STONEWALL INN, gay activism and gay rights movement
Sociologyindex, Queer Culture, Books On Stonewall Riot, Sociology Books 2012, Sociology of Sexualities
Stonewall Riot at the Stonewall Inn marked the beginning of resistance against intolerance towards people oriented differently.
On a weekend in June 1969 the New York police, continuing a policy of harassment of homosexuals, visited the Stonewall Inn, charging that liquor was being sold without a permit.
As the homosexual clientele were being taken to the police wagon, a spontaneous show of resistance emerged and the police were forced to retreat and call for reinforcements.
This resistance is now given substantial symbolic value and is seen as the birth of the modern gay rights movement, the emergence of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance, as well as the first gay pride parade, held in June 1970.
Reviews and Literature:
Sociopolitical antecedents to Stonewall: analysis of the
origins of the gay rights movement in the United States. Poindexter CC. School of
Social Work, Boston University
The 1969 Stonewall riot in New York City is widely celebrated as the beginning of the
modern gay rights movement. However, the social changes that followed were possible only
because of a decades-long indigenous organization. This article examines three traditional
organizational theories on social action movements and applies Aldon Morris's analytical
framework for understanding collective social action to the emergence of the modern U.S.
gay civil rights movement. The author concludes that social workers need to understand how
to gain access to and support indigenous social structures to assist oppressed groups to
bring about social change.
|
Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall
Myth
Armstrong, Elizabeth A.; Crage, Suzanna M.
Abstract: This article examines why the Stonewall riots became central to gay collective
memory while other events did not. It does so through a comparative-historical analysis of
Stonewall and four events similar to it that occurred in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and
New York in the 1960s. The Stonewall riots were remembered because they were the first to
meet two conditions: activists considered the event commemorable and had the mnemonic
capacity to create a commemorative vehicle. That this conjuncture occurred in New York in
1969, and not earlier or elsewhere, was a result of complex political developments that
converged in this time and place. The success of the national commemorative ritual planned
by New York activists depended on its resonance, not only in New York but also in other
U.S. cities. Gay community members found Stonewall commemorable and the proposed parade an
appealing form for commemoration. The parade was amenable to institutionalization, leading
it to survive over time and spread around the world. The Stonewall story is thus an
achievement of gay liberation rather than an account of its origins. - ingentaconnect.com
BIAS CRIME: AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT AND LEGAL RESPONSES
R J Kelly, University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract: This revised edition of "Bias Crime" reflects the increasing national
concern with bias-motivated crimes. The concern has focused on the response to these
crimes by police, legislatures, and the courts (sentencing). This new edition outlines
the historic contexts of bias crime against gays and Jews in the Stonewall Riot and the
Holocaust, respectively. The legal resolutions are discussed for both of these cases.
Updated materials have also been added on David Duke's career, the Rodney King case, bias
confrontations, and hate crimes on college campuses. The first section of the book, which
deals with law enforcement responses, describes police efforts to form bias crime units
and legislative efforts to address these crimes specifically in statutes. In a second,
completely new section on legal responses a representative of the Anti-Defamation League
discusses the legislation enacted to address bias crime, sentencing measures by the
States, and the 1992 Supreme Court decision on hate crime. He includes the league's model
legislation, which has been used as the basis for legislation in many States and provides
the texts of the laws which the league and others have used in successfully prosecuting
bias-motivated criminals. An 18-item bibliography and a subject index -
ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=142386
Diversity
in Ageing: Developing Practice With Older Lesbians and Gay Men
(Post-Qualifying Social Work Practice) by Ann Fannin, Lee-ann Fenge, Tina Hicks, and
