Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 512 - The Stonewall Riots

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

On June 28th, 1969, New York City police expected another routine raid on a gay bar. Instead, they found a community that had finally had enough. This week, we explore the long history of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in America, the explosive events of the Stonewall Riots, and how a few nights of resistance helped ignite the modern fight for queer liberation. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com  Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast. Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You get tired of being just pushed around. So said Sylvia Rivera, who grew up on the streets in New York City, beginning to 1962 when she was just 10 years old. And why was Sylvia kicked out of her home? Because she was trans. When she was in the fourth grade, her grandmother found her wearing makeup, and Sylvia, obviously still very much a child, was kicked out of the family home for doing that as a boy

and forced to go live on the street as a fourth grader, some grandma. For Sylvia and many others, being a young homeless queer person, meant surviving with whatever you had. Sometimes, if it came down to it, making your way as a child prostitute being preyed upon by pedophiles, as Sylvia did. Thank you, Grandma.

If you're really unlucky, living on the street meant a literal lifetime of scraping by and carrying the physical and psychic scars that put you in an early grave. If you were a little lucky, someone, an elder member of the community, perhaps, might take you under their wing. They might teach you how to become a drag queen

or connect you to work in one of the city's underground gay bars. Maybe then you could make enough to rent a room, build a circle of friends, have something resembling stability. But even if you did manage that, that stability was very tenuous. If you dared to go out of the town, if you had the audacity, to want to have a normal social life, like straight people did, you could and often would quickly find yourself at the business end of a nightstick, as police forced their way inside the gay bar you had decided to go to. You would be asked for your ID, lined up, and arrested, for something as trivial as not acting straight enough. seriously, to the mayor's office's liking. Drag queens and trans women were especially targeted because their visibility made them easy

to charge with violating laws about presenting according to your born gender. A woman could be arrested for not wearing three articles of feminine clothing at the same time. Not kidding. And easy policing meant better visibility for law enforcement, which meant the city government would get props for enforcing, quote, law and order. For fuck's sake. It was a vicious cycle. And in the middle of the 20th century, Sylvia and many others were caught in the middle of it,

navigating a world where any response to this mistreatment carried a lot of risk. Fight back in your wrist arrest, beatings, and the world getting media confirmation of queer people as violent and unstable in newspaper, newspaper, TV, magazine, and radio reports. Stay quiet and you would live another day, but nothing would change. And queer people would continue to be targeted and pushed to the side. So what were queer people supposed to do? In the 1950s and 60s, small queer groups like the Matashin Society and the daughters of Bilitis had tried to strike a compromise between fighting or staying complacent by organizing marches in Washington, D.C., in Philadelphia, where queer people would proudly hold signs

declaring who they were, but also respect law and order, and show up in conservative, a gender-appropriate dress for the time, you know, so society didn't unravel and quickly devolve into chaos. You know how it would be. You allow a man to wear a dress. or a woman to wear cargo shorts and hot dog, pretty soon the streets are chalk full of demons and babies are being barbecued and roasted on spits. But the media coverage, these early activists hoped for did not come. And as they tried to figure out a way to make politicians and law enforcement listen,

the raids against them and their communities intensified. More arrests, more beatings, more lives ruined by their names being printed in newspapers, leading to firings from jobs and banishment from families. And in the midst of this, some decided, fuck respectability. It was time to fight back. Enough was enough. A person can only take so much shit

before they feel like they have to strike back. When the police approached the Stonewall Inn in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, they believed everything would go as planned. Line people up, demand IDs, start making arrests. But this time, that shit wouldn't happen. When the police let a few of the bargoers out into the street, a crowd quickly gathered around them,

and very quickly it rapidly out of, numbered the cops. They murmured to each other. They're surprised at being raided quickly veering into anger. They asked each other why they were just standing and taking it. Again, why, in Sylvia's words, they continued to let themselves be, quote, pushed around. And then someone threw something. A brick, a cobblestone, a can, a bottle, a penny. That exact detail remains unclear, not that it matters. What we do know is that within moments, someone else through something, and then someone else after them, and then another person, and another, and another, and another and another. And pretty soon, the police had something they had never expected on their hands.

