[LINK] "Homo Nest Raided: Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad"

Thanks to Joe. My. God I'm reproducing here the New York Daily News's coverage, by Jerry Lisker and more than a week later on the 6th of July, of the Stonewall Riots. The homophobic bastard (paper, city).

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday

Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power

The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of "C'mon girls, lets go get'em," the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. "If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war."

Bruce and Nan

Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20's. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

"I don't like your paper," Nan lisped matter-of-factly. "It's anti-fag and pro-cop."

"I'll bet you didn't see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn't have a liquor license."

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan's trembling hands.

"Calm down, doll," he said. "Your face is getting all flushed."

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

"This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too," Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

"What wedding?," the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. "Eric and Jack's wedding, of course. They're finally tying the knot. I thought they'd never get together."

Meet Shirley

"We'll have to find another place, that's all there is to it," Bruce sighed. "But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later."

"They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular," Nan said bitterly. "I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that's the real reason. It's a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn't they leave us alone?"

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

"Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there," she said. "The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don't know what they did inside, but that's their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies."

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premises.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. "They had the tightest security in the Village," a First Division officer said, "We could never get near the place without a warrant."

Police Talk

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, "it hit me right above the temple."

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall's cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

[FORUM] What divisions bother one of your communities?

The passage of legislation authorizing same-sex marriage in New York City came just a day before the 42nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City that, mythologized to whatever degree, helped catalyze the gay rights movement that eventually led to same-sex marriage. WNYC's news blog had a great photo of a crowd of celebrants proud of their identity taken outside the Stonewall Inn itself that was hosted the riots.



There's a nice circularity to the above paragraph: two circles, in fact, processes coming to their completion. (Symbolic, at least, if not quite actual. Much remains to be done, even if much has been done.)

The problem with these circularities?

I've no experience of the first half of the circle. It's not just that Stonewall is removed from me geographically and I'm more familiar with the local Bathhouse Riots of 1981. (Good article, by the way.) I've recently written a [FORUM] post about what I feel to be my grace of late birth in having come to age just in time to not worry about being imprisoned or dying in an epidemic or not having access to legally sanctioned relationship. Even two decades ago, I find it difficult to imagine everything working out as very positively as it have. (Seriously, it was a good thing; had I been straight, all things plausibly being equal, I'd probably have the physique of the Comic Book Guy and be living in my parents' basement. Things worked out so much better.) I imagine that I could be a binge-drinker who eventually had a fatal car accident on a confusingly linear road, or maybe someone who died of pneumonia compounded by "cancer" with family who never liked talking about the whole thing, or just someone repressed who'd never try to disturb the universe and would never been disturbed in return. A life fragmented and shortened by the compartmentalization and stigma forced on me would seem inevitable; the best I could do would be to limit the fragmentation by cauterizing uncomfortable extremities. I've no relevant experience. (I think. I hope?)

Partly because of Jim Parsons' starring role (I like Big Bang Theory), I've been paying some attention to the success Broadway appearance of seeing playwright/activist Larry Kramer's 1985 AIDS-themed play "The Normal Heart". In an interesting New York Times article the unexpected similarities and surprises that a young gay audience felt, recognizing some cultural elements that survived from 1985 to 2011 despite all the changes (20-somethings being interviewed as out, with photographs, even). And for me, yes, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been something I have experienced at a remove, time and law and medicine and the rest ensuring that. The restaging of The Normal Heart, and Kramer's anti-AIDS activism, did us all much good.

Just last month, one writer's asked Kramer to "shut the fuck up". I kind of get that impulse, actually: in the Salon interview that inspired the previous writer to anger, Kramer doesn't seem to think much of my generation for having gone through Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres instead of horrific epidemics and imprisonment on the grounds of sexual orientation. Leaving aside the cross-generational gap that I've seen bridged fairly regularly, is that attitude actually going to encourage people to engage with an uncomfortable history that detracts from an increasingly comfortable present? I read his speech/text from 2005, The Tragedy of Today's Gays, and I don't get it. Things aren't perfect and the younger generation isn't perfect so we are all doomed, doomed, doomed, despite whatever progress has been made or is continuing to be made because we're all aparthetic and insensitive to our elders and barebacking on tina and ... ? Thanks a lot, Larry, for all that respect.

There is a gap between the two perspectives, of Kramer and his sort against his critics: real, emotional, operating in multiple dimensions, solvable only in part. There may be others in my life, but this is likely the most important gap applying to a community (aggregate?) of which I am a member. There will not, I repeat, be a general solution; too much separates us for everyone to come together. The community will remain divided.

That's one of my divided communities? And yours?