sweetluna

If the American justice system openly practiced homophobia until a few years before 1969, naturally, at that time, bars or establishments that received openly gay people were rare in the US – and those that did were often bullied or even closed by the police. Located between numbers 51 and 53 Christopher Street on the Vllage, the Stonewall Inn had become New York's only gay bar. To keep this business going, the Genovese Family – mobsters who owned the place – paid a hefty weekly kickback to the New York police. The bar didn't have a liquor license, didn't have emergency exits, didn't meet the legal sanitary requirements, but it was the only openly gay bar in the entire city, and its main attraction was dancing.

Still, police raids on the Stonewall Inn were constant, often arresting employees, unidentified customers, or simply trans men or men dressed as women (New York law provided for arrests for transvestite men). When, at 1:20 am on June 28, 1969, four police officers decided to break into the place, what was expected was that the raid would be another standard police operation. What happened, however, couldn't be more different – and more radical, transformative, violent and symbolic of the need for change that not only the US but the whole world needed to go through. There were just over 200 people present at the bar when the lights were turned on and the music turned off, as an indication that the police were present. The exits were closed, and the standard procedure of lining up clients, checking their documents and separating the “women's dresses” so that female police officers could check their gender did not happen as planned, given the clients' refusal to identify themselves. The initial decision was to take the majority of those present to the police station. The discomfort turned to revolt as a small crowd of customers and onlookers began to gather around the bar.

An even larger crowd gathered the following night, with a striking difference in posture: since they had lost the secret, hidden place where they could show their affections, they would now do so in public. Even in ruins, among gay couples kissing the streets of Manhattan, Stonewall opened its doors the following night, but what there was was a huge crowd, which spread for several blocks around. The police arrived en masse, confusion broke out and street fighting broke out again into the night.

For about five days, new outbreaks of revolt took place in the region, until the chaos was finally contained – but there was no turning back: it was the first time that gays, lesbians and transgender people had united and resisted with all their strength against the laws and homophobic violence in the US state. In the context of the black struggle for civil rights and the feminist uprising of the late 1960s, the gay movement was finally an inescapable force.

Within a few months, virtually every American city had strong gay rights organizations, and on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, on June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in the US.

Interestingly, Brazil, the country where the most hate crimes against LGBTs occur in the world, was the first nation in the Americas to decriminalize homosexuality and one of the first in the world: even during the times of the Empire, in 1830, being homosexual was no longer crime around here.The LGBT Pride Parade in São Paulo only started in 1997, but quickly became one of the largest in the world, and today it is the event that most attracts tourists in the city of São Paulo (and the second in Brazil, second only to Carnival From Rio). It is because of the Stonewall revolts that the event – which now takes place on all continents and in most countries on the planet – almost always takes place in June.

While gay activism of course didn't start that night, the fact is that everything changed after Stonewall. Just like Rosa Parks' gesture, in 1955, of refusing to give up her seat on a bus and going to the back of the vehicle where the space segregated for blacks was located, triggered the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA, the Rebellion of Stonewall has done the same for the gay movement and for LGBT rights around the world. As historians Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney put it, “from that night onwards the lives of millions of gay men and lesbian women, and the attitude towards them of the broader culture in which they lived, began to change rapidly. People started to appear in public as homosexuals, demanding respect.” The Stonewall rebellions must be remembered for what they were: the uprising of a population in revolt, after being raped to the limit, in the name of two things that are not only they must be seen as essential rights but also as fundamental premises of any just society: the right of people to be whoever they want to be, and love.

Interestingly, Brazil, the country where the most hate crimes against LGBTs occur in the world, was the first nation in the Americas to decriminalize homosexuality and one of the first in the world: even during the times of the Empire, in 1830, being homosexual was no longer crime around here.The LGBT Pride Parade in São Paulo only started in 1997, but quickly became one of the largest in the world, and today it is the event that most attracts tourists in the city of São Paulo (and the second in Brazil, second only to Carnival From Rio). It is because of the Stonewall revolts that the event – which now takes place on all continents and in most countries on the planet – almost always takes place in June.

While gay activism of course didn't start that night, the fact is that everything changed after Stonewall. Just like Rosa Parks' gesture, in 1955, of refusing to give up her seat on a bus and going to the back of the vehicle where the space segregated for blacks was located, triggered the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA, the Rebellion of Stonewall has done the same for the gay movement and for LGBT rights around the world. As historians Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney put it, “from that night onwards the lives of millions of gay men and lesbian women, and the attitude towards them of the broader culture in which they lived, began to change rapidly. People started to appear in public as homosexuals, demanding respect.” The Stonewall rebellions must be remembered for what they were: the uprising of a population in revolt, after being raped to the limit, in the name of two things that are not only they must be seen as essential rights but also as fundamental premises of any just society: the right of people to be whoever they want to be, and love.

Thanks for the space @MISSY @LEMON @PENNY @SEAN @YESSYBEAR @MICKEY@JACQUELINE