16: From Riots and Raids to Gay Pride Parades: How Pride came to be

2021/10/20

Dark History

Chapters

The episode introduces the Stonewall Inn and its role in the LGBTQ+ community, leading to the modern Pride parades, highlighting the historical context and the initial resistance against police raids.

Shownotes Transcript

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year. So you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?

What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and welcome to the Dark History Library. So hi, welcome. This is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who are like, hey, is history like really as boring as it seemed in school?

Oh, nay, nay, that is not true. This is where we can learn together about all the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories that honestly we were never taught in school, you know? So let's get into today's story.

Imagine this, it's 6 a.m., okay? You're putting on a full mug and you're pouring tequila into a bag for your purse. Why? Because you have a drinking problem. No, I'm just kidding, you don't. Actually, you're about to hit the streets for gay pride. Yay! So fun.

You get to the parade route and you just take in the scene. So many colorful outfits, personalities as far as the eye can see, feathers, sequins, butts, glitter. Sometimes glitter ends up in your creases and folds. Just a lot of glitter. We love it.

And literally, there's thousands of people gathered and dressed up all in the name of being loud and being seen. Now, that's the point of pride for a lot of people, just being seen, right? Great, love. So floats start moving, music is blasting, and people dance in the streets for miles.

And all along the route are camera crews and news people. And today, like, Pride is this big event, and it attracts families, corporations, pretty much just everyone. And it's just like this thing that happens in every major city in America. Well, friends, it's fun now, but it hasn't always been that way. There is a much darker side to Pride that is easy to ignore nowadays. Well, way back when, back before we had the first lady on a Pride float,

The mafia, the mafia was the one who operated a little hole in the wall gay bar in 1969 that would be the spark to set off what we know as the modern day pride parade. It's a really wild ride. There were demonstrations and corrupt cops and crazy laws and policies that made it illegal to be gay in New York. If they made that law now, you would have to shut down the whole city.

It's a very gay place, and I mean that in the best way possible. Okay, so there are a lot of things that led to what we now know as gay pride, but the pride celebration itself mainly stems from a specific series of events that happened throughout the country and in New York City back in 1950s, well, back in 1950s and the 60s. And let me tell you, the origins of pride are loud and risky, and they certainly didn't have a permit.

Let me open up my dark history book. That's not the right page, hold on. Nope, not the right page. No, there it is. Okay, great, wow. So welcome to the 1960s. It's New York City and we're in Greenwich Village, the same neighborhood from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire episode, remember? Yeah, a lot of shit was going down there apparently, you know? Hmm.

I don't know what it is about this place, but hey, great. Great stories. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Well, what started as an industrial neighborhood became a breeding ground for creativity. Yeah, you know?

Get your mind out of the gutter. I don't know if you heard of the beat movement, but it was a radical style of poetry that was popular back then. And it started in this neighborhood. Plus, it wasn't just poetry. There was jazz and blues musicians. There were coffee houses where singers like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon would just randomly show up and perform. I mean,

And this place was the spot for making shit. And the nature of creativity is that it draws people from all different kinds of backgrounds. So there are people coming from World War I and II and taking the opportunity to start a new life in the big cities.

So you had a lot of black people, white people, gay people, immigrants, all sorts of diversity in one spot. And when you have a big melting pot neighborhood like that, they tend to have a pretty progressive outlook on life.

Plus, all the best food. Let's be real here. The best food. Well, back then, there weren't a lot of places that gay people felt comfortable. So a place like Greenwich Village was the ideal place for them to settle down and create a community. And a community was so important at this time because a general view of the gay population was not good. In fact, they were considered...

Not to me. I didn't say they were sick, but this was the mindset at the time. In the early 1950s, it was literally classified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. They were considered sexual deviants and psychopaths. I mean, we talk about psychopaths all the time on my Monday uploads and...

It just doesn't make any sense, right? So dramatic, I know. Looking back on that now, it's just such a freaking eye roll. On top of that, it was just flat out illegal to have gay sex. No, seriously, you couldn't hold hands in public or have a drink in a bar if you were gay. And just to be clear, this applied to women, men who dressed like women, women who dressed like men, transgender people, or anyone considered queer.

In fact, I'm just going to use the word queer a lot moving forward. Queer, if you don't know, or maybe you're just too afraid to ask, is a term that kind of covers everything under the sun. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, asexual, intersex, and just, it's like the umbrella term. Because it's important to note with these laws, they use the word gay a lot, but they apply to all queer people. So if you hear me say gay, just know I'm referring to...

