It’s a curious coincidence that the June celebration of LGBT Pride Month provides the prelude for our nation’s Independence Day, July Fourth. Perhaps it was the sultry summer heat that brought our mutual simmering discontent to the boiling point. The June 28 events at New York City’s Stonewall Inn when drag queens, transgender people and others, mostly of color, rose up against institutionalized oppression and those in colonial Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, when our founding fathers (also in wigs and heels, by the way) declared our independence from an oppressive foreign power have many parallels.
Born in a long history of intolerable acts intended to repress a people, both set off revolutions in the social order. Both seemingly achieved their respective ends. But it would take centuries for one and decades for the other to reach some semblance of the intended goals of liberty, justice and equality for all. And, as in all revolutions, both still face reactionary opposition but remain defiant and ongoing.
Like Lexington and Concord, Stonewall is only part of our narrative. We’ve had our battles won and lost. In 1953 President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that banned LGBT people from employment by Federal government agencies including the military. In the ’80s, President Reagan opposed LGBT rights and dithered his way through the AIDS crisis. But then came President Obama who in the last eight years presided over a litany of LGBT advances. He ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA. He appointed LGBT people to higher government positions. There’s even a gay Secretary of the Army. When the Supreme Court declared marriage equality throughout the country, he bathed the White House in rainbow colors. Under Obama there has also been increased Federal funding of LGBT organizations, including local ones. And, perhaps most importantly in an acknowledgement of LGBT identity, he recognized Stonewall as the symbol of our struggle in his second inaugural address, listing it along with Seneca Falls and Selma. And, just weeks ago, after declaring June LGBT Pride Month, President Obama designated the Stonewall site a national monument. (Our own M&M Bar played a similar role in Milwaukee’s local LGBT revolution, serving as a true community center where we found our unity, safety and empowerment. It too should be declared an historic site.)
Today we can enjoy our visibility. Out LGBT people appear on TV game shows, in sitcoms and as news anchors. Speaking of which, a local TV station, CBS 58, just broadcast its own Pride tribute, celebrating the first anniversary of marriage equality. It’s the second, of course, but who’s counting? Apparently, it took Orlando to call their attention to the LGBT community. But, it’s the thought that counts.
A dozen score years ago when John Hancock and more than 50 others boldly signed that Declaration of Independence, they certainly intended it to affect future generations. They may not have envisioned the dandies and other LGBTs who would rely on that very document to demand equality in their pursuit of happiness but I’m sure, in their enlightened sensibility, they would have approved.