A full-on fucking riot for queer liberation. The Stonewall riots right now on this historical, and I guess technically true crime, but good, righteous crime, pride, power to the people edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. Happy Monday. Welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins. Probably woke, definitely socially progressive,

maybe part of the liberal agenda. I can't remember what I agreed to at the last New World Order meeting. And you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise me to Good Boy Bojangles and Glory B to Triple M. I learned so much this week. I found this topic very inspiring, very fascinating,

and I hope you do as well. Before I get started, a quick note, I will be using the word queer as opposed to gay a lot today. And why is that? Well, because fuck you. Fuck your family. That's why.

No, apologies. That certainly wasn't necessary and didn't make sense. No, I'm just striving for accuracy, is the reason. The word gay, typically specific to same gender attraction, mainly in reference to men, whereas queer, a much broader, more inclusive umbrella term for anyone who is not strictly heterosexual or cisgender. Since language is always evolving, in particular, what is currently considered a slur. I didn't want anyone to assign the wrong connotation with my usage of the same. the word queer. That said, still might get some other words wrong, but they won't be intentionally used wrong. Okay, now, let's get queer, and also gay in moments, and inclusive, and really sarcastic

and absurd and dark and angry and ridiculous. Hail Nimrod, and here we go. Greenwich Village, currently one of the most vibrant, bustling neighborhoods in all in New York City, filled with high-end apartment buildings, brownstone houses, funky little shops, elevated restaurants and much, much more. It is wildly expensive. As of May 2026, the average apartment rent in Greenwich Village was $3,558 a month for a studio, $4,362 for a one-bedroom, $5,526 for a two-bedroom, and just a tick under $6,5,919 for a three-bedroom.

Holy fuck. If you're buying rather than renting, one-bedroom apartments, you know, go for the medium price of about 1.2 mil. And, of course, it can go up from there, quite a lot. I poked around on realtor.com, found a new construction, 8,200 square foot, five bedrooms, seven and a half bath townhouse. Perched the top 16th, 5th Avenue. Not sure exactly how many floors up it is.

New construction, though, and do you want to guess what the price is? Did you just guess $59,950,000? 50 grand, 50 grand shy of 60 fucking million. million with a $17,000 a month HOA fee on top of that. So that's cool. But you do get 24-hour access to the building's small gym. So kind of balances out. Not everything's that crazy. You can also get a nice little 6,800 square foot five-bedroom townhouse at 114 Waverly Place for almost nothing. Just $22,850,000 pocket change, right? Unsurprisingly, the village is home to a lot of wealthy people walking on the street. You're going to see a lot of air, pod wearing finance fucking dominators, women in high-end athletic wear, toting yoga mats and Pilates equipment, drinking a fucking $30 press juice,

families with more than one full-time nanny because you can't just have one full-time nanny? Like some basic bitch peasant, can you? That's gross. But for the purposes of our episode today, the village is and was something besides a playground for the wealthy, also one of the most famous queer neighborhoods in the world.

If you visit Greenwich Village today, you're probably going to see a lot of rainbow flags flying from apartment balconies, same-sex couples holding hands as they walk down the street together, flyers advertising LGBTQIA plus events, meetups, drag shows, bar crawls, and more. However, Greenwich Village, not always this way. Of course not. No queer-friendly neighborhood in the U.S. has ever always been that way, because for the overwhelming majority of America's history, just openly being queer was literally illegal.

Back in the 1600s, the village was a lot more country than city. The tobacco farms dot in the landscape, I love imagining any part of Manhattan just having a farm. It just does not compute. But there was actually still at least one working farm on Manhattan as recently as 1932. Interestingly, in 1644, 11 Dutch African settlers in the area were granted half freedoms after the first black legal protest in America. Before America was even America, I guess, U.S. wise, all received parcels of land in what is now Greenwich Village. and a big part of it that became known as the land of the blacks. The earliest known reference to the village's name as Greenwich dates back to 1696 in the will of Yelis Manderville of Greenwich, London, England,

who before relocating to Manhattan had long resided by another settlement of the same name on Long Island. The village would be first mentioned by name in city records, official documents, in 1713. What is now Greenwich Village was still so rural that in the 1700, when malaria, yellow fever, and cholera outbreaks hit the southern tip of New York City, known today by some as Fidei. I hope I'm saying that right, or the financial district, people who had money fled north to the small countryside

known as the Village of Greenwich, seeking fresh air in a rural atmosphere. And then bit by bed, Greenwich, you know, got a lot less rural and a bit more New Yorkie. By the mid-1800s, Greenwich Village was a well-established neighborhood. The streets lit by gas lamps and dotted with horse stables. The haphazard settling of the area made for the neighborhood's characteristic crooked, zigzagging streets. During this time, the village was also home to several notable American writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Ida Tarbell.