To everyone. Great. We love that. The point is, even though Greenwich Village was a diverse, creative neighborhood, the New York Police Department, New York State Liquor Authority, and residents did not see it that way. Oh, nay, nay, they did not.

To them, if they saw a person wearing clothes that did not match their assigned gender at birth, they were breaking the damn law. If they saw two men giving little sweet butterfly kisses on a park bench, they deserve to be hate-crimed.

So it was like really hard for queer people to find a place to get together because the police were always trying to break it up. So queer people in the area are like, okay, you guys like this is ridiculous. We have to do something. And in California in the 1950s, they put their heads together and they created one of the first queer rights organizations that eventually spread across the entire country.

They called themselves the Mattachine Society. Mattachine was just a medieval term to describe male dancers who liked to make fun of everyone. So I guess they were just now naming themselves after that. Now, just to warn you, the things they did don't seem like a big deal to us now because nowadays we have pride parade and stuff like that. But back then, the idea of queer people coming together to make plans and holding demonstrations was

was huge. I mean, it was completely unheard of. So this was terrifying to the straights and a huge risk to queer people because if they were outed, they could lose their job or possibly something even worse could happen.

But the entire purpose of the Mattachine Society was just to show straight people that they were just like them. They just wanted to be accepted into society like everybody else and be employable, upstanding citizens. They dress up in suits and ties and would not protest in any loud or violent kind of way.

They'd blend in so like the straights, they weren't uncomfortable, you know? And that was kind of the strategy. Keep in mind, it sounds pretty mild to us, but back then it was a huge risk for them to be out so publicly. Well, they wouldn't take aggressive positions on queer rights and instead would hear all points of view, saying things like how every view needs to be heard, even if it's bad. As long as it dealt with homosexuality, in their eyes, everyone deserved a voice.

which honestly so American so First Amendment everyone should have been cool with this right great great but let's take an ad break we should take an ad break

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

Even though the Mattachine was a bit mild for modern standards, they saw these laws that didn't let them go to bars and stuff. And they just thought it was incredibly fucked up. And they wanted to do something about it in their own way. So by the mid-1960s, they took a page out of Dr. Martin Luther King's book and decided to have a peaceful sit-in.

Now a sit-in is when someone who was not allowed in a place goes to that place and peacefully sits there as a form of protest. So the Mattachine Society was going to do a similar action by demonstrating the discriminatory policy that didn't allow openly queer people to drink alcohol at a bar. But since they were going to do it at a bar, guess what they called it? So clever. It was called a sip-in. Sip with a P? Sip.

You get it? They're kind of, it's so funny, you guys. Clever. Sip in. I'm gonna go into a sip in.

Anyways, so what they did is they chose a bar that had a sign in the window that said, if you're gay, go away. Super clever. Straight to the point, you know? So the way things normally worked would be that the queer person would go in, order a drink, the bartender would turn them down, right? And then they would get upset and the bartender would call the cops and try to have them arrested for causing a scene. They called it disorderly conduct.

Well, Mattachine was like, this is stupid. We can't even order a drink at a bar. It's not illegal to be gay. It's just illegal to do gay stuff. So it's kind of like a loophole, you know? They could totally order a drink. That shouldn't be illegal. And the plan was to call the press, including the New York Times, and have them come photograph them getting arrested to try and get some press for it.

At the time, bars were some of the only places where queer people could meet and connect with others, making bars important spaces. Mattachine wanted to highlight it to make sure the public perception was clear that they were not dangerous psychopaths like the police was making them out to be. A New York Times reporter shows up right on time for the sip-in, okay? But the Mattachine Society was not there.

So the reporter goes up to the bartender and says like, hey, where are like those gay protesters that were coming? Weren't they coming here? Where are they at? I need to take some pictures of them. And obviously the bar had no idea this was going to happen. Okay. And they're like, what are you talking about? So then the reporter like accidentally snitched on them. So in response, the bar immediately shut down for the day.

So when the Mattachine Society showed up, the bar was closed. And they were like, oh, my God, that's so weird. Like, I guess we can't do our sip in here. And the New York Times reporter was like, oh, yeah, that's super weird that it's closed. Crazy. Wasn't us. It's closed today.

and they ended up going to three other different bars in the village. It was at the fourth bar that they were able to successfully be denied while ordering a drink. There's actually a super famous picture where the bartender is holding his hand over the cup so they can't get the alcohol. They were denied service just like they had planned, and they got the publicity they wanted by capturing this act of discrimination also just like they planned.

