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These new material conditions - coupled with the emotionally intensive circumstances of war - encouraged millions of men and women to explore and pursue homosexual desires and to form intimate and meaningful same-sex relationships on a scale that was previously inconceivable.Ĭorrespondingly, after returning from combat abroad or military production at home, many gay men and lesbians opted for the independence offered by America’s urban centers. Millions of men and women were called away from their homes and placed into overwhelmingly homosocial environments like military bases, hospitals, industrial factories, governmental offices, and urban centers. However, it was not until World War II - what many gay historians refer to as a national coming out experience - that LGBTQ history would undergo a qualitative turning point.īoth at home and abroad, World War II rearranged American society, including gender relations and sexual behavior, in order to meet the country’s military needs. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an extensive underground gay world began to develop in major US cities. The personal autonomy and privacy afforded by city life allowed for the exploration of non-heterosexual desires and greater gender expression, as well as the development of a community based on those shared interests in a way that was generally not possible under previous modes of production. It was only through the development of capitalist industrialization and the accompanying emergence of large urban centers, and the transformative effect this process had on social life, that the material conditions for the development of an LGBTQ identity and community became possible. While people have been sexually intimate with others of the same sex since the beginning of time, the social construction of a gay identity is a new phenomenon. In this context studying the Stonewall Rebellion and the gay liberation movement is more than just an interesting history lesson - it provides activists and radicals with lessons for confronting the political challenges we face today and rebuilding a movement that can win sexual liberation for everyone.
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Instead, they remain tied to Corporate America and prefer a strategy that relies exclusively on lobbying the Democratic Party rather than confronting the institutions of political power that have the money and resources to implement impactful legal and structural reforms.
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In response, mainstream LGBT organizations also referred to as Gay Inc., have not organized a serious resistance.
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The outcome has been disastrous, especially for the most vulnerable sections of the LGBTQ community-people of color, trans people, and queer youth. From the Administration’s attacks against trans people to support for so-called “Religious Liberties” and “Bathroom Bill” legislation, many of the gains won in previous years have come under attack from a well-organized, highly funded right-wing assault. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of the freedoms experienced by LGBTQ people today would have been inconceivable just a couple generations ago.īut with Trump’s election in 2016, all of that has come under threat. With the Supreme Court’s historic legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 and increased acceptance and representation of LGBTQ people in popular culture, it’s undeniable that we have come a long way from a time when cops routinely raided gay bars and being outed guaranteed a person would be labeled a sexual psychopath, blacklisted, ostracized by friends and family, and legally barred from employment in most occupations. Stonewall and how it all happened from a historical, activist pieceįifty years ago this June, in the summer of 1969, patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York City, fought back against abusive police, and in doing so launched the modern, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer movement.