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julien baker in darmstadt, 7/6/19

Stonewall didn’t actually mark the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement.

By June 28, 1969, so-called homophile groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had been risking life and liberty to organize queer folks and challenge the assumption that homosexuality was a mental disorder or moral defect for nearly two decades.  But the three days of public, violent demonstrations that followed an early-morning raid on The Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village — a rebellion against police brutality toward queer people, many of them trans or people of color — nonetheless came to occupy that space in the American consciousness.

The five decades since the Stonewall riots — begun, in mythology if not necessarily reality, by a transgender woman of color named Marsha P. Johnson — have seen unprecedented victories for the LGBTQ community.  But they’ve also witnessed immeasurable heartbreak, disappointment, death, and tragedy: The AIDS epidemic.  Harvey Milk.  Prop 8.  Anita Bryant.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Pulse.  HB 2.

Today, many LGBTQ Americans enjoy prosperous lives framed by rights won through pain and bloodshed — at least in parts of the country.  But how do we truly measure progress when the most vulnerable members of our community are still under threat?  

There’s no federal or state law protecting LGBTQ people from job discrimination.  President Trump is stacking the federal courts with people like Matthew Kacsmaryk, who’s called transgender people “delusional” — and who, last week, became a U.S. district court judge.  And with the rollback last month of Obama-era rules that safeguarded trans people from discrimination in medical settings, the Trump administration has effectively dismantled every federal protection for transgender Americans.  

This doesn’t even begin to consider the lived experiences of queer people of color, immigrants, and others living at the intersection of multiple modes of oppression.  Same-sex families’ adoption rights are at risk.  Trans women of color are murdered in the streets.  Queer kids are thrown out of their homes — a full 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ.

Progress is indeed a tricky thing to quantify, especially for a community as diverse as those living under the linguistic umbrella LGBTQ.  But as we reach a half-century after Stonewall, it’s crucial that we find ways to preserve this history — the victories, the losses, the joys, and the traumas that our queer ancestors endured — so that it doesn’t become a casualty of time and fading memory.

We owe this to our community’s elders, to future generations, and to ourselves.

Prior to coming back to North Carolina last September, I spent five years as the editor of HuffPost Queer Voices in NYC.  There I learned that the most important form of our community’s collective power lies in our stories.  Through personal storytelling, we humanize our struggle.  And through our stories, we ensure that the history of what our community has endured isn’t forgotten.  We tell our stories and uplift the voices of our community’s most vulnerable — and we do this as often and as loudly as we can to anybody who will listen — as we continue to fight for a more just and equitable world for anyone who calls themselves LGBTQ.

In an effort to create space for queer voices as Pride Month concludes, the INDY asked local community leaders, activists, and elders for their perspectives about what fifty years of Stonewall means — and where we go from here.  As someone engaged in an ongoing journey to more fully understand this community’s culture and history, I hope their words resonate with you as powerfully as they did with me.  —James Michael Nichols

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