They claimed that they hadn't done anything wrong by ordering a drink and that the policy that denied serving homosexuals was absolutely ridiculous. The city ruled that the policy was discriminatory and that it was legal for queer people to get together for drinks. Groundbreaking. The significance of that is now it was okay for people to have a queer bar if they wanted. Like this was the okay, the green light.

It didn't mean it was gonna be easy just because the law changed doesn't mean people's feelings change. But cops and the general public still, they didn't want like queer people hanging out. They thought that they were sick sociopaths. So, you know, they were like, no, no bars, no. So what I'm getting at is that it would still be really hard to get a permit for a gay bar, but it wasn't illegal. It was just harder. You get it.

Who do you turn to when you wanna operate something under the table? When you wanna be a little back alley Sally? Well that my friends is when the mafia arrives on the scene. Oh yeah, sleeping with the fish's types. A guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who was gonna help a gay guy, you know? That mafia, they get involved. They're like, "Hey, I'm here to help."

So we know the Mattachine Society was trying to keep a non-violent, non-confrontational approach to fighting for their rights. But then you have everybody else in the queer community. The mindset to them was that the Mattachine Society just wasn't doing enough. They needed more. Public perception wasn't changing. And if anything, straight people liked how easy it was to ignore the Mattachine Society.

They thought, you know, it's lame you want to blend in with the other assholes, you know, like let's get it done our way. And the Mattachine Society was never going to stand up for the more flamboyant members of the queer community because they didn't necessarily blend in. So the police were always harassing everyone and people were just like sick of it.

And that's where the fricking mafia comes in. Yes, the mafia. Hello? Hi. Because the mafia didn't care if something was illegal or not. They just wanted to make money. And if the government didn't want queer people getting together for drinks, the mafia wasn't afraid to create a space for them to spend their moolah, you know?

So that's what they did. And one of the most powerful families in New York was interested in the potential money-making scheme. So the mafia found a bar that they could turn into what would become the most famous queer bar in all of New York, the Stonewall Inn. Welcome, Stonewall Inn. Hello, hi, how are you?

Now the Stonewall Inn had already been a club before, but it had burned down for reasons that really aren't clear. In 1967, the new mobster in charge decided to just paint over the burn marks and make it a private club for queer patrons.

Because like I said, even though it was legal for them together, it was still hard to get liquor licenses for this. So they had to call it a club where you have to pay to get in. And part of the membership is alcohol. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Great. So it sounds like a fun little exclusive private club.

But it was actually a disgusting slum, according to people at the time. Since they were operating under the table, they didn't have to follow any type of sanitary laws or health codes. They didn't even have running water. They just had an old-ass bathtub where they cleaned the glasses. Yeah. Yeah.

Spoiler alert, it just didn't work that well, so everyone was drinking watered-down drinks out of dirty glasses. And they didn't even fix it up after it burnt down, so it probably smelled like a combination of fresh paint and like an old barbecue with zero ventilation. It was said that overall it was not a pretty scene, but the part that made it all worth it was...

The people, you know, they were just happy to be there, especially since they could dance. Yes, it was an ugly bar, but it was their ugly bar. A place where they could forget the outside world and do what felt normal to them. For some of them, the next day wasn't guaranteed. But when they were at the Stonewall, the next day didn't matter. Sure did not. But first, let's pause for an ad break.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer survey who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Rakuten is the smartest way to save money when you shop because members get cash back at over 3,500 stores across every category.

including fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, and more. Your favorite stores like Walmart, Lenovo, and Wine.com pay Rakuten a commission for sending them shoppers, and Rakuten shares the commission with its members. And that could be you. Cashback is deposited directly into your PayPal account, or if you prefer,

Rakuten can send you a check. The choice is yours. You can even maximize your savings by stacking cash back on top of other deals, like store sales and coupons. You're already shopping at your favorite stores. Why not save while you're doing it? Membership is free and it's easy to sign up. Get the Rakuten app now and join the 70 million members who are already saving. Cash back rates change daily. See Rakuten.com for details. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.