Nichola Lavin (Paperback - Nov 30, 2008)
Respectably
Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations by Jane Ward
(Paperback - Sep 15, 2008)
The
Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation? (Dilemmas in American
Politics) by Craig A Rimmerman (Paperback - Dec 24, 2007)
Same-Sex
Marriage: Moral Wrong or Civil Right? (Exceptional Social Studies Titles for
Upper Grades) by Tricia Andryszewski (Library Binding - Dec 15, 2007)
Seminal
stories: riots in front of the Stonewall Inn in the early-morning hours of June 28, 1969,
quickly became an emblem of the modern-day pride movement. ... (The national
gay & lesbian newsmagazine) by Gale Reference Team (Digital - Mar 16, 2007) - HTML
Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context by Vern L Bullough Review: Before Stonewall
Stonewall
: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution
by David Carter
From Publishers Weekly
While the centerpiece here is undoubtedly his hour-by-hour relating of the explosive June
1969 riots, Carter, an editor of Allen Ginsberg's interviews (Spontaneous Mind, 2001),
also provides an extended prelude that highlights the places, activists and others who
come to play key roles. Carter's beloved Greenwich Village and what he calls its
"queer geography," which enabled gay culture to form, flourish and consolidate
itself, emerges as an inimitable, finely detailed hero. But for Carter, the most
audacious, energetic and enterprising of riot participants were the drag queens, homeless
queer youths and other gender transgressors whose position on the farthest margins of
society enabled their radical response to oppression. What they and others managed to do,
Carter renders with fresh care and enthusiasm, getting new quotes and offering unfamiliar
perspectives, such as the Mafia's role both as a patron of the gay scene in New York City
(including the Stonewall Inn, which it owned and operated) and as a blackmailer of famous
homosexuals. He ends appropriately with the emergence of the Gay Liberation Front and the
Gay Activist Alliance, as well as the first gay pride parade, held in June 1970. While it
may distract readers interested only in the story of gay liberation, Carter's logistical
history of what gay author Edmund White called "our Bastille Day" will become a
permanent addition to the great histories of the civil rights era.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
In the late 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois; now the news
routinely covers the latest on gay marriages. So the subtitle says it all--or does it? The
six days of riots sparked by police action in the early morning of June 28, 1969, against
a popular Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, constituted a homosexual
"shot heard 'round the world" that transformed an American subculture. Carter's
carefully researched, well-crafted writing portrays Stonewall as part of a larger civil
and human rights movement and a spur to the gay rights movement. Stonewall precipitated
great change--the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, for
instance--and that leads Carter to examine the socio-politico-cultural convergence that
resulted in the riots. Hundred of interviews figure into Carter's thorough exploration
that dispels long-held myths and provides fresh facts about a freedom fight some liken to
the fall of the Berlin Wall. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association.
Mordden's Trilogy 1 - Literature
I've
A Feeling We're Not In Kansas Anymore (Stonewall Inn Editions)
by Ethan Mordden
Bay Area Reporter
In these wonderfully cosmopolitan sketches, Mordden is the Jane Austen of gay Manhattan,
but not confined to that city; he leaps memorably beyond geography.
Mordden's Trilogy 2 - Literature
How
Long Has This Been Going On (Stonewall Inn Editions)
by Ethan Mordden
From Publishers Weekly
According to Mordden's (I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore) sweeping panorama of
gay life in the United States, "the history meter is ticking"?and what a
resonant sound it makes throughout these masterfully crafted pages. Beginning in L.A. in
1949 and concluding at New York City's 1991 Gay Pride Parade (with interim stops in San
Francisco, rural New Hampshire and small-town Minnesota), this singular work chronicles
the emerging gay consciousness with trenchant humor, editorial observations tinged with a
soupcon of cynicism and scenes of often devastating emotional impact. Mordden pulls no
punches as he presents a compelling assortment of quirky characters (both male and female)
who connect, disconnect and reconnect in a constantly affecting game of musical lives.
