The Stonewall Inn and its Greenwich Village surroundings, a birthplace of the gay-rights movement, are slated for designation as a national historic site by President Obama, the first gay-related locale in the national park system. The landmarking will make a powerful statement about America’s continuing fight for universal equality.
The nation has come a long way in the almost half century since a police raid on the Christopher St. bar provoked an uprising by the tavern’s fed-up gay patrons — a revolt now viewed as a milestone in a journey that led last year to same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
Millions of people, businesses and institutions have traveled a long road away from social ostracism based on sexual orientation. The Daily News is among those who have evolved.
You need only read The News’ Stonewall coverage to meet a newspaper that was complicit in reflecting the demeaning and discriminatory attitudes that were so prevalent during the era.
Homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois in the late 1960s. Stonewall was one of the few New York City establishments that welcomed openly gay and lesbian patrons. (It was also Mafia-owned.)
In the early-morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the bar for alleged illicit alcohol sales. The next day’s News ran a 13-paragraph story that referred to “a reputed Greenwich Village homosexual hangout” and told of a “two-hour melee . . . as customers and villagers swarmed over the plainclothes cops.”
Given little significance, the story appeared on page 30 under the headline “3 Cops Hurt as Bar Raid Riles Crowd.”
On July 6, the News offered a fuller rendition, this time under the headline “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees are Stinging Mad.”
Written as if gleefully introducing “normal” readers to a freak show, the story exploited stereotypes and cartoonishly anti-gay caricatures for ridicule to be enjoyed by homophobes. Here’s how the article opened:
“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.”
The reconstruction of the events had a relentlessly similar attitude. For example:
“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.”
Amid the sneering, though, there were faint glimmers that something momentous may have taken place.
“Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot,” the piece reported, adding, “Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb.”
The Stonewall Inn is a city landmark. Creating the Stonewall National Historic Site as part of the National Park Service — which would include the bar, the small park across Christopher St. as well as nearby streets — would fittingly commemorate a fight for the betterment of an American soul whose need for improvement emerges so vividly from the first draft of history published by this newspaper on July 6, 1969.
