For many within our community “Pride Week” (or in Calgary this year, “Pride Month”) is an opportunity to have some fun at the beginning of summer, showcase some of our community organizations, and party. Nothing wrong with that as lots of minority communities do that -- Caribfest, Mardi Gras, Pow-Wows and Potlatches, to name a few.
It’s important, though, to at least remember why we celebrate what we’ve come to call “Pride Week”. Pride is held mainly in the first couple of weeks of June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the pivotal event that is marked as the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement which. In turn, it led to the development of an identifiable GLBTQ community during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than just a collection of individuals with nothing in common but who they had sex with.
Prior to 1969 there were isolated attempts to create a socio-political awareness amongst homosexuals. In the 50’s, Harry Hays created The Mattachine Society, named after a medieval secret society and fashioned after the secret American Communist Party ‘cells’ to which he also belonged. Originally, the Mattachine Society’s mandate was to advocate for the fair and equal treatment of lesbians and homosexual men. The lesbian counterpart to the Mattachine Society was an organization created by two lesbians in California, called the Daughters of Bilitis; Bilitis was an Egyptian goddess of knowledge.
After the Mattachine Society moved away from its “radical” roots and towards being a more accommodationist organization (one might even say Uncle Tom-like) a few years after Hays founded it, he left the organization and by the 70s was heavily involved in gay spirituality and the Radical Fairie Movement.
But none of these organizations had wide acceptance amongst the homosexual and lesbian population. Then, as now, most homosexuals and lesbians were not particularly interested in politics and, certainly in the 50’s and early 60’s, to be “out” was extremely dangerous. This was the era of the McCarthy Hearings and the House Committee on Un-American Activities when artists, actors, social reformers and activists were being tarred as “Communists” and being subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee to answer to the allegations levied against them. American citizens were being rounded up and accused of being spies, Communists, and enemies of the American State – the accusation was enough to destroy a career. To be openly homosexual in such an atmosphere would invite ruin.
As various social movements such as the civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements captured the public imagination throughout the 1960’s, the philosophies and analyses of these movements filtered throughout North American society, especially amongst the young Baby Boomers born in the early-to-mid 1950’s. Old mores were challenged and the conformity of the Eisenhower years of the 1950’s was being tossed out in favour of experimentation, restructuring society, examining ones own place in the world, and working to change the world.
Against this backdrop of change and social revolution, the day-to-day life of your average homosexual remained fraught with danger. Police raids against homosexual bars and gatherings were common and unheeded. Homosexuality was still a criminal offence in every state of the Union and throughout Canada, as it was throughout the world. Psychiatry labeled homosexuality as a pathology, requiring barbaric “cures” such as electro-shock therapy, drug therapy, confinement in asylums and mental hospitals, and ostracism from ‘decent society’.
This, then, was the setting that fateful night in June 1969 when the NYPD carried out a routine raid against a small tavern in Greenwich Village known to be frequented by homosexuals and lesbians, The Stonewall Inn.
The Stonewall Inn was what one could charitably describe as a dive. The patrons were not only homosexual, but often hustlers, drag queens, trannies, butch dykes and their femme girlfriends – easy pickings for the NYPD since they were, at that time, the castaways of an outcast population. The raid was routine, the timing was disastrous for the police.
Judy Garland, an icon within the homosexual population, had just died. New York City was sweltering through a hot humid summer. The summer of 1969 was the Summer of Love, the apex of the Hippie and counter-culture social revolution that had gripped the US for a couple of years. Revolution was in the air, as they used to say. When the police burst into the Stonewall to bash a few heads and arrest some perverts, the patrons fought back, leading to three nights of rioting in Greenwich Village. At one point, the police barricaded themselves inside the tavern while the hustlers, drag queens, trannies, and dykes rioting and chanting outside started battering the doors down to reclaim their space.
Suddenly America was aware of a new movement. The six o’clock news carried images not of Negroes marching for civil rights or burning their neighbourhoods as they had in the Watts district of Chicago or East Central Los Angeles, or of Women Libbers burning their bras in protest against the patriarchy, and not of pot-smoking students chanting slogans against the Vietnam War. These were pansies, sissies, faggots, dykes, queers and homos. A new word entered the American lexicon: gay. Gay Liberation had begun.
