Dark History - 16: From Riots and Raids to Gay Pride Parades: How Pride came to be

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

In 1969, the Stonewall Inn was just your typical, Mafia-backed queer bar in Greenwich Village, New York. But after yet another police raid, the LGBTQ+ community had enough and decided to fight back. Today, Bailey tells the story of how chaos in the streets of New York evolved into the colorful Pride parades we see around the world today.

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Serian and welcome to the Dark History Library. So hi, welcome. This is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who are like, hey, is history like really as boring as the same in school? Oh, nay nay. That is not true. This is where we can learn together

about all the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories that honestly we were never taught in school, you know? So, let's get into today's story. Imagine this, it's 6 a.m., okay? You're putting on a full mug and you're pouring tequila into a bag for your purse. Why? Because you have a drinking problem. No, I'm just kidding, you don't. You're putting on a full mug and you're pouring tequila into a bag for your purse. Why?

Because you have a drinking problem. No, I'm just kidding, you don't. Actually, you're about to hit the streets for gay pride. Yay! So fun. You get to the parade route and you just take in the scene. So many colorful outfits, personalities as far as the eye can see, feathers, sequins, butts, glitter. Sometimes glitter ends up in your creases and folds,

just a lot of glitter, we love it. And literally, there's thousands of people gathered and dressed up all in the name of being loud and being seen. Now that's the point of pride for a lot of people, just being seen, right? Great, love. So floats, start moving, music is blasting, and people dance in the streets for miles. And all along the route are camera crews and news people.

And today, like pride is this big event, and it attracts families, corporations, pretty much just everyone. And it's just like this thing that happens in every major city in America. Well friends, it's fun now, but it hasn't always been that way. There is a much darker side to pride that is easy to ignore nowadays. Well way back when, back before we had the first lady on a pride flow, the Mafia, the Mafia, was the one who operated a little hole in the wall gay bar in 1969 that would be the spark to set off what we know as the modern day pride parade. It's a really wild ride. There were demonstrations and corrupt cops and crazy laws and policies that made it illegal to be gay in New York. If they made that law now, you would have to shut down the whole city.

It's a very gay place and I mean that in the best way possible. Okay, so there are a lot of things that led to what we now know as gay pride, but the Pride celebration itself mainly stems from a specific series of events that happened throughout the country and in New York City back in 1950s, well back in 1950s and the 60s. And let me tell you, the origins of pride are loud and risky and they certainly didn't have a permit. Let me open up my dark history book. Uh, that's something I paid, hold on.

Nope, not the right page. Hold on. No, not the right page. Uh, no. There it is. Okay. Great. Wow. So welcome to the 1960s. It's New York City and we're in Greenwich Village. The same neighborhood from the Triangle Shirt Waste Fire episode, remember? Yeah, a lot of shit was going down there apparently, you know? Hmm. I don't know what it is about this place, but hey, great. Great stories.

Yeah, maybe I don't know. Well, what started as an industrial neighborhood became a breeding ground for creativity? Yeah, you know, get your mind out of the gutter. I don't know if you heard of the beat movement, but it was a radical style of poetry that was popular back then. And it started in this neighborhood. Plus, it wasn't just poetry. There was jazz and blues musicians. There were coffee houses where singers like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon would just randomly show up and perform. I mean, this place was the spot for making shit. And the nature of creativity is that it draws people from all different kinds of backgrounds. So there are people coming from World War 1 and 2 and taking the opportunity to start a new life in the big city. So you had a lot

of black people, white people, gay people, immigrants, all sorts of diversity in one spot. And when you have a big melting pot neighborhood like that, they tend to have a pretty progressive outlook on life. Plus, all the best food, let's be real here, the best food. Well, back then, there weren't a lot of places that gay people felt comfortable, so a place like Grennitch Village was the ideal place for them to settle down and create a community.

And a community was so important at this time, because a general view of the gay population was not good. In fact, they were considered sick. Not to me, I didn't say they were sick, but this was the mindset at the time. And the early 1950s, it was literally classified as a mental illness by the American psychiatric association. They were considered sexual deviants and psychopaths. I mean, we talk about psychopaths all the time on the Monday uploads and it just doesn't make any sense, right? So dramatic, I know.