Bitter and sweet, it's all here: the barely opened closets of the 1950s, the 1969
Stonewall riots, the growing prominence of San Francisco ("the great city of
do-as-you-like") as a gay capital and, of course, the coming of AIDS. Evocative
descriptions make appropriate, occasionally campy, references to pop culture , while comic
and poignant passages commingle throughout the detail-packed narrative?frequently within
the same paragraph. Stylistic variations, too, blend to create an astonishing scope;
Mordden changes tenses, addresses the reader and often presents the same scene,
Rashomon-like, from several points of view. His characters remain achingly real, yet they
also perfectly typify their generation?and, what's more, evolve with the changing gay
climate. If the book has a message, it might well be found in the observation of a New
Hampshire man in 1990: "It's not that things change so much as that we see them
different." Thanks to Mordden's stunning work, we can see a little more clearly now.
Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
In this epic, New Yorker contributor and film writer Mordden ( The Hollywood Studios , LJ
5/15/88) tracks the gay and lesbian experience in America from 1940s Hollywood to 1990s
New York.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Generation
Q: Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals Born Around 1969's Stonewall Riots Tell Their Stories of
Growing Up in the Age of Information
by Robin Bernstien (Editor), Seth Clark Silberman (Editor)
Since the advent of the gay liberation movement in 1969 -- the direct result of the
Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village -- there has been a plethora of writing about the
lives of gay men and lesbians. Much of this has been done by people who were already
"out" by the mid-1970s. Generation Q is a collection of essays, memoirs,
recollections and thoughts by young people who were just being born in 1969. Ranging from
humorous commentary to serious examinations of what it means to be a young gay man in the
middle of the AIDS epidemic, this is an important, moving and challenging look at the
problems and the pleasures facing young gay people today, for it tells us not only about
our youthful presence but our future as well.
Stonewall
by Martin Duberman
From Publishers Weekly
A police raid on the Stonewall, an unlicensed Greenwich Village gay bar, set off a series
of riots in the summer of 1969 that mark the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political
movement. Duberman ( Paul Robeson ) re-examines this event through the vibrant,
intertwined portraits of six people--two lesbians, three gay men, one transvestite--whose
lives converged at the Stonewall Rebellion and in the militant movement it spawned.
Politically, his six subjects run the gamut from ex-priest Jim Fouratt--a leftist and
Yippie cohort of Abbie Hoffman--to Foster Gunnison, who devoted his energies to moderate
gay causes and later became a conservative. Yvonne Flowers, a black feminist, overcame her
suspicion that the gay movement was not open to people of color, while transvestite Sylvia
Rivers faced hostility from lesbians. Duberman, himself gay, exposes schisms in gay
liberation that pitted gay men against lesbians, male chauvinists against feminists,
whites against blacks. Photos. First serial to Grand Street; QPB selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Historian Duberman, author of Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey ( LJ 2/15/91), chronicles here
the Stonewall riots that occurred in New York City during the summer of 1969. Involving
gays and lesbians who fought back against a police raid at a Greenwich Village bar, these
street battles marked a watershed event in gay and lesbian rights in this country.
Duberman's work is a combination of biography and history that is primarily viewed through
the words of six participants (four men and two women) who were either at the Stonewall
riots or involved in the gay and lesbian politics of the time. It is often a powerful and
compelling narrative that shows how an oppressed minority arrived at a historic moment and
changed forever the way they would view themselves and how others would view them.
Recommended for all public libraries and gay and lesbian special collections. Previewed in
Prepub Alert, LJ 1/93.- - Richard Drezen, Merrill Lynch Lib., New York. Copyright 1993
Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mordden's Trilogy 3 - Literature
Everybody
Loves You (Stonewall Inn)
by Ethan Mordden
From Publishers Weekly
The subtitle of this witty collection of stories, the conclusion of a trilogy begun with
I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore and continued in Buddies , is slightly
misleading: the "adventures" are really no more than a series of parties,
dinners and moonlit conversations, and their world extends beyond Manhattan to Woodstock,
Fire Island and London. The narrator is Bud, a middle-aged gay writer who mediates the
emotional traumas of his best friend Dennis Savage, Dennis's flighty, frenetic lover
Little Kiwi and Cosgrove, an unschooled, manipulative teenager whom the older men take in.