These writers were joined by waves of immigrants from France, Ireland, Italy, pushing out the, quote, respectable crowd, who then settled north near Fifth Avenue and Central Park. This changing character brought both energy and unrest, as change often does. after the Triangle Shirtwaste Factory Fire on March 25th, 1911, jump a quite a bit ahead, in which hundreds of women, many of them immigrants, died due to unsafe conditions. The neighborhood was outraged. In response, labor and women's rights activists organized marches and demonstrations. That same year, Greenwich Village served as the starting point for the New York City's first women's suffrage parade, demonstrating in support of equal voting rights for men and women.

Clearly, the village has a long and notable history regarding the fight for equality. which I'm sure was not lost on the many artists who would later make their names there like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Soon after, or soon, excuse me, another community began to take root more visibly in the village's streets and gathering places, the queer community,

which had been covertly establishing itself in the village for years, setting up early gay bars at places like the Black Rabbit, located at 183 Bleaker Street, and the slide at 157 McDougall Street. That last one, very famous street in American Folk Music, by the way. In 1890s, the Black Rabbit

Offered Live Sex shows as part of its draw Closed by the police in 1899 And then reopened, then raided again In 1900 by the Society for the Suppression of Vice Well, that doesn't sound like a fun bunch But a lot of those dudes would have also been right at home Working for a group called the Society of the Killing of Joy The Slide was operational around the same time

Didn't last nearly as long Opening around 1889 or 1890 closing in 1892. There was a key difference between these early, somewhat openly, queer individuals and other waves of minorities. While immigrants and women's movements were increasingly able to organize visible public protests, no one expected the queer community to ever take to the streets. For one thing, many queer people simply had zero intention of ever coming out at this time. They did not want to be branded by their neighbors.

They're super smart, highly evolved neighbors, as being sinful, deviant, or even demonic. they tended to live their lives secretly slipping out of the homes they shared with their families to get a drink somewhere in a darkened room dance maybe even kiss before they had to go back to their quote-unquote real lives so sad even the ones who joined burgeoning gay societies like the madachine society the first to identify gay people as a minority that deserved legal protection typically used fake names when they signed up hoping that would protect them from being outed and so a few straight americans expected the queer community to ever emerge as a visible, organized force in the streets, which also played into the politician's expectations that raids upon this group were an easy way to rack up points

with homophobic constituents who were almost all constituents for a long, long time. And so queer life stayed on the edges of society. Nobody protested or demanded media coverage when a gay bar was raided, or when a gay man's identity was published in the newspaper for his workplace and family to see, or when drag queens or transgender women face brutality at the hands of the police. when uprisings did happen, which was not often. They were covered very briefly and in a sensational tawdry way by the media, who often described the way the protesters looked in lurid terms

and emphasized their, quote, abnormal femininity for gay men and drag queens, or their, quote, butch masculinity for lesbian women. Much more often, the emphasis was on whether or not any police or straight bystanders were hurt. But then, that would all change with the Stonewall right. In 1969, the Stonewall Inn was one of the most popular and few gay bars in New York City, a seedy, mafia-owned and ran crowded place with no running water behind the bar, drink glasses, streak with grime because of no running water. In the early morning hours of Saturday, June 28th, 1969, so really Friday night,

a group of police officers entered the Stonewall Inn to again rate it like they had done countless times before. They arrested the employees for selling alcohol without a license, roughed up many of its patrons, cleared the bar, and in accordance with the supposed New York criminal statute that never actually existed, that supposedly authorized the arrest of anyone, not wearing at least three articles of gender-appropriate clothing that took several people into custody. What constituted gender-appropriate clothing was entirely subjective, by the way, up to the arresting officers for them to determine. Just a bunch of fucking nonsense. Some patrons would be charged with violating an archaic law from 1845 that had declared it a crime to