Your cash back really adds up. It's worth mentioning that even today, there aren't spaces like this where queer people and specifically trans people feel totally safe. So Stonewall was ahead of its time in that regard. And for a while, it seemed like this was a solution that was going to work. I mean, the mafia was paying off the police so they wouldn't even bother them. And even though the bar was garbage, I mean, it was working. That is.

until the police decide they didn't want to see them thriving like this. You can have fun, but not too much fun, goddammit. So in June of 1969, tensions would rise and police decided to make a move.

The police were looking for a reason to shut down Stonewall. They were like, what can we shut them down for, you know? So they would stop by pretty often unannounced to inspect the bar and look for any type of minor infractions that the cops could use to kick people out and just give them a hard time.

Because remember, it was still illegal for people assigned male at birth to dress as women, and they would regularly arrest people for stuff like this. Trans activist Sylvia Rivera says she was arrested 200 times for something called upper head female impersonation.

Yeah, what the hell is that, you know? She's basically being arrested just for being trans. I mean, it's New York in the 1960s. I'm sure like there's some murders happening like a block away or so. Why don't they go handle that, you know? They don't. They seem to be wasting their energy on just...

So one of these regular inspections or raids, if I'm being honest, happened on June 24th, 1969. Police Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine would lead several officers to Stonewall to just basically mess with everyone.

One of the things the police did was line up the patrons outside and like force them to show their IDs also while doing an anatomy check, which is where they would check to see if their outfit matched the type of genitals they had. Yeah, which is humiliating and completely dehumanizing. It's all sorts of fucked up and honestly a little suspish on the officer's part.

Like, I'm sorry you're mad at us for being gay, but you want us to line up and then you want to judge our outfits and look at our private parts? You don't just want to, like, come in the bar? I mean, it probably didn't go down like that, but it's definitely completely traumatizing. But that was the point. The police wanted them to feel powerless and demoralized. So the police would do all of this and then shut the bar down for the night and force everyone to go home.

And as you might expect, the mafia was not crazy about this. They'd be like, whatever, man, we're just gonna open back up tomorrow. Like, go ahead, close us down, we're back open, boom. And because that was another perk of the mafia being your landlord, they didn't give a shit what the police said. And this just pissed off Seymour, the cop. Yeah, he was pissed, pissed the fuck off.

And even though the mob was powerful, it didn't mean police would just let them do whatever they wanted. I think Seymour felt his manhood was being questioned because he can't just let the mafia boss him around like that. So he had his little feelings hooked. And this would be the setup for the full-blown riot that would occur just a few nights later.

The riots that would go on to inspire pride events around the world that we still celebrate today. The events of the riots began on June 28th, 1969. It was a hot and humid night in New York, which is never a good thing. Anytime it's hot in New York, I feel like the city starts to lose its mind a little bit and people get a little sketchy, a little on edge, you know?

Well, police were planning another one of their raids, assuming like normal that the queer people of Stonewall would not fight back. I mean, the cops had billy clubs and guns and all of their other cops in New York were just a radio call away. I mean, who would want to fight back against that, right? They knew they'd win. Everyone was having a good time when people started to notice a few unfamiliar faces in the bar. People who looked a little...

out of place, you know what I'm saying? Like they might be cops, maybe undercover. Well, it turns out, surprise bitch, they were, okay? They weren't wrong. And it wasn't long before all the lights in the bar were turned on and the cops locked the door so no one could leave. The police wanted to keep everyone inside until they could figure out what they wanted to do with them.

I mean, this is like a full-blown hostage situation. Very Lifetime movie of them. The cops lined the patrons up to check their IDs and clothing, and you know, that whole charade. And anyone dressed as a woman would be arrested. Anyone underage would be arrested, and everyone else was going to be let off. A weird thing they decided to do was put all the trans people and drag queens in a closet while they cleared the place out.

It's kind of ironic, I guess. But when you feel empowered and you're in a place that empowers you like Stonewall and somebody tries to steal that from you, what do you think is gonna happen? Meanwhile, the people who were released, they didn't just leave. They were crowding around the outside of the bar.

I mean, their friends were still locked inside with the cops, so they weren't just gonna like leave them there. And since these raids were a pretty normal occurrence, waiting for your friends to reappear was just kind of part of the whole process. Like they would make it a whole scene. The person coming out of the bar would act like they were like on a runway. They were walking the runway and then the crowd, everyone outside would cheer for them. And they would take a bow and like go on about with their night.

So that's kind of what everyone was waiting out there for, the runway show. But let's take an ad break first. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?