With passion and wit, Mordden depicts their quest to maintain pride in the face of
prejudice, and hope in the age of AIDS. Some readers will quarrel with the unduly insular
portrayal of homosexuality as a world of artifice and theatricality, and with the author's
assertion that "all gays are born actors, selecting the role they feel most secure
in." But the finest of these stories break away from those cliches to create touching
portraits of men in conflict and conciliation with an often hostile world.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The final volume of Mordden's trilogy (I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore,
Buddies) is a delight. Narrator "Bud Mordden's" continuing chronicle of gay life
in New York City ends on a poignant note. "Little Kiwi," the playful man-child
lover of Mordden's irascible sidekick Dennis Savage, grows up; Carlo, the devastating
Hunk, shows a caring side; and a neglected adolescent is taken in by Mordden's extended
family of gay men and begins the long road to maturity. Mordden maintains his sharp social
commentary throughout; but the pace is more subdued, the tone more philosophical, and the
result more powerful as Mordden attempts to explain the complex ways in which men relate
to one another as brothers, lovers, and friends. Highly recommended. Kevin M. Roddy,
Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
This is an important book. Ward shows how managing diversity in the LGBT non-profit
sector mirrors the corporate sector's management of diversity: representing identity
differences has become instrumental, not an ethic or end in itself. Her nuanced and
complex case studies demonstrate how difference is contained and domesticated, and provide
empirical grounding for the larger theoretical claims about the effects of neo-liberal
apolitical discourses of diversity, the current funder-directed state of the LGBT social
movement, and the importance of documenting ways to resist corporate diversity-speak.
Paisley Currah, Director, Transgender Law and Policy Institute, and Associate Professor of
Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Product Description
For three years the author did participant-observation at three nationally prominent queer
organizations in Los Angeles-Christopher Street West, which produces L.A.'s queer pride
festival; the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a 37-year-old multi-site organization;
and Bienestar, an HIV services organization for gay Latinos. Ward documents the evolution
of these organizations, including class and race conflicts within them, but she especially
focuses on the misuses of diversity culture.
Respectably Queer reveals how neoliberal ideas about difference are becoming embedded in the daily life of a progressive movement and producing frequent conflicts over the meaning of "diversity." The author shows how queer activists are learning from the corporate model to leverage their differences to compete with other non-profit groups, enhance their public reputation or moral standing, and establish their diversity-related expertise. Ward argues that this instrumentalization of diversity has increased the demand for predictable and easily measurable forms of difference, a trend at odds with queer resistance.
Ward traces the standoff between the respectable world of "diversity awareness" and the often vulgar, sexualized, and historically unprofessional world of queer pride festivals. She spotlights dissenting voices in a queer organization where diversity has become synonymous with tedious and superficial workplace training. And she shows how activists fight back when prevailing diversity discourses-the ones that "diverse" people are compelled to use in order to receive funding-simply don't fit.
Throughout their relatively short history, the lesbian and gay movements in the United States have endured searing conflicts over whether to embrace assimilationist or liberationist strategies. This new book explores this dilemma in both contemporary and historical contexts, describing the sources of these conflicts, to what extent the conflicts have been resolved, and how they might be resolved in future. The text also tackles the challenging issue of what constitutes movement “effectiveness” and how “effective” the assimilationist and liberationist strategies have been in three contentious policy arenas: the military ban, same-sex marriage, and AIDS. Considerable attention is devoted to how policy elites-most notably Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton; Congress; and the Supreme Court-have responded to the movements’ grievances. The book examines the George W. Bush presidency with an eye to assessing how political opportunities have informed the broader lesbian and gay movements’ strategies, and also details the response of the Christian Right to the movements’ various assimilationist and liberationist strategies.
About the Author
Craig A. Rimmerman is professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith
Colleges. He is the editor of Westview Press's Dilemmas in American Politics
series. He is also author of Presidency by Plebiscite: The Reagan-Bush Era in
Institutional Perspective, and co-editor with Kenneth A. Wald and Clyde Wilcox of The
Politics of Gay Rights.
