President Obama, during his two terms from 2009-2016, declared June as the LGBT pride month each year. The Bush administration maintained a stoic silence on the issue. In the US, the first ever ‘official’ Gay Pride Month was declared by President Bill Clinton in June 1999 and then followed it up with declaring one in June 2000 as well.
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The pride marches opened a path of acceptance and assimilation for the LGBTQ community, which, for the longest time, had been shunned by the mainstream. The next year, the marches had spread to Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris and even West Berlin. There were simultaneous marches held in the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. On June 28, 1970, people marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and the anniversary heralded the first ever ‘gay pride march’.
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In 2016, President Obama declared the Stonewall Inn a national monument. The Stonewall Riots hence mark an important day in the evolution of modern-day gay rights. It led to five more days of belligerent protests and activism by the LGBTQ people of New York. Instantly, a full-fledged riot broke out. The situation turned aggressive, and many civilians were manhandled, and an LGBTQ woman was hit by a policeman as he bundled her into a police vehicle. The raid ignited the long pent-up frustration of the LGBTQ community, and many patrons and gay residents of the Greenwich village started to gather around the Inn. Some were employees, and some were patrons who violated New York state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute - read drag queens.
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In the wee hours of June 28, 1969, the police raided Stonewall Inn and arrested 13 people. Gay bars were routinely raided and their owners and patrons harassed. However, the city still deemed public display of affection by the gay community as illegal. Newsletter | Click to get the day’s best explainers in your inboxĭrag Queens, effeminate men, and gay men who pretended to be straight, could all come and have a good time at the ‘bottle bar’ - the Inn didn’t have a liquor license, as the patrons got their own. In these rough times, the Stonewall Inn offered a safe haven to the LGBTQ community. In fact, solicitation of homosexual relations was still a crime in New York City. At the same time, gay and lesbian members of the American society were being constantly marginalised. To learn more about the history of the Stonewall Inn and LGBTQ heritage in the United States, please visit the National Park Service’s Stonewall National Monument page.The sixties was the time in the US when the anti-Vietnam war protest was gathering momentum, and a hippie counterculture was bubbling under.
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The Stonewall Rebellion, according to Andrew Dolkart, a Columbia University professor who helped prepare the inn’s nomination for National Landmark status, “opened the door for millions of gay and lesbian Americans to begin pressing for full and equal civil rights.” Instead of quietly dispersing, as police had come to expect, the crowd rioted.”īy the 25th anniversary, an estimated 500,000 people participated in the New York parade for LGBTQ pride. The reaction of the bar’s patrons and of the neighborhood crowd that assembled in the street was not typical of such raids, however. “In a pattern of raids and harassment of gay establishments, the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn on the early morning of June 28, 1969.
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The National Park Service’s “Statement of Significance” for the Stonewall Inn describes what happened. The Stonewall Rebellion, on June 28, 1969, in New York, is considered the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, not only in the United States but around the world. The first gay pride parade was held in 1970, one year after the Stonewall Rebellion. For many Americans, LGBT Pride Month is a celebration of diversity, civil liberties and human rights. In addition to LGBTQ persons, family members and friends often join in to offer support.Īlthough parades in New York and Los Angeles get the most media attention, communities around the nation in all 50 states hold events. It marks a time when LGBTQ communities celebrate their identity with events that include parades, street festivals and educational efforts. June has been recognized as LGBTQ Pride Month for many years in the United States. June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month.