Stonewall At 40: Gay Rights Hits Middle Age [Opinion]
Michael Nagle/Getty Images
Participants march with rainbow balloons in the Gay Pride Parade June 24, 2007 in New York City. The parade celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride and honors the Stonewall riots of 1969, when gay bar and nightclub patrons resisted a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
On June 28, the gay liberation movement officially turns 40. But since a lot of gay guys moisturize, we look a lot younger. For those of you who are what we call "homosexually impaired," let me give you a quick history.
While our fight for equality goes back to the time Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for the "love that dare not speak its name," Gay 2.0 began with the Stonewall riots, when patrons at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back for the first time against a police raid.
From that birth, we moved straight — no pun intended — into a libidinous adolescence with "macho, macho men" and "bad girls — toot, toot, yeah, beep, beep." The party came to an abrupt end with the advent of AIDS, forcing us to grow up fast while we watched a generation disappear before our eyes.
By the time we were 25, we defied expectations by lobbying to serve in the military, as if someone had mixed up the Gay Agenda with the Republican one.
When we reached 35, we were finally ready to settle down and get married, which we can now do in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, plus civil union arrangements in more than 20 more like Israel, Brazil, Croatia and Uruguay. But here in the land of the not-so-free and the home of the not-so-brave — not so much.
So as we hit the big 4-0, is it time for the gay liberation movement to buy a red sports car and have an affair? According to Gail Sheehy's Passages, when we turn 40 we experience "a major upheaval of the roles and rules that may have comfortably defined us in the first half of life." As someone who's just slightly older than Stonewall — though I'm told I don't look it — that means sulking around the house in my boxers singing Peggy Lee's "Is that all there is? Is that all there is?"
It's not as self-pitying as it sounds. Forty is the time you look over your shoulder to see how you got where you are, so you can figure out how to get where you're going. For the past 40 years, homosexuality has been like duck hunting — interesting only to those who practice it or those who want to stop it. To move ahead and make history, we must engage our straight allies, people who realize that a society with civil rights for some is not a civil society. Imagine how much we could change if even a few marriage announcements read: "The bride and groom are delighted to announce their nuptials, while saddened that the caterer and florist cannot."
Together, we need to start acting the way we know to be true — that those who oppose equality stand on the wrong side of history and will soon be ashamed of their bigotry.
And by the time we're 50, we can all look back and see how inequality was just a part of history.
Comments
Add your comments