The atmosphere on this night, it felt different. It was tense. It was a little eerie. And again, maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was because the people of Stonewall were just sick and tired of going through this every single freaking night. Either way, this is where shit goes sideways. You know what I'm saying, bird? You know what I'm saying.

Bird. What happened next is police brought a trans woman out of the bar and were trying to get her into a police car because she was under arrest for existing, pretty much. And while they were putting her in, she turned around and kicked the officer. She was like, fuck you. And they like kicked him. Great. He deserved it, honestly. Well, this pissed the officer off, right? Great. I mean, not great.

So he jumped in the backseat with her and then started beating her up very bad, right? And the crowd is just watching this all go down. And other officers were shouting, telling the crowd like, show's over, everyone needs to go home, trying to break up the crowd because they're all watching.

But that night, the crowd didn't go home. People who were there say that everyone there just kind of understood that tonight was different. Okay, they were sick of it. Why do I have to watch our friend get brutalized by the police regularly? So it started small. The crowd started throwing pennies at the police, which this is a side note, but I used to get bullied by this kid in elementary school and he would throw pennies at me and that shit fucking hurts. Little FYI. So that...

Great weapon. Anyways, I think the point of that was like the mafia was already paying off the police to leave them alone. So the crowd was like, here, that's not enough. Here's some money. Like, fuck you, bitches. I don't know. Pennies. It hurts. Anyways, as you can imagine, the police, they didn't love this, okay? And when the police are upset, they get sad. They cry and they go home. Just kidding. We know that's not true. When their egos are damaged, things can escalate.

Pretty drastically. Yeah, I think that's safe to say. It's hard to tell exactly what happened next, but it seems like after pennies, they started throwing rocks and then like a window broke. And then the police started to realize that they might be outnumbered. Mm-hmm.

So they barricade themselves inside of the bar and just wave their guns out the door like, hey, we got these guns. You should stop, you know? It wasn't effective though. And then somehow the coat room inside of the bar, it catches on fire. Some say it was the police who set the fire. Some say it was a crowd. Some say it was just an accident. Either way, there's a fire in the closet. So let's set the scene real quick.

There's a fire inside the Stonewall Inn. Smoke's coming from the shattered windows. The police are barricaded inside and there's an angry mob of people in New York City outside and throwing rocks. So the boys in blue call for backup and onto the scene shows up New York's tactical police force. This is like SWAT. This is like a SWAT team before SWAT was officially a thing.

So they had the latest weapons and all the strongest armor and were sent in to disrupt anything New York City thought of as a threat. Some of the people who were there that night say it seemed like the tactical police were looking for a fight. So now there's fire and cops and just pure chaos. And the realization hits the crowd that this has gotten way out of hand.

So what does a crowd of angry young queer people in New York City do when faced with all of this? Well, they dance. They dance. They sure do. So the police, they were still locked inside. The crowd was just outside the bar, but the tactical police were lined up behind the crowd.

So the crowd turns around and they form a line copying like the Rockettes. So if you don't know who the Rockettes are, they invented that dance where you all lock arms and you do high kicks in unison. You've seen it. You've probably seen it like before or during the Christmas parades or something. It's like really beautiful. It's stunning. I'm like, oh my God, they can kick so high. Their legs always look like Barbie legs.

Bravo, you know? Anyways, so they start doing that at the police while singing some of their favorite songs. Only in musicals would this make any sense, but babe, this was real life, okay? This riot is turning into a Broadway show, and we are here for it right now.

You know? Okay. But this is where the violence explodes. The police charge the crowd and start attacking them with their clubs and tear gas and start chasing after everyone. One of the patrons simply called it senseless bullshit. So the crowd in response starts trying to flip cop cars over, screaming, just causing a freaking ruckus. And some of the stronger ones amongst them were...

I'm laughing because some of the stronger ones, they were ripping out parking meters, just clean out the ground and throwing them at the cops. Honestly, super iconic. Great. I think most of us probably would have chosen something to throw that wasn't cemented into the ground, but I love the creativity. Five stars. Now the thing people don't seem to realize is that Stonewall wasn't just one night of fighting. So the sun eventually came up and the fire got put out and people went home because they were tired.

So the police thought like this was the end of it. But nay nay, little bird, nay nay. This was just the beginning. Queer people were done putting up with this bullshit. And now they'd seen that they can fight back. So none of their own died in the clash and they got a taste of what they could do with their powers combined. But that was night one. Night two was when the police brought the hammer down on the protesters.