Looking back on that now, it's just such a freaking eye roll. On top of that, it was just flout out illegal to have gay sex. No, seriously, you couldn't hold hands in public or have a drink in a bar if you were gay. And just to be clear, this applied to women, men who dress like women, women who dress like men,

transgender people, or anyone considered queer. In fact, I'm just going to use the word queer a lot moving forward. Queer, if you don't know, or maybe you're just too afraid to ask, is a term that kind of covers everything under the sun, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, asexual, intersex, and just, it's like the umbrella term. Because it's important to note with these laws, they use the word gay a lot, but they apply to all queer people.

So if you hear me say gay, just know I'm referring to everyone. Great, we love that. The point is, even though Greenwich Village was a diverse creative neighborhood, the New York Police Department, New York State liquor authority, and residents did not see it that way. Oh, no, no, they did not. To them, if they saw a person wearing clothes that did not match their assigned gender at birth, they were breaking the damn lock. If they saw two men giving little sweet butterfly kisses on a park bench, they deserve to be a hate crime. So it was like really hard for queer people

to find a place to get together because the police were always trying to break it up. So queer people in the area are like, okay, you guys like this is ridiculous, we have to do something. And in California in the area are like, okay, you guys like this is ridiculous, we have to do something. And in California in the 1950s, they put their heads together and they created one of the first queer rights organizations that eventually spread across the entire country. They called themselves the Matachine Society. Matachine was just a medieval term to describe male dancers who like to make fun of everyone.

So I guess they were just now naming themselves after that. Now just to warn you, the things they did don't seem like a big deal to us now because nowadays we have pride, parade, and stuff like that. But back then, the idea of queer people coming together to make plans and holding demonstration demonstrations was huge. I mean it was completely unheard of. So this was terrifying to the straits and a huge risk to queer people because if they were outed they could lose their job or possibly something even worse could happen. But the entire purpose of the Maddachene society was just to show straight people that they were just like them. They just wanted to be accepted into society like everybody else and be employable,

upstanding citizens. They dress up in suits and ties and would not protest in any loud or violent kind of way. They'd blend in so like the straights are, they weren't uncomfortable, you know, and that was kind of the strategy. Keep in mind, it sounds pretty mild to us, but back then it was a huge risk for them to be out so publicly. Well, they wouldn't take aggressive positions on queer rights, and instead would hear all points of view, same things like how every view needs to be heard, even if it's bad. As long as it dealt with homosexuality and their eyes, everyone deserved a voice, which honestly, so American, so first amendment,

everyone should have been cool with this, right? Great, great. But let's take an ad break. We need to take a ad break. Even though the Matt machine was a bit mild for modern standards, they saw these laws that didn't let them go to bars and stuff and they just thought it was incredibly fucked up. And they wanted to do something about it in their own way. So, by the mid-1960s, they took a page out of Dr. Martin Luther King's book and decided to have a peaceful sit-in. Now a sit-in is when someone who was not allowed in a place

goes to that place and peacefully sits there as a form of protest. So the Matashin Society was going to do a similar action by demonstrating the discriminatory policy that didn't allow openly queer people to drink alcohol at a bar. But since they were going to do it at a bar, guess what they called it? So clever. It was called a sip in. Sip with a pee. You get it? They're kind of, it's so funny, you guys.

Clever. Sip in. I'm gonna go into a sip in. Anyways, so what they did is they chose a bar that had a sign in the window that said, if your gay go away, super clever, straight to the point, you know. So the way things normally worked would be that the queer person would go in, order a drink, the bartender would turn them down, right?

And then they would get upset, and the bartender would call the cops and try to have them arrested for causing a scene. They called it disorderly conduct. Well, Matt Ashean was like this is stupid. We can't even order a drink at a bar. It's not illegal to be gay. It's just illegal to do gay stuff. So it's kind of like a loophole, you know.

They could totally order a drink that shouldn't be illegal. And the plan was to call the press, including the New York Times, and have them come photograph them, getting arrested to try and get some press for it. At the time, bars were some of the only places where queer people could meet and connect with others, making bars important spaces. Mattishine wanted to highlight it to make sure the public perception was clear that they were not dangerous, psychopaths like the police was making them out to be.

A New York Times reporter shows up right on time for the sipping, okay? But the Madison Society was not there. So the reporter goes up to the bar tender and says like, hey, where are those gay protesters that were coming? Aren't they coming here? Where are they at? I need to take some pictures of them. And obviously, the bar had no idea this was going to happen.

