It Was (And Is) More Than Just A Rebellion

Yesterday, I was coming home on the subway here in Philadelphia, when I saw a kid, no more than fifteen or sixteen, wearing a T-shirt, complete with the rainbow and a declaration of his Pride in a very bright, fat font. As the train rolled along, I smiled to myself and pondered the significance of such a seemingly minor thing. The young man, born in this century, was comfortable and free in his expression of his truth in a way I never could have been at his age. Perhaps mindful but unafraid of the risk such a declaration still carries in the homo- and transphobic climate in the time of Trump, he still sallied forth from his home to make his statement for all the world to see. The road to that level of freedom (albeit one we’re traveling still) began one steamy night fifty years ago in New York City’s Greenwich Village when gay, lesbian and trans patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against harassment by the NYPD and the State Liquor Authority. The Rebellion went on for another six days and changed the course of history.

Whitewashed revisionist films aside, the Rebellion was as multihued and diverse as the city in which it took place. People who struggled with racism and misogyny on top of their sexual orientation threw caution to the winds, found a way to get downtown, and joined their siblings in making a stand. Gay bars like the Stonewall were illegal by default 1969, and it was also against the laws of the era to serve alcohol to “known homosexuals”, or even for LGBTQ people to congregate in places like the Stonewall. If arrested for being LGBTQ, a person could expect to be publicly shamed, and lose their jobs, apartments, and even their families, for the “degenerate offense” of being who they were and loving who they loved. It is no exaggeration to note that daring to seek out people of like company in 1969, whether in NYC or anywhere else, was a life-safety issue, and the government was the biggest threat factor. Yet, despite all the awesome power the state brought to bear, the young (and not-so-young) patrons of the now-famed establishment took their courage in their hands and fought back against the full force of the laws arrayed against them.

Yet and still, our journey is about more than just the Rebellion. I discovered the Village in high school. I’d just begun attending a school in Manhattan, and the newfound freedom the subways afforded gave me a chance to dramatically expand my horizons. I was aware of my sexuality at age 12, and though I knew little of the winds and ways of the world, you’d better believe I understood completely that I should never utter, even breathe this truth to anyone, if I knew what was good for me. It was bad enough I was a little runt of a kid with two hearing aids getting bullied daily; if people found out I was gay, too, oh, boy, my problems would multiply exponentially. Already dealing with the trauma of that, the thought of undergoing cruel electroshock ‘therapy’ to “cure” me of this “maladjustment” generated horrifying nightmares. Homosexuality was a mental disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the “bible” of the psychiatric profession, and shock treatments were a common “remedy”, along with aversion therapy and other hideous attempts to “readjust” the minds of LGBTQ people of the day. It took a rebellion of a different kind to change all that.

After a long process of evolution, homosexuality was finally removed from the DSM just over 30 years ago. It was a quiet uprising by members of that branch of medicine, but no less significant in its impact. The impetus for the change was not the doctors, but their patients, who, like the Stonewall rioters, had endured enough. I did my own, personal rebellion in those early days, meeting others like me, experiencing things I was sometimes ready for, and sometimes not. Like the unrest of just ten years before, this time was not without turbulence for me; I saw and heard what was being done to people just like myself every day. I lived with myself in silence, except when I was secretly at the Pier, or the homes and hidden spaces of frightened young men like me, who held me and whom I held for dear life. Yes, I kept trying to kill myself, and to this day, neither my family nor the doctors who treated me, know the real cause behind all those suicide attempts. Experiences like that are the reason the Rebellion was so necessary, and why they took place on so many levels.

It’s about more than just the (well-known) Rebellion. To get to where we are now, a thousand, a million, tens of millions of Rebellions, on a grand scale as well as on a personal plane, had to happen. Countless more will still need to take place, if we are ever to ultimately gain a true, equal place at the table for ourselves on some marvelous day in the future. Peace will not come to all of us, until all of us can be at peace.