have your, quote, face-painted, discolored, covered or concealed or be otherwise disguised while in a road or public highway. The state originally intended that law to punish rural farmers, who would take into dress and like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors. And now was being misused to harass homosexuals by soulless, fear-mongering politicians putting on a show for voters. The raid that led to the Stonewall riots was the third such raid on Greenwich Village gay bars in a short period of time, and police that night had no reason to suspect that

things would not go smoothly again. This time, however, the queer community fought back, leading to what some sources have characterized as a two-day, three-day, or even six-day battle with police over who could exist in public spaces as they were. So what were the Stonewall riots exactly, as you might have guessed, from the ambiguous timeline there, it's not exactly clear. If any of us know of the Stonewall riots, it's likely that we've heard of them as the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s. And we probably imagine it as either an organized protest or as a completely spontaneous expression of pent-up frustration. But none of those things are actually true.

At least rather, they're not the full truth. For one thing, there were many uprisings that could be classified as riots that had occurred before Stonewall at bars, diners, private clubs, that were frequently raided by police throughout the 20th century. Following from that, Stonewall was not the first instance of people fighting for gay rights. indeed small queer groups like the Matashin Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, as I mentioned, had been working for years to get queer people legal protection from harassment. Quick pronunciation note, by the way, if you watch five different videos of people saying daughters of bilitis, you'll find five slightly different pronunciations of biletus,

since it is an American adaptation of a French word. I chose the one that felt right to me. Anyway, Stonewall also was not organized, not an organized protest or a spontaneous expression, while nobody had planned to protest the bars raid that night in fact nobody knew it was going to be happening except the police there were also members of those various queer organizations who had been waiting for their time to take to the streets and this happened to be the right moment

there's another big misconception that sits at the heart of the stonewall riots given the somewhat widespread recognition of queer rights say we probably think of stonewall as a as a straightforward victory but that is not true the stonewall riots were broken up around 4 a.m. on both the first and second night, and many of the protesters actually fled from the police when there was enough force to overwhelm the crowd, but also that did not mean that it was not a victory. Indeed, the very act of standing out on the street and protesting was pretty fucking radical and courageous at a time when many queer people were still actively hiding their identities. And the fact that many came

back for the next night, drawn an even bigger crowd, was proof that the queer community was not going to stand for this kind of oppression any longer, and that they had straight allies on their side. But that wasn't the only shift. In the immediate aftermath of Stonewall membership at gay riots organizations surged, and it was that surge that allowed those organizations to keep pressing for acceptance and protection from discrimination. So how did all this happen? What actually did happen on those nights at the Stonewall Inn? And why is the fact and fiction of the Stonewall riots so difficult to pin down? Let's jump in today's time-suck timeline to find out all that and so much more.

Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. In New York City in the 1840s, there were no buses or subways. There were no iconic yellow cabs in the sounds of honking horns did not fill street-level apartments or echo up to the higher floors above. Instead, there was something simpler. Footpaths, dirt roads, if you can imagine that, horse-drawn carriages, obviously horses to pull those carriages.

And that is where the story of the Stonewall Inn really, begins. The Stonewall Inn is located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, still there today. It was not an inn when it was first built, but rather a stable. Constructed at the 51 Christopher Street lot in 1843, then expanded into the adjacent lot three years later. At that time, between one and two hundred thousand horses lived in New York City. Holy shit. And that would equate to so much actual shit. And in 1843, some of those horses lived with newly built Jefferson Livory Stables. By all accounts, these horses were very well taken care of, especially at a time when farm animals were allowed to roam the streets

constantly and the carcasses of those who happened to die were often simply left from the streets to rot, not cleaned up until someone just couldn't fucking take the stench and or sight anymore and clean that mess up themselves. Indeed, the Jefferson horses were well taken care of because they had a very important job. They provided literal horsecocks for glory holes, which were just starting to become very popular on the island. Wait, no, that's not right. But I'm guessing I'm not the only person with a very interesting visual in my head right now. Now, these horses were not just running around sticking their big old, silly old horse cocks into holes for strangers to suck, stroke, and fuck. But that does sound like a pretty fun job. They were responsible for delivering the finest

men's and women's fashions, garments, to the exclusive Saxon Company store on 34th Street. Every day, the horses were groomed until their black coats shone, and their hooves were painted black and polished like patent leather shoes, all to reinforce the image of sacks and company as one of New York's most elite stores. By the 1930s, cars were much more common than horses in American cities, and horse-drawn carriages were quickly being phased out.