Okay, and they're like, what are you talking about? What? So then the reporter accidentally snitched on them. So in response, the bar immediately shut down for the day. So when the Matashine Society showed up, the bar was closed, and they were like, oh my god, that's so weird, like I guess we can't do our sip in here. And the New York Times reporter was like, oh yeah, that's super weird, that it's closed. Crazy. Wasn't us. That's just closed today. And they ended up going to three other different bars

in the village. It was at the fourth bar that they were able to successfully be denied while ordering a drink. There's actually a super famous picture where the bartenders holding his hand over the cup so they can't get the alcohol. They were denied service just like they had planned, and they got the publicity they wanted by capturing this act of discrimination, also, just like they planned. They claimed that they hadn't done anything wrong by ordering a drink, and that the policy that denied serving homosexuals was absolutely ridiculous. The city ruled that the policy was discriminatory, and that it was legal for queer people to get together, for drinks, groundbreaking.

The significance of that is now it was okay for people to have a queer bar if they wanted. Like this was the okay, the green light. It didn't mean it was gonna be easy, just because a law change doesn't mean people's feelings change, but cops and the general public still, they didn't want like queer people hanging out.

They thought that they were sick sociopaths. So, you know, they were like, no, no bars, no. So what I'm getting at is that it would still be really hard to get a permit for a gay bar, but it wasn't illegal. It was just harder. You get it. Who do you turn to when you want to operate something under the table? When you want to be a little back alley Sally Well, that my friends is when the mafia arrives on the scene. Oh, yeah, sleeping with the fishes types a Guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who was gonna help a gay guy, you know that mafia?

They get involved, they're like, hey, I'm here to help. So we know the Matashine Society was trying to keep a non-violent, non-confrontational approach to fighting for their rights. But then you have everybody else in the queer community. The mindset to them was that the Matashine Society just wasn't doing enough. They needed more.

Public perception wasn't changing, and if anything, straight people liked how easy it was to ignore the Mattachine Society. They thought, you know, it's lame you want to blend in with the other assholes, you know, like let's get it done our way. And the Mattachine Society was never going to stand up for the more flamboyant members of the queer community because they didn't necessarily blend in. So the police were always harassing everyone and people were just like sick of it. And that's where the frickin mafia comes in. Yes, the mafia. Hello. Hi Because the mafia didn't care if something was illegal or not,

Hi, because the mafia didn't care if something was illegal or not They just wanted to make money and if the government didn't want queer people getting together for drinks The mafia wasn't afraid to create a space for them to spend their mule You know, so that's what they did and one of the most powerful families in New York was interested in the potential money-making scheme. So the mafia found a bar that they could turn into what would become the most famous queer bar in all of New York. The Stonewall Inn. Welcome, Stonewall Inn. Hello, hi. How are you? Now, the Stonewall Inn had already been a club before, but it had burned down for reasons that really aren't clear. In 1967, the new mobster in charge decided to just paint over the burn marks and make it a private club for queer

patrons. Because like I said, even though it was legal for them to gather, it was still hard to get liquor licenses for this. So they had to call it a club where you have to pay to get in and part of the membership is alcohol. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Great. So it sounds like a fun little exclusive private club, but it was actually a disgusting slum, according to people at the time. Since they were operating under the table, they didn't have to like follow any type of sanitary laws or health codes. They didn't even have running water. They just had an old-ass bathtub where they cleaned the glasses. Yeah, spoiler alert.

It just didn't work that well, so everyone was drinking water-down drinks out of dirty glasses. And they didn't even fix it up after it burned down, so probably smelled like a combination of fresh paint and like an old barbecue with zero ventilation. It was said that overall, it was not a pretty scene, but the part that made it all worth it was the people, you know, they were just happy to be there,

especially since they could dance. Yes, it was an ugly bar, but it was there, ugly bar. A place where they could forget the outside world and chew what felt normal to them. For some of them, the next day wasn't guaranteed, but when they were at the stone wall, the next day didn't matter. Sure did not. But first, let's pause for an ad break. It's worth mentioning that even today, there aren't spaces like this where queer people

and specifically trans people feel totally safe, so Stonewall was ahead of its time in that regard, and for a while it seemed like this was a solution that was going to work. I mean, the Mafia was paying off the police so they wouldn't even bother them. And even though the bar was garbage, I mean, it was working. That is. Until the police decide they didn't want to see them thriving like this. You can have fun, but not too much fun got damn it. So in June of 1969, tensions would rise and police decided to make a move. The police were looking for a reason to shut down Stonewall. They were like, what can we shut them down for, you know? So they would stop by

pretty often unannounced to inspect the bar and look for any type of minor infractions that the cops could use to kick people out and just give them a hard time. Because remember, it was still illegal for people assigned mail at birth to dresses women and they would regularly arrest people for stuff like this. Trans activist Sylvia Rivera says she was arrested 200 times for something called upper head female impersonation. Yeah, what the hell is that? She's basically being arrested just for being trans.