Activists formed groups like the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Alliance. They were organizing friends, lovers, and acquaintances into discussion and conscious-raising groups, political action and lobbying groups. My God, they were even holding public dances in rented halls and plastering the streets with posters advertising gay-this and gay-that.
By the mid-70’s Gay Liberation, which advocated tearing down social institutions and rebuilding, gave way to a gay and lesbian rights movement focused on working within the system. Homosexuality started moving away from the fringe and into mainstream North America.
In 1969, homosexuality was decriminalized in Canada (although it remains a criminal offence in most of the US). Communities started to develop with their own institutions and social spaces, operated by lesbians and gay men for lesbians and gay men. Entire neighbourhoods, like the Castro in San Francisco, Christopher Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and West Hollywood in Los Angeles, were recognized as gay enclaves. To a lesser extent the same phenomenon was happening in Canada with Vancouver’s West End, Montreal’s St. Catherine’s Street East, and Toronto’s Church Street neighbourhoods becoming increasingly gay-identified. Various urban neighbourhoods were recognized as Gay Villages, or at least as the somewhat less high-profile ‘gaybourhood’.
In Canada, the gay and lesbian rights movement, now expanded to include bisexuals and transsexuals (GLBT), began to slowly change legislation through the courts. In Alberta, human rights legislation finally was changed in 1997, following Delwin Vriend’s Supreme Court challenge. It was no longer legal to discriminate in housing, employment, or access to public services on the basis of sexual orientation. That is only 8 short years ago. Calgary didn’t have it’s first Pride March and Rally until 1991, which was organized by a handful of activists, That was only 14 years ago, and 22 years after the Stonewall Riots. 150 people showed up at that first Rally, many of them in masks or wearing paper bags over their heads so that they would not be recognized. In 2004, what had now evolved into the more celebratory Pride Parade and Street Fair, attracted thousands, none of whom wore masks.
Every province and territory in Canada has human rights legislation protecting against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, with the Northwest Territories going further with protection on the basis of gender identity. Eighty percent of jurisdictions in Canada now have legal same-sex marriage, and the Civil Marriage Act is making its way through Parliament, despite massive opposition from the social and religious Right. It is currently in Committee – the final step before being brought before the Senate for approval and eventual Royal Assent to make it law.
Same-sex couples can legally adopt in almost every province and territory, file joint tax returns, inherit the estate of a deceased partner even if there is no will (at least in Alberta), have ‘next-of-kin’ status in regards to medical decisions, and in some provinces – Alberta most notably – are able to, if not actually marry, at least register as an “interdependent relationship” with almost all the same legal rights as married couples.
In 36 years, less than a lifetime, our community has moved from a collection of secretive often isolated individuals shunned by ‘society’ and forced to meet surreptitiously, to a visible community. We have our own community associations, political organizations, legal status in all areas including access to the institution of civil marriage (and sometimes even religious marriage, depending on what faith community one is dealing with), and a respected body of literature, art and media. Advertising and marketing agencies, fundraisers and media of all descriptions, eager to tap into our supposed highly disposable income, seek us out. Our political organizations have considerable political clout. We no longer need to hide in the shadows waiting for the next round of arrests.
That is indeed something to celebrate.
Stephen Lock is the Regional Director for Egale Canada and the Calgary Representative for The Canadians For Equal Marriage Coalition. He is also the producer and host of a semi-monthly glbt radio show, Speak Sebastian, airing at 9pm on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month on CJSW FM 90.9.
We are still looking for contributions to the Goliath’s Defence Fund. Donations can be made by cheque or money order, payable to “Stephen Lock (trustee).” In the memo section write “to be held in trust for the Goliath’s Defence Fund” and mail to: The Goliath’s Defence Fund, c/o The Calgary Eagle, 424-a 8th Ave SE, Calgary AB T2G 0L7. All proceeds go to defray the legal costs of the man charged as a found-in.
