Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Stonewall Riot


June 28, 1969:

Judy Garland dies. NYC police harass gay bar patrons one too many times. Drag queens lead gay riot that f**ks up Greenwich Village for several days.

Viva la revolution.

Rating: depends who you ask %

Image courtesy of The Boulevardier

14 comments:

laurie said...

Unfortunately, I think only New Yorkers and gays (basically the same thing, right?) have even heard of the Stonewall Riots. Frank Rich talks about them in his latest column.

DCP said...

I think probably everybody has heard about the Stonewall Riots speaking as somebody who is neither from New York or gay.

laurie said...

I'm going to have to disagree with you there, Glenn, and assert that you are perhaps a bit more progressive than most people in America and therefore aren't representative of most people in America.

Viking Andrew said...

I believe the recent Rainbow bar imbroglio in Fort Worth took place on the 40th anniversary of The Stonewall Riot. Cops, you know...

John from Daejeon said...

I can pretty much guarantee you that most people in South Texas might know a certain Stonewall Jackson, but they’d have no clue about what the Stonewall riots were. South Texas is that area south of San Antonio that encompasses Corpus Christi and the lower Rio Grande Valley. I didn’t even know homosexual people existed until I hit Houston for college and found myself shopping for laundry detergent with my dad in a Target near the Astrodome following our tour of the 8th wonder of the world. In my search for laundry sundries, we just happened to see a couple of hot young women groping the hell out of each other next to the clothes pins. Besides nearly fainting, I thought my dad was going to force me to leave the big city and its “uniqueness.” Luckily, we didn’t hit the Montrose area and he never met my Cinema Appreciation teacher (Prof. Hawes) who had a fondness showing porn clips in class.

Chris said...

Yeah, only New Yorkers would be progressive enough to know about something like the Stonewall Riot.

But I guess you were implying New Yorkers would know since they live in New York, right?

I doubt it considering a lot of people living in New York weren't even born there.

laurie said...

@John from Daejeon: That sounds a lot like young me who barely knew what Jews were before I went to college.

laurie said...

@Chris: I meant to say that New Yorkers know about the riot because we live in New York and are all totally gay.

Viking Andrew said...

John from Daejeon is from Texas? Hm. I did not know that.

Chris said...

I thought John from Daejohn was I.J.

And why couldn't you just take the bait, Laurie?

laurie said...

I'm not even sure what the bait was. What was I supposed to say?

John said...

@ Chris
Seriously? I've never even been to Daejon.

John from Daejeon said...

You can call it brainwashing by our circumstances (family, education, church, etc.) as we grow up or just a lack of exposure to the world the does not exist in our own back yard, but unless you were born into that certain set of circumstances (lifestyle, religion, skin color, nation, rural, etc.) we really shouldn't get all shook up when someone isn't as smart, or enlightened, as we think we are.

However, it still bugs me to this day that many Houstonians think that Houston is South Texas. It's not my fault that these intellectual giants never learned that it's still 350 miles further south until you hit the Mexican border across from Brownsville, Texas.

Chris said...

How am I supposed to know you haven't been to Daejeon?

You've lived in Seoul. It's possible you've traveled there.

Oh yeah, did anybody get it? Daejohn? I think you should change your name, John from Daejeon.