I mean, it's New York in the 1960s. I'm sure like there's some murders happening like a block away or so. Well, I don't think they go handle that, you know? They don't. They seem to be wasting their energy on just this, you know? So one of these regular inspections or raids, if I'm being honest, happened on June 24th, 1969. Police, deputy inspectors, Seymour Pine, would lead several officers to Stonewall to just basically mess with everyone. One of the things the police did was line up the patrons outside and force them to show show their IDs also while doing an anatomy check.

Which is where they would check to see if their outfit matched the type of genitals they had? Yeah, which is humiliating and completely dehumanizing. It's all sorts of fucked up and honestly a little suspicious on the officer's part. Like I'm sorry you're mad at us for being gay but you want us to line up and then you want judge our outfits and look at our private parts you don't just want to like come in the bar I mean it probably didn't go down like that but it's definitely completely traumatizing but that was the point the police wanted them to feel powerless and demoralized so the police would do all of this and

then shut the bar down for the night and force everyone to go home. And as you might expect, the mafia was not crazy about this. They'd be like, whatever man, we're just going to open back up tomorrow. Like, go ahead, close this down, we're back open. Boom. And because that was another perk of the mafia being your landlord. They didn't give a shit what the police said. And this just pissed off Seymour, the cop. Yeah, he just pissed, pissed, don't folk off. And even though the mob was powerful, it didn't mean police would just let them do whatever they wanted. I think Seymour felt his manhood was being questioned because he can't just let the mafia boss him around like that. So he had his little fuel wings hooked and this would be the setup for the full-blown riot

that would occur just a few nights later. The riots that would go on to inspire pride events around the world that we still celebrate today. The events of the riots began on June 28th, 1969. It was a hot and human night in New York, which is never a good thing. Anytime it's hot in New York, I feel like the city starts to lose its mind a little bit, and people get a little sketchy, a little on edge, you know? Well, police were planning another one of their raids, assuming like normal that the queer people of Stonewall would not fight back. I mean, the cops had Billy clubs and gods, and all of their other cops in New York were just a radio call away.

I mean, who'd want to fight back against that, right? They knew they'd win. Everyone was having a good time when people started to notice a few unfamiliar faces in the bar. People who looked a little... out of place, you know what I'm saying? Like they might... be cops. Maybe under cover. Well it turns out surprise bitch they were, okay? They weren't wrong. And it wasn't long before all the lights in the bar were turned on and the cops locked the door so no one could leave. The police wanted to keep everyone inside until they could figure out what they wanted to do with them. I mean this is like a full-blown hostage situation, very lifetime movie of them. The cops

lying the patrons up to check their IDs and clothing and you know that whole charade and anyone dressed as a woman would be arrested. Anyone underage would be arrested, and everyone else was going to be let off. A weird thing they decided to do was put all the trans people and drag queens in a closet while they cleared the place out. It's kind of ironic, I guess. But when you feel empowered and you're in a place that empowers you like stonewall, and somebody tries to steal that from you,

and when you think it's gonna happen. Meanwhile, the people who were released, they didn't just leave. They were crowding around the outside of the bar. I mean, their friends were still locked inside with the cops, so they weren't just gonna like leave them there. And since these raids were a pretty normal occurrence, waiting for your friends to reappear

was just kind of part of the whole process. Like they would make it a whole scene. The person coming out of the bar would act like they were like, on a runway, they were walking the runway, and then the crowd, everyone outside would cheer for them, and they would take a bow and like, go on about with their night.