The 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, which thrust the struggle for civil
rights for homosexuals into the consciousness of North Americans, was so seminal an event
that it is easy to forget that it did not occur in a vacuum. Editor Bullough (ed.,
Encyclopedia of Birth Control; coauthor, Sexual Attitudes) redresses this with a
collection of 49 short biographies of activists, written by such authors as Felice Picano,
James T. Sears, Wayne R. Dines, and Charley Shively. Included are not just gays, lesbians,
and transgendered individuals but such figures as Alfred Kinsey, Evelyn Hooker, and
Bullough himself, who, although not themselves gay, worked to reduce the stigma attached
to homosexuality. Most of the names, with such exceptions as Kinsey, Allen Ginsberg,
Christine Jorgensen, and perhaps Franklin Kameny, are undeservedly obscure. A few of the
biographies are uneven or awkwardly brief, but overall they admirably convey the passion
and commitment of these men and women. This inspiring chronicle of risk takers and
trendsetters (the book's original title) merits a place in all history, gay and lesbian
studies, and human sexuality collections.
Richard J. Violette, Special Libs., Victoria, BC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Indispensable documentation of a major social movement, January 26, 2003
By W. Dynes (New York, NY USA)
Launched a half-century ago, the American gay and lesbian rights movement has achieved a
remarkable success. Its influence has spread throughout the world, contributing enormously
to the happiness, productivity, and self-esteem of homosexual citizens elsewhere. For the
most part, those who launched this wonderful development in the 1950s did not realize, or
did not record, the essence of their achievement. They were too busy doing their work.
Now, under the guidance of Vern Bullough, a major scholar in the field, it has been
written down. In biographies of some forty individuals, many fascinating in their own
right, the story is told. It is as if one received a whole raft of biographies in one
volume! This book must be seen and read in order to understand its remarkable
contribution, a contribution that is significant for all of us. Comment | Permalink | Was
this review helpful to you? (Report this)
A Fascinating Collection!, March 17, 2003
By C. Jacob Hale (Los Angeles, CA United States)
A collection of fascinating personal stories of individual and collection action against
injustice! This book dispels myths that give central location to the Stonewall rebellion,
showing instead a much more complex history of activism for gay and lesbian rights.
Although the biographies are uneven (some are too short, and some are written by their
subjects' partners, hence too celebratory), most of these approximately forty biographies
show the successes and charms, foibles and failures of a remarkable group of people --
gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, transgendered, non-transgendered -- who all made a
tremendous difference in the quality of life possible for gays and lesbians in the United
States today. Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)
An Inexorable Element of Gay Studies, November 14, 2005
By William A. Percy "http://www.williamapercy.com" (Professor of History, UMass
Boston)
This review is from: Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical
Context (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies) (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)
(Paperback)
Vern's introduction credited me with suggesting that he replace Wayne Dynes, after Dynes
resigned, as the editor of Before Stonewall. I'm happy that John De Cecco, the editor at
Haworth, accepted my suggestion. John, who has edited the Journal of Homosexuality and a
number of other Haworth Journal and series, is beyond question the most important gay
editor since Magnus Hirschhfeld. He has made the Journal the place of record for gay
studies, and Vern Bullough, with over fifty books to his credit is also the leading living
historian of sex. Both of those scholars have braved the slings and arrows of the
religious right, the child abuse industry, and others suffering from sexual panic. They
did a splendid job on this much needed work, which contradicts the present-minded, now the
vast majority of the gay rights movement, who maintain that nothing significant happened
before Stonewall.
I believe that someone should do a sequel - a book that would devote chapters to the most
significant scholars and activists in the next generation, that is to those who took the
lead after 1969, until the date when AIDS became significant enough to end Gay Liberation
and sexual laissez-faire, which had dominated our movement after Stonewall. The terminal
date of such a book should be during the early 1980's - I'm not sure which year. What was
first dubbed GRID - Gay Related Immunity Deficiency - in 1979 or 80, became Karposi
syndrome before it became AIDS.