June 28,1969. In the early morning hours, police raid a mafia-run Greenwich Village bar named the Stonewall Inn that catered to an assortment of patrons including drag queens, transgendered people, homeless youth, middle class gays, and hustlers.
Before the Stonewall Riots, the pre-assimilation queer community was far more mixed, because everyone was disenfranchised and anyone could be arrested for illegal conduct. This meant that a place like the Stonewall had an easy mix of just about anyone you could find under the rainbow. Throughout the 60’s, police raids on gay bars were commonplace and acceptable, but on this one occasion, the authorities lost control and incited a riot.
Summer of 1987. At the age of sixteen, I became one of those homeless youth and hustlers at the West Side Highway piers in Manhattan. Almost two decades had passed since the Stonewall Riots, and I knew nothing about them. My only concerns at the time were finding a comfortable place to sleep at night, getting some money to buy food, and trying not to get AIDS or to be killed by a trick. Marsha P. Johnson was a black drag queen who, during the Stonewall Riots, had climbed a lamppost, dropped a heavy bag onto the hood of a police car, and shattered the windshield. I did not know anything about her or what her living situation might have been. All I knew was that she was always on Christopher Street in her tattered dress and funny looking hats. She was friendly, if not odd, but underneath my breath, like all the other pier queens, I would simply make fun of her. I remember being told that she should be respected as I rolled my eyes with contempt. Still, years later, when her body was found floating in the Hudson River after being brutally stabbed, I knew someone truly genuine and important had passed through my life. Fall 2009. I am teaching a spoken word poetry workshop at Sylvia’s Place, a shelter for queer homeless youth provided by the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. Sylvia’s Place was created to honor the request of another Stonewall Riots Veteran, drag queen activist Sylvia Rivera, on her deathbed. There are only about thirty sleeping bags and maybe two other shelters catering to queer homeless youth in a city where it is estimated that there are about a thousand gay kids out on the streets. It is truly essential that we acknowledge that some of our children still end up homeless after coming out to their families. We need to break through the illusion that the only thing gay people have left to win is the right to marry. It is disturbing to realize that forty years after Stonewall, we as a community are more concerned with fashion models’ muscles than with those mostly non-white kids who would do anything for a place to live. For all the progress in gay visibility and acceptance of the past forty years, our legal and social status has not progressed all that far. As my friend Sarah Schulman noted, “We do not have a national anti-discrimination bill. In fact, with the exception of the overturning of sodomy laws in 2003, there has been no national change in laws affecting gay people in our country’s history.” We also have no authentic representation in mainstream arts, and any expressions of our own experiences remain marginalized and obscure. During these tough economic times, let’s not forget that there’s still poverty and homelessness within our own community. Disturbingly enough, there are still gay teens out there who don’t own a pair of Prada sunglasses, have a gym membership, or have enough money to buy Ecstasy. Moreover, there are gay teens out there who are not white, toned, and anally bleached. Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which takes place in San Francisco in the 1970’s, features rare characters known as “faggots with food stamps.” With the unemployment rate so high, this phenomenon is making an unfortunate comeback. Imagine those queers who are not even eligible for unemployment or food stamps. Now picture them with colored skin. Now imagine them in their teens. Now picture them out on the streets without a place to call home. June 28, 2009. On the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, under the guise of an “alcohol beverage code inspection,” police raid a gay bar named the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth, Texas, arresting seven customers for intoxication and sending one man to the intensive care unit bleeding from his brain. Allegedly, patrons made sexual advances at the police officers who were already annoyed to find intoxicated men at a bar. (Imagine that: intoxicated men at a bar!) September 10, 2009. At 11:30 p.m., police raid an Atlanta, Georgia, leather bar named the Eagle on charges ranging from drug use to public and solicited sex, arresting 62 patrons and staff who had been left on the ground for an hour, many handcuffed, while openly expressing homophobic and racist remarks. With no drugs or weapons found and background checks which sadly provided nothing further for the police department, the staff was arrested on the grounds of “unlicensed stripping” for wearing only underwear on underwear night. Even when they are sober and wearing pants, people like drag queens, leather men, the transgendered, the homeless, and queers of color do not look like—and often do not share the same dreams as—those attending high-end gay banquets where straight celebrities are honored for their contributions to our struggle. The Stonewall Rebellion was about a community realizing that it could come together to fight against oppression and forced conformity. A rebellion today would be about a community coming together to force the government to accept us as more than second-class citizens unworthy of equal rights, and making our relationships as significant and protected as everybody else’s. It would also be about our lives being fully integrated into the arts and ideas of a larger society. It’s worth noting that ever since Stonewall, the queer community has significantly fragmented into groups that rarely interact with one another. It would be important for all members of our community, including the drag queens, the transgendered, the leather scene, queer youth, people of color, sex workers, and everybody whose identity lies outside the realm of mainstream sexuality to stand up and fight against this injustice. However, while celebrating the support we receive from our straight allies and trying to prove to the world that we’re just like everybody else, let us not forget the real heroes in our community who continue to struggle to survive and often go ignored while we’re fighting for equality. Let us remember Stonewall-era legends like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera who end up homeless or die in poverty. It is a sad reality that as we move forward as a community, our true heroes are often being left behind. Emanuel Xavier, author of Christ Like