So that's kind of what everyone was waiting out there for, The runway show. But let's take an ad break first. The atmosphere on this night it felt different. It was tense. It was a little eerie and again maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was because the people of Stonewall were just sick and tired of going through this every single freaking night. Either way, this is where shit goes sideways, you know what I'm saying, bird? You know what I'm saying. Bird, what happened next is police brought a trans woman out of the bar and were trying to get her into a police car because she was under arrest for existing pretty much. And while they were putting her in, she turned around and kicked the officer. She was like, fuck you. And they like kick some. Great. He deserved it honestly. Well, this pissed the officer off, right? Great. I mean, not great. So he

jumped in the back seat with her and then started beating her up. Very bad. Right? And the crowd is just watching this, all go down, and other officers were shouting, telling the crowd, like, shows over, everyone needs to go home, trying to break up the crowd, because they're all watching. But that night, the crowd didn't go home. People who were there say that everyone there just kind of understood that tonight was different, okay?

They were sick of it. Why do I have to watch our friend get brutalized by the police regularly? So it started small. The crowd started throwing pennies at the police. Which is a side note, but are you seeing a bully by this kid in elementary school and he would throw pennies at me and that shit fucking hurts. Little FYI, so that great weapon. Anyways, I think the point of that was like the mafia was already paying off the police to leave them alone So the crowd was like here. That's not enough. Here's some money like F*** you bitches. I don't know Pennings it hurts. Anyways, as you can imagine the police they didn't love this, okay?

And when the police are upset they get sad they cry and they go home Just kidding. We know that's not true. When their egos are damaged, things can escalate pretty drastically. Yeah, I think that's safe to say. It's hard to tell exactly what happened next, but seems like after pennies, they start throwing rocks and then like a window broke and then the police started to realize that they might be outnumbered. So they barricade themselves inside of the bar and just wave their guns out the door like, hey, we got these guns. You should stop, you know? It wasn't effective though. And then somehow the coat room inside of the bar catches on fire.

Some say it was the police who set the fire. Some say it was the police who set the fire. Some say it was a crowd. Some say it was just an accident. Either way there's a fire in the closet. So let's set the scene real quick. There's a fire inside the stone wall in. Smoke's coming from the shattered windows. The police are barricaded inside and there's an angry mob of people in New York City outside and throwing rocks. So the boys in blue call for backup and onto the scene shows up New York's tactical police force.

This is like a SWAT team before SWAT was officially a thing. So they had the latest weapons and all the strongest armor and were sent in to disrupt anything New York City thought of as a threat. Some of the people who were there that night say it seemed like the tactical police were looking for a fight. So now there's fire and cops and just pure chaos and the realization hits the crowd that this has gotten way out of hand. So what does a crowd of angry young queer people in New York City do when faced with all of this? Well, they dance. They dance! They share too. So the police, they were still locked inside.

The crowd was just outside the bar, but the tactical police were lined up behind the crowd. So the crowd turns around and they form a line copying like the rockets. So if you don't know who the rockets are, they invented that dance where you all lock arms and you do a high kicks in Unison. You've seen it. You've probably seen it like before or during the Christmas parades or something. It's like really beautiful. It's stunning. I'm like, oh my God, they can kick so high. Their legs always look like Barbie legs. Bravo, you know. Anyways, so they start doing that at the police

while singing some of their favorite songs. Only in musicals with this making sense, but babe, this was real life, okay? This riot is turning into a Broadway show and we are here for it right now, you know? Okay, but this is where the violence explodes. The police charge the crowd and start attacking them with their clubs and tear gas and start chasing after everyone.

One of the patrons simply called it senseless bullshit. So the crowd in response starts trying to flip-cop cars over screaming, just causing a frickin' ruckus. And some of the stronger ones amongst them were. I'm laughing because some of the stronger ones, they were ripping out parking meters, just clean out the ground, and throwing them at the crops. Aren't they? Super iconic.

Great. I think most of us probably would have chosen something to throw that wasn't cemented into the ground, but I love the creativity. Five stars. Now the thing people don't seem to realize is that Stonewall wasn't just one night of fighting, so the sun eventually came up, and the fire got put out, and people went home because they were tired. So the police thought like this was the end of it. But nae nae, little bird, naeeney, this was just the beginning. Queer people were done putting up with this bullshit, and now they'd seen that they can fight back.