So that night, 100 officers were present from precincts all over the city and they made sweeping arrests of anyone they thought was involved in the uprising. But it was hard to catch everyone. Thousands of people had heard about the fighting at Stonewall the night before and were swarming the streets in one of the biggest protests for queer rights at this point in history.

Now the second night apparently had a lot of similarities to the first night, but it was kind of hard to find specifics. It's rumored that a trans activist named Marsha P. Johnson was seen climbing a light pole and throwing bricks at cop cars, but it seems like it was just more fighting, fires, throwing things at police, and trying not to get arrested. And a lot of people felt energized after these nights of clashes with the police.

It was sort of like this revelation in their minds. Like we don't have to take this and we're better than this, you know? They scheduled a march that would take place about one month after the Stonewall uprising.

They probably just expected the normal patrons from Stonewall to come, along with maybe some like neighborhood locals. But nay nay, it ended up being like 2,000 people, which was way bigger than they were expecting. Now many consider this the first queer pride march. Great. And people were taking turns making speeches, but they made sure to go home quickly so the police wouldn't catch on, you know?

but they had done something that would have a lasting effect. They made plans to have more marches and make each other's voices heard even louder.

Because queer people didn't just live in New York, obviously. They were everywhere in the nation and this fight was their fight too. Word of what happened at Stonewall spread around the country. On the one year anniversary of the uprising, other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, they all had their own version of queer liberation celebrations.

And suddenly, parades started popping up. And although things weren't perfect, police relations were still bad. There were a lot of hate crimes and queer people were still classified as deviants. The riots, though, they led to a change in the way queer people viewed themselves. They didn't have to blend in and hide anymore. They could be loud, colorful. They could kiss each other and, like,

not have to feel bad about it. It didn't end with the parades. It's still not over. Remember, Stonewall happened in 1969. There's a whole lot of days between Stonewall and 2021. But first, let's take an ad break.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer survey who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Welcome back. We're in the homestretch of our story here, but the story of the LGBTQ plus rights is nowhere near completion, you know? We still got ways to go, baby. And the reason it's important to remember Stonewall is because it's so easy to not think about where something as commonplace as Pride started. Like, it's such a fun event that you almost can't fathom it actually came or started from something as dark as police discrimination and riots.

This is why we consider Stonewall a key turning point in the forming of pride. Here's the thing about being born though. Step one, be born. Step two, nobody leaves the womb fully formed. You have to grow and you have to experience heartache and loss and all sorts of bad shit in order to grow, right? Love that for us.

Pride is something that we had to fight for and something we still fight for. Most of the changes that came out of Stonewall were personal changes, like the way that queer people view themselves was made stronger because of something like Stonewall.

When we see big corporations making rainbow shirts and celebrating pride, it's easy to forget that hate crimes are still a very big part of reality for queer people today, just as much as they were back then. In 1998, a gay college student named Matthew Shepard was offered a ride home by some of his classmates. Well, sadly, Matthew would never make it home. His classmates would later claim that Matthew hit on them and tried to make a move.

This apparently pissed them off and they beat him, tortured him, and ultimately killed him because he was gay. They admitted that. Fuck them. But while a lot of people recognize his name, there's almost an even darker part to his story that most of us don't know.

During the trial, one of the murderer's lawyers argued that his client shouldn't be convicted because he was driven to temporary insanity by Shepard's alleged sexual advances. This argument did not work in this case, but there's actually a name for this defense. It's called the Gay Panic Defense, and it's legal in 35 states still today in 2021.

Maybe you remember this term from my murder mystery and makeup episode where we talked about the gay panic defense and like how fucked up it is. Yeah, again, still legal today. So what does that say? That it might be possible to get away with murder if you think a gay person is flirting with you. But it's weird how I can't get away with murder if a straight person is flirting with me. Hmm, that's kind of bizarre, isn't it?

As if being hit on by someone of the same sex as you would make you completely lose your mind and you're just gonna go into some murderous rage, you know?

Come on people, we're not sharks, okay? We have common sense here, don't we? Well, some of us do. Now the gay panic defense has never actually worked in the United States, but it does have an ugly sister, the trans panic defense. Back in 2005, the defense was used when a woman named Gwen Araujo was murdered by a few men just for being trans. And it was so successful that three of the men were released on parole just over 10 years later.