Library stables began to close, and many of the buildings that housed the stables were converted into commercial business spaces. That was exactly what happened to the Jefferson Library Stables. The space reopened in 1930 as Bonnie Stonewall, a tea room that also operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition. In 1934, shortly after Prohibition laws were repealed, Bonnie Stonewall became a more legitimate operation.

As time passed, name changed to Bonnie Stonewall Inn, known as a respectable cocktail bar and restaurant that hosted weddings, parties, and banquets. Where did Stonewall? That term come from. There's actually no definitive agreed-upon answer, but possible the inspiration came from a book published in 1930 called The Stone Wall, written by a story. written by Ruth Fullerfield under the pen name of Mary Castle

the Stonewall was an autobiographical account of her romantic dalliances in relationship with another woman. So it seems like the name Stonewall could have been a way to send a coded welcome message to other lesbians in the area. And in terms of American history, this era, not the worst time to be queer in.

This era of relative progress had started a few decades back, while the early 19th century only criminalized homosexual acts typically as sodomy or crimes against nature, they weren't focused on the actual identity of the person committing that because the idea of a, you know, gay or queer person with a fixed sexual identity

did not really exist at this time in American mainstream culture. As a result, there was actually little policing of same-sex attraction, which got lumped in with other immoral acts like gambling and drinking. And as the country started to loosen up on thinking of those things as inherently sinful, things to a burgeoning nightlife culture, queer people started to become more visible in public life. In late 19th century, there was an quote in the late 19th century. There was an increasingly visible presence of gender non-conforming men

who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities. That's according to Chad Heap, professor of American studies at George Washington University. Despite the presence of social reformers who labeled these men, not kidding, as, quote, male sex perverts. A number of nightclubs and theaters would start featuring stage performances by female impersonators, aka drag queens,

aka male sex perverts. Can you imagine being friends with somebody who says something like male sex pervert in an actual, like, disgusted way? Like, if I overheard someone saying, and I can't even tell you how many male sex perverts I ran into,

I would know immediately, oh, that person sucks. That's not somebody I ever have to waste a fucking single moment of my life pouring into my precious and limited time or energy into because they're not worth it. These spots frequent by male sex perverts

were mainly located in the Levy District on Chicago's south side, the Bowery in New York City, and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities. In other words, they were what we would consider now to be gay bars. And as it turned out, they were great places for gay people, queer people, to socialize, build community, and, I don't know, fucking relax, be their true selves. These new spaces gave gay people,

queer people, a chance to get to know each other on their own terms. to become friends, to hook up or date. There was no danger of hitting on somebody who was not into your gender since the assumption was that everyone there was pretty open. And it was largely gay. It was largely gay men. Most of these establishments located in basements and backrooms, hotels and restaurants, places that would not be so easily detectable to the police.

Unfortunately, the police, of course, would find out. And police attention would still come. The rise of gay and queer subcultures, but mostly gay again at this time, also intensified the activities of police department's vice squads. These departments were responsible for ridding their cities of immoral behavior like gambling, public intoxication, prostitution, other acts considered to be corrupt, deviant, otherwise socially unacceptable. And now that there were spaces for queer people to congregate, just like casinos were places for gamblers to congregate, that landed queer nightlife squarely in the crosshairs of vice cops. As queer patrons and performers became increasingly visible in city's nightlife, the raids got more targeted, more organized, more violent. On the night of February 21st, 1903, the morning of February 22nd,

police raided the basement of the Arreston Bathhouse in New York City, located on the corner of 55th Street in Broadway, where gay men were suspected of socializing. The manager of this space was even, as it was rumored, gay himself. Oh, my heck! They must be stopped. What if they open up a rift in the space-time continuum and unraveled the fabric of the universe with all their same sex sucking and fucking?

What if? six dicks got into six buttholes at six a.m. sharp. Would that conjure Beelzebub? During this raid, 34 men were arrested, 16 charges of sodomy were leveled in the first anti-gay police raid on an establishment in New York City. And the trials that followed featured moments of Salem witch trial level absurdity. The following are some excerpts from the archived transcript of the People v.