So none of their own died in the clash, and they got a taste of what they could do with their powers combined. But that was night one. Night two is when the police brought the hammer down on the protesters. So that night, 100 officers were present from precincts all over the city, and they made sweeping arrests of anyone they thought was involved in the uprising. But it was hard to catch everyone. Thousands of people had heard about the fighting at Stonewall the night before,

and were swarming the streets in one of the biggest protests for queer rights at this point in history. Now the second night apparently had a lot of similarities to the first night, but it was kind of hard to find specifics. It's rumored that a trans activist named Marsha P. Johnson was seen climbing a light pole and throwing bricks at cop cars, but it seems like it was just more fighting, fires, throwing things at police, and trying not to get arrested. And a lot of people felt energized after these nights of clashes with the police.

It was sort of like this revelation in their minds, like we don't have to take this and we're better than this, you know. They scheduled a march that would take place about one month after the stone wall uprising. They probably just expected the normal patrons from Stonewall to come, along with maybe some like neighborhood locals, but nay nay. It ended up being like 2,000 people, which was way bigger than they were expecting.

Now many consider this the first queer pride march. Great! And people were taking turns making speeches, but they made sure to go home quickly so the police wouldn't catch on, you know? But they had done something that would have a lasting effect. They made plans to have more marches and make each other's voices heard even louder. Because queer people didn't just live in New York, obviously. They were everywhere in the nation and this fight was their fight too. Word of what happened at Stonewall spread around the country. On the one-year anniversary of the uprising, other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, they all had their own version of queer liberation celebrations.

And suddenly, parade started popping up, and although things weren't perfect, police relations were still bad. There were a lot of hate crimes and queer people were still classified as deviance. The riots, though, they led to a change in the way queer people viewed themselves. They didn't have to blend in and hide anymore.

They could be loud, colorful, they could kiss each other and like not have to feel bad about it. It didn't end with the parades. It's still not over. Remember Stonewall happened in 1969. There's a whole lot of days between Stonewall and 2021. But first let's take an ad break. Welcome back. We're in the home stretch of our story here, but the story of the LGBTQ plus rights is nowhere near completion, you know? We still got ways to go, baby. And the reason it's important to remember Stonewall is because it's so easy to not think about where something as commonplace as Pride started.

Like, it's such a fun event that you almost can't fathom it actually came or started from something as dark as police discrimination and riots. This is why we consider Stonewall a key turning point in the forming of pride. Here's the thing about being born though, step one, be born. Step two, nobody leaves the womb fully formed. You have to grow. You have to experience heartache and loss and all sorts of bad shit in order to grow, right? Love that for us. Pride is something that we had to fight for and something we still fight for. Most of the changes that came out of Stonewall were personal

changes, like the way that queer people view themselves was made stronger because of something like Stonewall. When we see big corporations making rainbow shirts and celebrating pride, it's easy to forget that hate crimes are still a very big part of reality for queer people today, just as much as they were back then. In 1998, a gay college student named Matthew Shepard was offered a ride home by some of his classmates. Well, sadly, Matthew would never make it home. student named Matthew Shepard was offered a ride home by some of his classmates.

Well, sadly, Matthew would never make it home. His classmates would later claim that Matthew hit on them and tried to make a move. This apparently pissed them off and they beat him, tortured him, and ultimately killed him because he was gay. They admitted that. Fuck that. But, while a lot of people recognize his name, there's almost an even darker part to his story that most of us don't know. During the trial, one of the murderers' lawyers argued that his clients shouldn't be convicted because he was driven to temporary insanity by Shepard's alleged sexual advances. Disarguement did not work in this case, but there's actually a name for this defense.

It's called the gay panic defense and it's legal in 35 states still, two day in 2021. Maybe you remember this term for my murder mystery and makeup episode where you talked about the gay panic defense and like how fucked up it is. Yeah. Again, still legal, two-day. So what does that say? That it might be possible to get away with murder. If you think a gay person is flirting with you. But it's weird how, um, I can't get away with murder if a straight person is flirting with me. Hmm. That's kind of

bizarre, isn't it? As if being hit on by some of the same sex as you wouldn't make you completely lose your mind and you're just going to go into some murderous rage, you know. Come on people, we're not sharks. Okay, we have common sense here, don't we? Well some of us do. Now the gay panning defense has never actually worked in the United States, but it does have an ugly sister, the trans panpanic Defense Back in 2005, the defense was used with a woman named Gwen Arahao was murdered by a few men just for being trans. It was so successful that three of the men were released on parole just over 10 years later.

