The Gay Liberation Era
(Words: 2202)
Known for being the hangout for drag queens and owned by the Mafia, Stonewall Inn was a gay bar on Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village. As a typical, gay bar raid: the manager was presented with a warrant for selling liquor without a proper license and those who did not have a form of identification or those who were wearing clothing of the opposite sex were taken to police headquarters. This was the Stonewall police raid that occurred on June 28, 1969, but it was not a typical police raid at a gay bar in New York. This time, the gay people that were in the bar actually decided to fight back and not be concerned with being openly identified as a homosexual. This manifested the first time that the gay community made an effort to fight back and because it was considered a significant event to the gay movement, people began to refer to history before this event as pre-Stonewall and history after this event as post-Stonewall. Stonewall was the spark that ignited the Gay Movement because more gay people were not afraid of being open with their sexual orientation. Neil Miller believed that the events preceding the Stonewall incident, the decades of the late 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, defined Gay Liberation. Miller describes the post-Stonewall times as the era of gay liberation because it was the beginning of a period of pride for the gay community and it was the commencement for many events that were viewed as gay power. Considering liberation to mean achieving personal and societal acceptance along with complete equal rights, I do not believe the post-Stonewall era obtained this. Although I do believe that this era was essential to the gay movement, I believe it was merely the beginning of gay liberation and this equality is much closer to reality in the most recent decades.
The 1960s included the Stonewall event and other riots from the gay community attempting to express their beliefs, while the 1970s also marked a decade filled with events contributing to the gay movement, but also introducing the beginning of more backlashes and negative moments for the gay community. Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. This was a significant day for the advance of the gay movement because it conveyed to gay people that they should not be ashamed of their sexual orientation and it should not be a reason to stop them from being successful and interacting outside of their gay community. The election of the first openly gay man gave the gay community the thought that maybe it is possible to achieve acceptance by society. Although the Harvey Milk election was a positive step for the gay community attempting to reach liberation, the 1970s was also filled with events of backlash for the gay movement. An example of recoil being the uprising of Anita Bryant, who was a celebrity set on promulgating her anti-gay message. Anita Bryant was an American singer and gay rights opponent in the 1970s. This showed the first step of backlash on the gay movement, showing an opposing character to Harvey Milk with an anti-gay person that gained a lot of attention. She was the leader of the “Save Our Children” coalition, whose purpose was to repeal the ordinance that there should not be discrimination based on sexual orientation while using the slogan “Homosexuals cannot reproduce so they must recruit” (Miller 372). She used the idea that homosexuals would influence and disturb the children’s normal and healthy way of life. During this same decade, a state senator by the name of John Briggs created a proposal acquiring enough signatures to bring about The Briggs Initiative (Proposition 6). This symbolizes the first attempt during this era of the gay movement to legally discriminate and exclude homosexuals. If this proposition were to pass, it would ban gay teachers from teaching at public schools. This is in support of Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children coalition and it represents the recoil of the gay movement. On top of all of this, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office, Harvey Milk, was brutally assassinated. Dan White was the man that assassinated Harvey Milk and this was a wakeup call for all those standing up for gay liberation and it brought them closer, all working to make sure these kind of events do not happen but also disappointing the gay community.
In 1981, the first case of AIDS was discovered in Los Angeles when a gay man came into the medical center with immune difficulties. At this point, no one knew what to think of this and they certainly did not know what AIDS was. The “gay cancer” or “Saint’s disease” (Miller 410) was the belief after the same case was found on many gay men by two doctors, in which AIDS became an important part of the gay movement. This discovery created more of a struggle for the gay community because in the beginning, gay people were being accused of starting and spreading AIDS, being the cause of so many people dying off in great numbers. It was called the “Saint’s disease” because it was named after a popular NY gay club that the group of gay men first diagnosed attended and it was also called “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID)” (Miller 410). This did create more of a struggle for the gay community, but I also believe that it united them as well because they were motivated and determined to decrease the number of deaths and try to do something about the AIDS epidemic. Kramer, for example, started the organization Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) whose mission was to educate the gay community, help the people already infected, and also fight for the rights of the people with the disease. The AIDS epidemic also brought forth the battle for bathhouses in California because a lot of people would practice unsafe sex, therefore adding to the number of people catching AIDS. Because the bathhouses were closed, it symbolized another backlash for the gay movement because a lot of gay people would use bathhouses as a way to escape from society’s unwilling attitude to accept homosexuality and be in a safe environment without being judged.
