National March! On Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights: Official Souvenir Program Page: 11
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"One purpose of homophile groups is to explain the various alternatives
open to the individual and the possible consequences of such alterna-
tives... ."
"We do not feel that drag, sado-masochism, and other aspects of sexual
behavior can be summarily dismissed as necessarily invalid expressions of
human love.... We have a special interest in understanding all sexuality."
The East repudiated this word for word, but Young Turks Randy
Wicker, Craig Rodwell of the Whitman Bookstore, and Bob Martin
of the first Student Homophile League, Columbia, had broken the
conservative Eastern ranks. The West also heard the first complaint
that not even the sympathetic men were really hearing the women's
concerns.
Gays in four cities protested Draft discrimination in 1966, while
others joined anti-war protests. Many half closeted gays helped lead
the Berkeley Revolution. 200 protested L.A. police brutality in Feb-
ruary '67, joining other minority community protests. In August '68,
Port of Los Angeles gays answered a bar raid by "raiding" the police
station with flowers. An ex-Penecostal preacher was there, and it led
to the founding of Metropolitan Community Church; of HELP, a gay
legal aid society; of SPREE, a movement-minded film club; and real
growth for the 12-page Advocate. Dignity was also started, for gay
Catholics, and militancy was rising in California and Minnesota.
Young Turks took over the Eastern Conference. The slogan Gay
Power was in the air.
THE RAID HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
The next act almost blotted from memory all that preceded.
The June 28, 1969 Stonewall Inn raid in New York's Sheridan
Square should have been routine. Cops had always seen gays as push-
overs: wade in, smash some furniture, rifle the cash box, bruise a few
fags and herd them out to the vans. But halfway thru this routine,
the worm turned. Shouts of Gay Power rose on Christopher Street.
Pennies and jeers were thrown, then an uprooted parking meter. The
cops got locked inside the bar. Guns drawn, they watched the
curtains flame up! Reinforcements arrived-for both sides-and
Sheridan Square seethed with the gay rage no one had thought
possible. Leaflets went out that nite from Mattachine Action Com-
mittee. More push and shove with cops. Poet Allen Ginsberg, long a
one-man gay liberation front, said, "The guys were so beautiful ...
they've lost that wounded look...."
NY press coverage was prejudiced but full. Tremendous impact,
tho with but a fraction of the gay press we have today, it took weeks
for word to reach cross-country. It had its greatest impact on gays
closeted in the radical or hip movements, who'd thought the homo-
phile groups too tame. Secretly gay whites who'd worked in the
11
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D.C. Media Committee. National March! On Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights: Official Souvenir Program, pamphlet, 1979; Washington D.C.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc276226/m1/13/: accessed June 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.