Yeah, you'll serve more time selling crack cocaine than you will for murdering a trans woman. And if this is an evidence of a systemic problem, not I don't know what is. Okay? In 35 whole last states, queer people can get murdered for hitting on the wrong person. And there's a real possibility, no one goes a jail for it. Now, hey, that's some shit. My point is, pride parades don't mean the fight is over. Queer people and especially trans people are still at high risk of being a victim of a hate crime. Since 2013, the Human Rights Campaign has tracked over 200 violent deaths of trans people with

almost 40 in 2020 alone. These are only the ones in the United States and only the ones that got reported. It doesn't include the dozens of trans people that go missing, never to be heard of again. One of these names is Malaysia Booker. Now, Malaysia was a young black woman who was filmed to be beaten in 2019

in the hate crime incident. She had accidentally backed her car into another person's car and a man offered the crowd $200 to beat her up just because she was trans. That video quickly went viral as an example of the torment that trans people of color faced on a daily basis. Just one month later, Malaysia was found murdered by another man, a man who was suspected of murdering another trans woman already. There's also Barbie Puse story, a gender non-conforming person who was tortured on Facebook live

for 20 minutes before being shot dead, all because they were dressed to a Christmas party in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2020. I can go on and on and on and on and on. There are too many tragic stories to count. But when you hear your crazy Uncle Bob ask things like, why don't we have a straight briar parade? That's how I imagine he says it. The reason why is because straight people don't have to worry about being harassed

or even killed just for being straight. The reason is because there hasn't been decades of persecution for people being straight. To really understand just how behind we are on making the United States a safe place for queer people, it wasn't until 2020 that the Supreme Court made a ruling that companies couldn't fire people just for being gay or trans. 2020, that's just last year, if you aren't paying attention. Meanwhile, just this year, 2021, over 80 new anti-trans laws have been passed with the intention to deny health

care to trans people. So, yeah. A pride parade in San Francisco might sound a little redundant, but let's not pretend that it's not important for people to see and feel support from their communities because they for sure don't feel it like from their own country. You remember that conversion therapy episode we just did? Where we talked about the way churches make kids try to change who they are so they can go to heaven. It's basically torture disguised as therapy. Pride is important for those people too because they need to see people living their life as their authentic self and not scared of anything. That might sound simple but for someone who is in a really dark place that can really make a huge difference.

While there is evidence of progress, a new law here or there doesn't get rid of the ancient biases. If only it was as easy as major brands making their Twitter profile picture rainbow during Pride Month, you know. There is still a huge perception in America and in the world that queer people are abnormal, problematic, the list goes on. Therefore, they should be eradicated. There needs to be a shift in society. A shift in public perception that a human life is a human life, no matter what they choose to wear, who to love, or how to act. If they aren't hurting anyone, what is the matter to you Uncle Bob? Pride is defined in the dictionary as a feeling of satisfaction from one's own achievements,

and this couldn't be a better word to represent the queer movement for equality, because it is nothing short of a goddamn miracle that queer people survive, thrive, and still find the time to advocate for those in their community. In the end, all that matters is to be a good person, be kind to others, and don't frickin murder people. Like, literally, those three things are all that really matter here in this life. So, be kind and please rewind. If I get my VHS and it's playing the credits, I'm gonna be goddamned pissed, okay?

We're wind. Well, everyone, thank you so much for learning with me today. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions to get the whole story because you deserve that. Now I'd love to hear your thoughts or reactions to today's story, so make sure to use the hashtag dark history so I can see what you're all seeing on socials. Hey, or you can even join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch my murder mystery makeup which drops on Mondays.

Ooooo. Anyhow, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Bye. Tark History is an audio boom original. This podcast is executive produced by me, Bailey Sarian, Chelsea Derget from Slash Management, Kimberly Jacobs, St. My Dog, and Ed Simpson from Wheelhouse DNA, produced by Lexi Kiven, Deriel Christon, Spencer Strasmoreor and Claire Turner. Today's research was provided by Ramona Kivit,

writers, Jed Bookout, Michael Obers, Joyce Guvuzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. I'm a big thank you to today's historical consultants Charles Francis, President, Mattishean Society of Washington DC, Pete Feltz, co-founder and CFO, Mattachine Society of Washington, DC. And me again, I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. You guys, I didn't close the book. I'm done with the story. I'm supposed to close the book. Thank you for joining me today.

Thank you, Dark History Book. Okay, goodbye now. Okay, goodbye now.