Arthur C. Butts. Oh, yeah, Mr. Butts. And his butt would be a huge focal point of the trial. The man you are hearing, uh, as the witness is an undercover cop, uh, who infiltrated the bathhouse. And he's talking about Mr. Butts in this little back and forth. Uh, I'm going to add a music bed that I feel like the prosecution back then would have found 100% appropriate tonally. So this is a prosecutor. Again, prosecutor and that witness, that undercover cop. Question. What, if anything. Did you see this defendant do as you stood there by the door with your back against the westerly wall in this southeasterly room on the night or morning of the 22nd day of February 1903? Answer.

He sat up on the side of the couch. Who is he? The defendant. Call him the defendant so we will know. The defendant sat up on the side of the couch and then the undercover cop right there at the doorway entrance. The witness indicates. Put a pee by it, the black mark being on the side of the doorway. The witness complies.

What, if anything, did you see this defendant do as you stood there by the door with your back against the westerly wall in the southeasterly room on the night or morning of the 22nd day of February 1903? He sat up on the side of the couch. Who is he? The defendant. Who, if anybody, was there on the third couch when the defendant sat up on the defendant. the second couch and headed towards him. There was a man lying on the third couch.

Who was that man, if you know? I did not know who he was. Did you see his face? No, sir. How was this individual that you described as lying on the third couch attired, if you know? He was naked, with the exception of a sheet. How was the sheet placed, if you saw? It was hanging around his body.

Now, with respect to his hand. Well, it was up around his neck and down around his body. What did you see this defendant do then? He raised the sheet and threw it up over this man's head and shoulders, covering his head and shoulders. And then he reached his hand over and took hold this man's penis. What did he do with a man's penis? He moved his hand up and down. He moved his hand up and down what?

On the man's penis. He had hold of it, and in a little while it was in a state of erection. What was? This man's penis, and then he put his mouth over it. And he moved his head up and down for a few moments and then he took it out of his mouth and spit on the floor

and wiped his mouth at the end of the sheet and laid back on the couch again. What did you do? I took a good look at him. I left the room. For fuck's sake. Taxpayer money. Law enforcement time. Right? Manpower.

Spent lurking around at a fucking bathhouse at night, trying to catch dudes jerking and sucking each other off. So they could arrest them and then waste even more taxpayer money and officials' time on an idiotic and explicit trial. The government's basic job is to protect its citizenry, right? What is that protecting exactly? Instead of ignorant people's feelings? Learn me that.

Sounds like two guys had a great time in a dark room around nothing but other dudes, all of whom were gay, by the way, outside of some creepy undercover officers. It's not like those two dudes were out in the middle of a playground doing this shit during recess or doing in the back a pew of a Baptist church on Sunday morning. Shit like this is honestly why I have such little respect for laws in general and I have never given a single fuck about breaking certain laws. Too many laws were passed by people with too few brain cells. People I definitely do not respect as human beings.

Respect is earned or at least it should be. Actions and history like this have 100% eroded, not completely eroded, but 100 said, you know, eroded to some degree, my respect for the U.S. government and much of it citizenry over the course of doing historical episodes on this podcast. This shit is so fucking ignorant. And even more than ignorant, it's just embarrassing and pathetic. One more section of testimony, even more absurd and pathetic than what you just heard. Right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks, if you do don't want to hear these ads ever again,

please sign out to be a space litter on Patreon, support us, help make monthly charitable contributions, get the catalog ad free, episodes three days early and more. Thank you for listening to our sponsors. Let us return to that insanely pathetic trial transcript from 1903. What was the defendant doing in this center cooling room? He was walking through, walked around the sheet arranged around his body, in a manner that women arrange their skirts. I ask that to be stricken out.

This is a defense attorney now. That is a conclusion of the witness, Judge. Yes, I grant that motion. Back to the prosecutor now. Describe how the defendant was wearing this sheet. due to, say, in the manner, just describe how it was put on. He had it arranged so that there was a train that would trail on the floor after him and walked around. Where was this sheet attached to his body, if it was attached, or how was it attached to his body?

At that time, he had it around, just wrapped around his body under his arm. What was he doing with the sheet, trailing behind him, as you have stated? walking around Describe it Talking Acting, acting in an effeminate manner Defense attorney

I object to that And asked to have a stricken out Judge motion granted Back to the prosecution State what he did Just walking around How was he walking around He was imitating the female

As far as I could see Defense I object And move to strike it out Judge, motion granted. Back to the prosecution. Describe what you saw this defendant do as he was walking around the cooling room. When he would turn around, he would kick the train formed by the sheets around as he would turn like with one leg, one foot.

