Moisés Kaufman

<h1>(Stonewall: 50 Years Later): Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn, we asked Jennifer Finney Boylan, Moisés Kaufman and Danez Smith to reflect on the episode’s impact on the global LGBTQ community and to look to the promises and challenges of the future.</h1>

In his book “The Rebel,” Albert Camus sets forth the idea that every revolution begins with one word. The word is “no.”

On June 28, 1969, shortly after midnight, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn — a gay bar in Greenwich Village — stood up to policemen who were conducting a raid of the club.

In the past, these raids would result in arrests and public shaming. However, that night the patrons fought back, the police lost control and a riot erupted. Drag queens, homeless LGBTQ teens, transgender women of color, lesbians, gay men and allies took to the streets in an uprising that lasted six days.

Even though this wasn’t the first time LGBTQ people had fought back, the Stonewall riot captured the world’s imagination because it was violent, it was large scale, it lasted for days and it contested the control of an entire neighborhood in one of the most important cities in the nation. The patrons of the Stonewall Inn had decided to say “no” to the police. And in the decades that followed, that “no” was heard around the world.

But what did that “no” mean, and what must it mean now?

One of the most important achievements of the Stonewall uprising was that it began a radical redefinition of the character of the LGBTQ person in the popular imagination. In 1969, homosexuality was still defined as a mental illness by the medical profession, and same-sex sexual relations were a crime in 49 states.

The uprising showed the world a new image of our community. We were no longer willing to hide in closets in silence and shame; we would take to the streets and demand to be full citizens. Within months, several activist groups like the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists Alliance and the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries were formed.

Merely a year later, some 5,000 activists held the first pride march in New York City — with similar marches held in Chicago and Los Angeles. And the rallying cry of the movement became: “We must all come out of the closet. We must make ourselves known.”

Camus also states in his book that “in every act of rebellion,” the rebel experiences a “complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself.” Just four years after the riots, in 1973, we said “no” to the American Psychiatric Association, and its leaders at long last removed the diagnosis of homosexuality from its official list of mental illnesses.

The next year, 1974, we said “no” to being politically powerless when Elaine Noble, the first out lesbian to run for a state-level political office, was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature. And, famously, in 1977, an openly gay man, Harvey Milk, was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

But as the battle went on, and as the character of the homosexual was being redrawn in revolt, 1981 brought about the first cases of the AIDS epidemic. And the death toll — and the country’s initial refusal to respond to it — brought to the surface the depth of homophobia, transphobia and other queer-centered bigotry in the American psyche.

A radical rethinking of tactics and actions was needed, and a new kind of gay activist was born. Lambda Legal, GMHC (formerly the Gay Men’s Health Crisis), ACT UP and a host of other organizations redefined the way civil rights wars were being fought.

When ACT UP members stood, triumphant, on the awning of the Food and Drug Administration building in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1988, the nation was shown a new kind of LGBTQ person: the warrior who would fight every person or institution that stood in the way of their survival.

These groups not only revolutionized the way scientific research was conducted in the country but also saved hundreds of thousands of people because of the AIDS drugs they propelled to market.

The epidemic brought about the most cohesive, cogent and heroic period in the movement’s history. Different LGBTQ communities — including trans individuals, people of color and people with disabilities — came together to fight. Eventually, the coming out en masse that the activists had been pressing for since the start of the movement did occur, and as they’d predicted, it changed the nature of the dialogue.

This became clear in 1998, when Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old university student living in Laramie, Wyoming, was kidnapped, beaten and tied to a fence on the outskirts of town. He died a few days later. This crime made the front page of every paper in America and every TV news program; the photograph of the fence where he was tied made the cover of Time magazine. The symbolic nature of the crime — it was perceived to be a crucifixion — had a lot to do with why it received so much attention.

But more than that, the AIDS activists had pushed the LGBTQ person into the center of the American conversation. And the struggle for the rights of the LGBTQ community was now a part of the zeitgeist.

Today, the building that houses the Stonewall Inn has earned a listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and a monument is being erected to honor Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two drag queens of color who were instrumental in the Stonewall uprising.

Homosexuality has been decriminalized nationwide. Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are able to serve openly in the military.

There’s federal hate crime protection, and AIDS has become a chronic illness as opposed to a fatal one, at least for those with access to health care. We have marriage equality, and a gay man is making a serious run for the presidency.

In this context, the celebration of the 50-year anniversary of Stonewall may feel euphoric. But is euphoria the right attitude for this moment in time? It is always tempting when writing the history of minorities to focus on the victories. But for all of these achievements, in 28 states employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression is still legal. That means you can get married on Sunday and get fired on Monday.

Violence against the trans community, especially trans people of color, is rampant. And President Donald Trump has barred most transgender people from serving in the military.

Long-term survivors of AIDS are still struggling with post-traumatic stress, and the suicide rate among LGBTQ teens is five times higher than their straight cisgender peers. HIV infection rates among communities of color are at epidemic levels, and even within the LGBTQ community, racism, misogyny and classism still keep us from realizing true liberation and equality. Beyond our borders, over 70 countries still criminalize consensual same-sex acts, and in 11 of them, punishments include the death penalty.

So in the ongoing war of this movement, in the continuing battles that need to be fought, where do we locate our “no” at this time?

The greatest battle being fought in the hearts and minds of Americans is between the enlightenment ideals that gave birth to our democracy, and the autocratic and repressive views that threaten progress.

Willingly and unwillingly the LGBTQ community has carried forward a historic mission: to criticize and confront that repressive ideology. This places us at very the epicenter of that battle, and we soar or falter on par with the health of our democracy.

That is why it’s imperative to recognize that all the progress of the last 50 years is tenuous and fragile. Most of our wins have happened in the courts — courts that are now run by people who oppose us. Marriage equality, for example, was granted by a single Supreme Court vote — and that court now has a conservative majority.

We know wins can be reversed. Look at the progress made by African-Americans during Reconstruction, which was undone during the Jim Crow era. Or the great strides made in Germany in the 1920s for LGBTQ rights that were swept away during the next decade. There’s nothing guaranteed in the march toward equality for LGBTQ people in the United States or anywhere else.

Our success as a movement is inexorably tied to the prosperity of our democratic institutions (both here and abroad). So if we are to succeed, we must stand with a broad coalition of the many communities under assault whose values we share and of which we are a part: immigrants, women, people of color, people living in poverty and so on.

And as we pass the torch to a generation that often doesn’t know a single person who has died of AIDS, who has never heard of Matthew Shepard, or Marsha P. Johnson, we must also pass on a sense of history and responsibility.

If the last 50 years of transformation and triumph brought about by our movement have taught us anything, it is that we can indeed bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. This movement has changed the lives of the LGBTQ community, but it has also changed the way the entire nation thinks and feels about homosexuality, and about the entire spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation. How can we use what we’ve learned in those 50 years to combat the current turn toward autocracy?

This month, 3 million visitors are expected in New York City for Pride, to celebrate and honor the Stonewall patrons who said “no.” We have earned the right to dance in the streets where they rioted. But we must do so with a clear eye to history, and the role we’re yet to play in it.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/us/moises-kaufman-stonewall-50.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

In his book “The Rebel,” Albert Camus sets forth the idea that every revolution begins with one word. The word is “no.”

Moisés Kaufman: A dangerous euphoria

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Moisés Kaufman

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Moisés Kaufman: A dangerous euphoria