Yeah, you'll serve more time selling crack cocaine than you will for murdering a trans woman. And if this is an evidence of a systemic problem, I don't know what is, okay? In 35 whole ass states, queer people can get murdered for hitting on the wrong person. And there's a real possibility no one goes to jail for it.

Now ain't that some shit? My point is, pride parades don't mean the fight is over. Queer people and especially trans people are still at high risk of being a victim of a hate crime.

Since 2013, the Human Rights Campaign has tracked over 200 violent deaths of trans people, with almost 40 in 2020 alone. These are only the ones in the United States, and only the ones that got reported. It doesn't include the dozens of trans people that go missing, never to be heard of again. One of these names is Malaysia Booker. Now Malaysia was a young black woman who was filmed being blacked

in 2019 in the hate crime incident. She had accidentally backed her car into another person's car and a man offered the crowd $200 to beat her up just because she was trans. That video quickly went viral as an example of the torment that trans people of color face on a daily basis.

Just one month later, Malaysia was found murdered by another man, a man who was suspected of murdering another trans woman already. There's also Barbie Pugh's story, a gender non-conforming person who was tortured on Facebook Live for 20 minutes before being shot dead, all because they wore a dress to a Christmas party in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2020. I can go on and on and on and on and on. There are too many tragic stories to count.

But when you hear your crazy Uncle Bob ask things like, why don't we have a straight pride parade? That's how I imagine he says it. The reason why is because straight people don't have to worry about being harassed or even killed just for being straight.

The reason is because there hasn't been decades of persecution for people being straight. To really understand just how behind we are on making the United States a safe place for queer people, it wasn't until 2020 that the Supreme Court made a ruling that companies couldn't fire people just for being gay or trans. 2020. That's just last year, if you aren't paying attention.

Meanwhile, just this year, 2021, over 80 new anti-trans laws have been passed with the intention to deny healthcare to trans people. So, yeah.

A pride parade in San Francisco might sound a little redundant, but let's not pretend that it's not important for people to see and feel support from their communities because they for sure don't feel it like from their own country. You remember that conversion therapy episode we just did where we talked about the way churches make kids try to change who they are so they can go to heaven?

It's basically torture disguised as therapy. Pride is important for those people too because they need to see people living their life as their authentic self, not scared of anything.

that might sound simple, but for someone who is in a really dark place, that can really make a huge difference. While there is evidence of progress, a new law here or there doesn't get rid of the ancient biases. If only it was as easy as major brands making their Twitter profile picture rainbow during Pride Month, you know? There is still a huge perception in America and in the world that queer people are abnormal, problematic,

The list goes on. Therefore, they should be eradicated. There needs to be a shift in society, a shift in public perception that a human life is a human life, no matter what they choose to wear, who to love, or how to act. If they aren't hurting anyone, what does it matter to you, Uncle Bob?

Pride is defined in the dictionary as a feeling of satisfaction from one's own achievements. And this couldn't be a better word to represent the queer movement for equality, because it is nothing short of a goddamn miracle that queer people survive, thrive, and still find the time to advocate for those in their community. In the end, all that matters is to be a good person, be kind to others, and don't fricking murder people. Like literally those three things are all that really matter here in this life.

So, be kind and please rewind. If I get my VHS and it's playing the credits, I'm gonna be goddamn pissed, okay? Rewind. Well, everyone, thank you so much for learning with me today. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions to get the whole story because you deserve that. Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts or reactions to today's story, so make sure to use the hashtag darkhistory so I can see what you're all saying on socials. Hey. Hey.

Or you can even join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch my murder mystery makeup which drops on Mondays. Anywho, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by me, Bailey Sarian, Chelsea Durgett from Slash Management,

Kimberly Jacobs, Saint, my dog, and Ed Simpson from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, Spencer Strassmore, and Claire Turner.

Today's research was provided by Ramona Kivitt, writers Jed Bookout, Michael Elbers, Joey Scavuzzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. I want to thank you to today's historical consultants, Charles Francis, President, Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., Pate Feltz, Co-Founder and CFO, Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., and me again, I'm your host, Bailey Sarian.

You guys, I didn't close the book. I'm done with the story. I'm supposed to close the book. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Dark History Book. Okay, goodbye now.

16: From Riots and Raids to Gay Pride Parades: How Pride came to be 41:23 Share

Dark History

Chapters

Shownotes Transcript

16: From Riots and Raids to Gay Pride Parades: How Pride came to be