Toward the more recent decades, there have been more events working closer towards what I would define as gay liberation and attempting to reach that equality where homosexuality is a universally accepted aspect of life with more people supporting the LGBT community. The more recent decade has shown improvement and hope for the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy (DADT), which is now closer to being repealed because there are more people that are against it. A survey done for the DADT policy has revealed that 70% of troops in the military in fact are not opposed to working alongside openly gay troops. When interviewing the citizens of America, similarities came about when the majority of Americans showed support for or ambivalence to the repeal of DADT. The issue of whether or not this policy will maintain in process or if it will be repealed is an issue that has been given much more focus, which gives hope that the DADT policy will not be in effect soon. Getting rid of this policy would take away one less form of discrimination against the LGBT family, which means being closer to reaching equality between heterosexuals and homosexuals. The LGBT community has received much more support in the recent decades than the time period that miller describes as the gay liberation era, including President Barrack Obama. The current president of The United States stated during his election that he is in favor of the repeal of the DADT and has showed support for the LGBT group through his speeches. There is also support coming from other celebrities, politicians, non-profit organizations, several accepting churches, and more. This support group that is growing for the LGBT community implies a sense of growth and improvement getting closer to my definition of liberation, meaning achieving societal and personal acceptance and obtaining equal rights.
Creating a broader support group and making progress towards reaching equality, the more recent decades have shown growth with the battle for marriage equality, bringing gay liberation to a more tangible concept. Within the era that Miller described as gay liberation, the concept of gay people being able to marry was not even a thought about possibility and in these more recent decades the LGBT community is closer to obtaining that right. With the constant fighting for more equality, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. This symbolizes a meaningful step towards liberation by extending the support system to achieving yet another equal right in an entire state. As of today, there are six states in the United States that have same-sex marriage as a legal aspect of their law which include: Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, Washington D.C., and New Hampshire. Gaining the right to legally marry in six states shows an impressive progress alone, not including that three states also recognize the marriage of same-sex couples from other states, but do not give out licenses on their own. California was also a state in which same-sex marriage was legal for a brief period of time until it was ruled off. The issue that the LGBT community is trying to get more support for is attempting to make people understand that a civil union or domestic partnership is still discriminating against homosexual couples. California, as an example of a state that only allows for civil unions and domestic partnerships does give the same rights of marriage to same-sex couples, but without the title. For my definition, in order to reach liberation, reaching acceptance would mean also obtaining the title that heterosexuals get when they decided to enter into marriage.
I believe that this more recent era has come close to defining gay liberation compared to Miller’s time period, but I do not think we have reached gay liberation. The more recent era has shown progress through increasing the number of supporters for the LBGT community and obtaining rights that would not even be thought of in the decade that Miller believed defined gay liberation. I understand why he might describe it in this way because it was a period in which there was a lot of gay pride and power and also the beginning of many aspects that showed society that the gay community was no longer ashamed to reveal their sexual orientation any longer. There was a lot of empowerment during this time, but I define liberation as being not only personal acceptance, but also societal acceptance. I do not believe that the gay community reached liberation during this era because they were still not socially accepted by everyone and still discriminated against. I think that even to this point, the gay community has not reached liberation because even though they are a lot more socially accepted, there is still much discrimination happening. Now, being gay is seen more as a way of living compared to an illness but there are still aspects in which they are excluded from like being openly gay in the military and legally marrying a same-sex partner. Because of this, I do not think that they will reach liberation during this decade, but the era Miller describes was an essential component because it marked the beginning of this progression towards freedom. Although I do agree with Miller’s argument, I would call it the era of commencement, starting the gay movement, but not the era of liberation because they gay community did not reach total acceptance. I believe that liberation is possible and we have not reached it, but we are much closer to achieving liberation for the gay community in the current decades than we were in the post-Stonewall era.
Yesenia Guizar-Orozco
Works Cited
Miller, Neil. "Stonewall and the Birth of Gay and Lesbian Liberation." Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 365-387.
Miller, Neil. "The 1970s: The Times of Harvey Milk and Anita Bryant." Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 395-421.
Miller, Neil. "The 1980s: The Age of AIDS." Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 439-479.
Connelly, Joel. “Majority in Poll: “Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”” Seattle Pi. 27 Sept. 2010. Web 24 Oct. 2010.