That's all I seen him do at the time when I first seen him. What? That's all I seen him do. Remember seeing him do at the time in that room. And do you know if any name the defendant was known by there in this. Turkish bath establishment was called. Objected to. Objection sustained. Question again by the prosecution. Did you hear him addressed by any person by any name?

I did. What was that name? The French Queen. Oh no! Not the French Queen! Not some guy walking around in an effeminate manner. Being referred to as such. He must be stopped. If we don't all conform to traditional gender norms, obviously society will completely and completely. quickly collapse into some kind of mad max form of utter depravity and dystopia. I mean, you know how the saying goes. If we let men prance, we all die on the lance.

Or maybe it's, if we let men prance, we all have fun and dance? I can't quite remember. In another ridiculous case that came out of the Arristen Bathhouse raid, the people versus Kregel, probably Kregel, probably not Kregel, the defense tried to get Andrew Kregel, a tailor who was married with five children, found innocent of charges of committing sodomy by bringing in a medical doctor, Dr. Pierre Siegelstein,

who testified that it was literally physically impossible for Andrew to have been standing up as an undercover witness attested while another man, Charles Chamberlain, passionately fucked him in the ass, while a third man, John Rogers, knelt down in front of Andrew and sucked his dick while he was getting fucking the ass

until he came. All three men were arrested for committing this act within the hour and charged with, I imagine having a great fucking time. Holy shit, and hell Lusufina. The prosecution would bring in another medical doctor and medical expert specialized in sex crime cases, Dr. William Travers Gibb,

who said that upright anal sex was indeed possible. And hot as fuck! He didn't say that last part, but surely some in the courtroom thought it. Why do they put these poor guys through big tabloid-covered trials? Well, to humiliate them, to destroy them socially and financially. If word of your arrest got back to your family, your employers, anyone else in your social sphere, you could quickly find yourself out of a job, unable to get a new job, kicked out of your house,

and in an extremely precarious position overall. That's what politicians and cops wanted to make sure happened. The police would feed the names of the people they had arrested to journalists and their names and home addresses would be printed in the morning paper. From then on, any time there was a raid, press coverage would quickly follow. In one article published by the San Francisco Chronicle, a club that was raided that was described as, quote, a rendezvous for a large number of vicious men.

For the police, newspaper coverage was an essential part of stamping out the threat of gay life, as they saw it, if a closeted gay man, heard about the backlash, where other gay men were outed, they would be more likely to stay in the closet themselves.

Some of the men who arrested were charged with disorderly conduct or for violating liquor laws, others charged with sodomy, and most of those cases were sent to trial. Trial's like the one I just mentioned. In the end, while very few men were found guilty, it seems like that wasn't really the point. The point, again, was to humiliate them.

And all of the men put on trial were indeed humiliated. And the police did not just stick to raiding bars and bathhouses to find these men. Sometimes the vice squads would use entrapment tactics in order to catch unsuspecting gay men. For example, on January 14, 1916, Antonio Belvenci went to his job as a bartender, 32 Sand Street, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He had no idea that before the evening was out, he would be caught up in New York City's early attempts at policing homosexuality. At that time, the Navy Yard area was renowned for its lawlessness,

and to those in the know, it's gay cruising. Sand Street, in particular, was so infamous that in 1932, when Charles Dumuth painted an image of a John trying to pick up two sailors there, he simply titled it on that street. But Belavinci, a 34-year-old, married Italian immigrant, father of five, did not really care about that, it seems. He was just heading out to work. As he started his shift,

a very different organization was starting work of their own. The Brooklyn police, aided by the Committee of the 14, a civilian anti-vice group, full of some real peaches, I'm sure, we're getting ready to raid the bar.

The committee of, I think I added the word of the, the committee of the 14, not the committee of the 14, which I do think sounds cooler, had been founded back in 1905 by dudes whose daddies did not hung them enough to fight the spread of what was called Rainslaw hotels.

Bars that rented rooms as a way to get around an 1896 law that banned any public institution other than a hotel from serving alcohol on Sundays. Since most men only had Sundays off, they were often forced into going to these bar hotels to hang out, and the committee wanted to put a stop to that. No fucking fun! Especially not on the Lord's Day.

