without succumbing to a prescribed social "norm" of a ceremony, and no-one - whether gay or straight - who wants to opt out of a religious or civil ceremony has any partnership rights at all.

The "age of consent" may well have been equalised at 16 for gays as well as heterosexuals, but under this government's tenure the specific criminalisation of anyone who dares to be sexually active under that age is now written into the statute books, with a maximum prison sentence of six months (unprecedented under any previous government).

Shocking, angry stuff - yet so many gay people are completely unaware of the facts!

Peter's rapturous ovation almost brought the house down. However, we had one final treat in store, as the lovely Michael Twaits took the stage. "Post drag; Post Gender; Post giving a shit!". We had seen and enjoyed his thunderous, poetic patter-song/poem about the experiences of the queens on the night of the Stonewall riots (set the the backing track of Amy Winehouse's Back in Black) before, but tonight, after a breathtaking evening, it just seemed to be the most fitting way to round off the final event of the London Literature Festival...

Michael Twaits - Stonewall

Stonewall: 40

Forty years on, and..?

The Stonewall riots are widely described as a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of New York City.

They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.



Yet, as Haydon Bridge, writing in this week's issue of QX magazine, says:

"When it comes down to it, we know little for certain about one of the most significant events in gay history. Why was The Stonewall Inn raided? Who was there that first night? Who started the riot? Who did what to whom? Opinions differ. We’ll never be sure exactly what happened in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1969 because only one newspaper thought that the whole event was worth recording. That’s not surprising because it was no big deal. New York gay bars were raided all the time. This was also the decade of riots, much bigger ones than the “melée” around The Stonewall Inn. Not only were there no TV crews covering the event, there were hardly any photographers. The news took months to reach the rest of the U.S."

And in the UK, it hardly made an impression at all - coming as it did at a time when decriminalisation of homosexuality had just been achieved here by genteel political means.

Many and varied are the "myths" that surround the events at Stonewall. If everyone who claims to have been there actually was there, the tiny bar and its surrounding streets would have had a crowd the size of an audience at one of Tina Turner's concerts.

As for the link between the news of the death of icon Judy Garland and the heightened emotions of distraught queens being their reasons for rioting, not a single eye-witness recalls Garland's name being discussed. In fact gay activist and pioneer Bob Kohler said:

"When people talk about Judy Garland's death having anything much to do with the riot, that makes me crazy. The street kids faced death every day. They had nothing to lose. And they couldn't have cared less about Judy. We're talking about kids who were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Judy Garland was the middle-aged darling of the middle-class gays. I get upset about this because it trivializes the whole thing."

In his foreword to Philip Core's brilliant book Camp - The Lie That Tells The Truth (one of my favourite books of all time - available on Amazon), George Melly says:

"It should not be forgotten, particularly by the macho-clones with their short hair and big boots, that when, in Greenwich Village, for the first time and without precedent, a group of effeminate little queens refused to accept the police's casual invasion of one of their bars, they repelled them, not with knuckle-dusters or karate blows but with hand-bags!"

A wonderful piece written in defence of "camp" against the bigotry of certain types of "straight-acting" queers and assimilationists maybe, but even Gorgeous George was working on second-hand anecdotal evidence. For even now no-one is really certain whether it was in fact the "effeminate little queens", or even the drag queens, who fought back first - or was it the dykes?

Trannies certainly were prominent in the struggle, as witnesses confirm:

"An officer shoved a transvestite, who responded by hitting him on the head with her purse as the crowd began to boo", "Fights erupted with the transvestites, who wouldn't go into the patrol wagon", and "All I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously".

But what was the legacy of the riots? A united front? A world gay rights movement? Although it was probably as a direct consequence of those events that forty years ago queer activist organisations such as the Gay Liberation Front and in the UK the Campaign for Homosexual Equality were founded (and it is certainly the reason why Pride marches are held at this time of year), not everyone in the gay community considered the revolt a positive development.

To many older gays and many members of the Mattachine Society [an organisation that worked throughout the 1960s in the US to promote homosexuals as no different from heterosexuals; its equivalent here in the UK was ‎the Homosexual Law Reform Society] the display of violence and effeminate behaviour was embarrassing. An early gay rights pioneer Randy Wicker even went as far as to say that the

"screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I wanted people to think about homosexuals ... that we were a bunch of drag queens in the Village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap."

And gay and lesbian rights activist Jean O'Leary certainly made her feelings clear subsequently, deriding transvestites and drag queens for mocking women as entertainment - to the point that transgender activist Sylvia Rivera and "freedom fighter for men who dress as women" Lee Brewster felt prompted to storm Ms O'Leary's stage shouting "You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!"

In truth, there has always been a divide in opinion between lobbyists such as the UK's Stonewall group (yes, it was named after the riot) and those such as Peter Tatchell, who says in an article in yesterday's Times:

"We had a beautiful dream, but it is fading fast. In the 40 years since Stonewall, there has been a massive retreat from the ideals and vision of the early gay liberation pioneers. Most gay people no longer question the values, laws and institutions of mainstream society. They are content to settle for equal rights within the status quo. Conservatism and respectability have taken over the gay movement. In the late 1960s, we saw the family as a patriarchal prison that enslaves women, gays and children. Four decades later, the focus of most gay campaigners is on safe, cuddly issues like civil partnerships and adoption. Gay people are increasingly reluctant to rock the boat and more than happy to embrace traditional heterosexual aspirations."

There are still many, many battles to be fought for the rights of gay people (in the West as well as in more repressive regimes across the world), and there are still many people whose attitudes need to be changed - both straight and gay!

Public mass events like the Gay Pride parade must still be seen as a political statement, not just a fluffy carnival. I may be wearing feathers, fouf and faff next Saturday, but I am there every year (along with thousands of other gay people) in order to make certain that the media and the public realise:

"We're here, we're queer - get used to it!!".

Varla Jeam Merman - Stonewall (Revue Your History)