Another Take on Stonewall’s Aftermath
To the Editor:
A small gloss on the final paragraph of David Carter’s “What Made Stonewall Different” [March-April 2025]: Carter gives much of the credit to Craig Rodwell’s idea of an annual parade to give it “staying power.” A good idea, but those of us who were there remember twice as many observers as marchers.
More to the point was the four days of protests right after the riot at the six Greenwich Village subway stations. Gay or straight, you could not come or go from 4 pm to 8 pm without encountering gay and lesbian marchers with signs, chanting, and being egged on by people like Vito Russo with megaphones. Those, in turn, had sign-up lists, and people did show up a half a block away, upstairs, for the first meeting (and subsequent meetings) of the Gay Liberation Front. That group became the larger, more effective Gay Activists Alliance. It was a multi-pronged movement early on.
Felice Picano, Los Angeles
How the Black Cat Protests Went Down
To the Editor,
Eve Goldberg’s article in the Origins issue [March-April 2025] was correct about the brutality of the Black Cat raid but woefully distorted about the protest later. Her description of the cruel and unprovoked LAPD attacks on the Black Cat and a second gay bar across the street at midnight
of a New Year’s celebration is factually correct.
The approximately 200 demonstrators on February 11, 1967, were not there to protest the Black Cat raids, however. A handful of Black Cat protesters correctly and adroitly latched onto the larger demonstration as protective cover. My sources are printed accounts of the raids in LA-based homophile publications, detailed conversations with Jim Kepner who was a speaker at the assembled protest, and several archival accounts at the USC-ONE lgbtq Archives.
Four demonstrations—on the Sunset Strip, and in the Valley, South L.A., and Silverlake—were called to protest LAPD violence against young counterculture hippies on the Sunset Strip and, secondarily, Black and Latino communities. Only the Sunset Strip and Silverlake events materialized. In the Silverlake protest, organizers forbade the use of the words “homosexual,” “homophile,” or “gay.” Look at the photo of demonstrators’ protest signs with the article. None use those forbidden words or refer to the Black Cat violence. In Kepner’s speech that day, whenever he wanted to use one of the forbidden words, he said instead “the word I am forbidden to speak” in defiance.
About the actual Black Cat protest, Kepner shared the following narrative: “A handful of demonstrators (whom I respect and honor) very briefly protested outside the Black Cat and then moved across Sunset to very briefly protest at the second gay bar that was secondarily raided. When a police car parked nearby on Sunset, the Black Cat protesters rapidly disappeared into people assembled for the real rally.”
LAPD raids, like the Black Cat event, were happening all over L.A. and throughout the country wherever gay people publicly congregated. The Black Cat was important because it was part of the awakening of LGBT resistance.
Don Kilhefner, PhD, Los Angeles
Explaining Sexuality—and Dexterity
To the Editor:
As usual I learned much again from the information in a recent issue [Jan.-Feb. 2025]—thank you. I want to comment on Andrew Holleran’s review of Josh L. Davis’ book A Little Queer Natural History. The book details homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom. Holleran ends his review by stating: “One finishes this book no nearer to an ‘explanation’ for homosexuality.”
A number of years ago I wrote a paper that addresses this question titled “Dexterity and Sexuality: Is There a Relationship?” (Journal of Homosexuality, v. 28, 1995). As far as I know, all the information I present is still correct and relevant. I used the word “dexterity” to mean which hand is dominant, the left or the right. It turns out this difference has much in common with sexual orientation. As I point out in the article, both left-handedness and homosexual tendencies seem to hover around ten percent of the population, and of course there are both ambidextrous and bisexual people. Handedness and sexuality are traits that may not be obvious to observers and may be deliberately concealed (as left-handedness once was), as both have historically been subject to negative social perceptions. And there are other curious parallels: for instance, women statistically seem to be both more bisexual and more ambidextrous than men.
And yet, to this day there is still no real explanation for the origin of either dexterity or sexuality. While there is no obvious connection between them—though there is evidence that gay people are more likely to be lefthanded—as a social and scientific analogy it does give one pause.
John Hamill, San Francisco
Correction
In the March-April 2025 issue, in a review of Love Is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill, the two co-editors should have been listed as John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr.
