Pride Month is the Ramadan of sexual revolutionaries, and the Stonewall Inn is its Mecca. On June 28, 1970, a group of LGBT activists staged
Pride Month is the Ramadan of sexual revolutionaries, and the Stonewall Inn is its Mecca.
On June 28, 1970, a group of LGBT activists staged the first “Pride Parade” in New York to mark the anniversary of the “Stonewall Riots” the previous year. The riots began, the story goes, after homophobic police raided the Stonewall Inn, one of the few “safe spaces” in which homosexuals could meet before the social movements of the 1960s and ‘70s liberated them from the oppression of traditional American society. The put-upon club-goers responded to the raid by rioting. Some threw rocks and bottles at the cops. Others lit garbage cans on fire. At least one person uprooted a parking meter and used it as a battering ram. According to the popular narrative, the proprietors and patrons of Stonewall had committed no crime but the love that dare not speak its name.
The legend of Stonewall has turned the non-descript bar into a progressive pilgrimage site, not merely for homosexuals, but for liberals of all stripes. There, defenders of freedom overcame the armed enforcers of the repressive state — at least according to the narrative, which will be told and retold ad nauseum for the rest of the month. But the legend bears little resemblance to reality. In fact, the police had plenty of reasons beyond prevailing sexual standards for shutting down Stonewall.
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