Uh-uh, no, sir. Sit around and be sad. Think about all the bad shit that happened to Jesus on Sunday, every Sunday until you die, like he did. God hates fun. Don't you ever fucking forget that. If you're having fun, you're probably sitting, and you're going to be on fire, literally forever, because that makes sense.

For a couple years. that was all they focused on. Ending Sunday drinking fun. What a noble cost. What a noble pursuit. By 1916, though, the committee had expanded their purview to include all kinds of other fun,

I mean vice, that took place inside these hybrid saloon bars, mostly sex work, but also any kind of same-sex intimacy or any other gender non-conforming behavior or activities. They truly hated fun of all sorts. No flirty, no drinking. No, no tight pants.

No unbutton shirts. No touching, no kissing. Definitely no sucking, stroking or butt-fucking. No, sir, and I bid you good day. The committee's primary method of enforcement was to strong-armed breweries into canceling the contracts of saloons they disapproved of, effectively shutting them down. Since the committee was composed of many high-standing businessmen and civic leaders, most brewers did as they requested.

However, when necessary, the committee worked directly with the police, like they were doing on the night of January 14th. So why did they target Antonio Belvenci's bar? Well, the bar had been on the committee's radar for at least two years after a previous owner had come under scrutiny for allowing gambling on the premises. The committee had also heard that a lot of jokes were being told to this bar, that there was too much laughing, excessive laughing, and mirth. That even a handshaking that went on was too heartfelt.

Bluh. No. Then in late 1915, the police officially put the bar under observation, and four weeks before the raid, the officers had noticed that the place was frequented by degenerates. men that were powdered and painted up and their voices, feminine. Yes, feminine voices, dear God. Instead of just barging in,

the 149th precinct chose a novel method of investigation. They dressed Officer Harry Saunders in a U.S. Navy sailors' outfits, hot little tight one, in order to, quote, get the pervert to frequent the place. According to a letter written by Frederick Whitten,

General Secretary of the Committee of 14, now dressed up as a sexy little sailor boy, Saunders headed in. What came next was according to his own, possibly biased testimony. Apparently in the brief 15 minutes he was inside the salooned at 32 sands. Saunders was cat-called by a group of three men sitting at a table, who called out to him, quote, Oh, sailor dear, come over and drink with us.

He was lucky. He wasn't held down and fucked. Could have died. A few minutes after joining them, one of the men, John Meehan, leaned over and said, quote, why, you can come over with us. We want you to come to 170 Schmerehorn, street. If you will come down there, we will suck your cock. Whoa! Those evil fucks wanted to make him come really hard. E. Gad. Sonders turned down and turned them down. Move to another table where he said three more men propositioned him. What? Were these gay dudes like really horny or something?

Were they kind of like how stray dudes are? Were they kind of like how I am? I honestly used to wish I was gay. I used to wish I was gay when I was younger. So it would have been easier to have a lot of of illicit sex action with no fear of pregnancy. With somebody whose sex drive matched my own. My best friend is gay. So that I went to the Folsom Street, Fair With years ago, when I saw slow stroke if any old stand-up fans are listening. And I would be so jealous of some of the stories he would tell, right?

He's a horny dude, too. And he sometimes would party with other horny dudes, just find himself in a room full of yeses, a bunch of dicks, wanted to be stroked. But alas, other cocks, just do not get my own cox motor revving. but also if I had been gay, I am aware that life is far from just nothing but funing games and that I would have had to deal with a bunch of straight, deluded fun killers bullying me

and constantly trying to buzz kill Mabonor. The police barged in after all these solicitations. A few minutes later, Saunders, who had just been saved, and two other officers arrested all six men, as well as Belivinci. Because according to Saunders, Belavinci had heard the proposition and done nothing. And that made him guilty of something, of running a disorderly house. That's what he was charged and convicted of on February 1st. As a result, Belivinci was sentenced to three months in a fucking workhouse.

Insane. Totally insane, which he appealed. During the second trial, the three police officers began to elaborate their stories. Now, not only had the six-men propositioned Officer Saunders, they had rouged cheeks when they did so, blackened eyebrows, and we're holding, and I hope you're sitting down, powder puffs. Furthermore, Officer William Finkin claimed that every man in the backroom of the bar was similarly done up, and when they first arrived, quote,

two sailors were sitting on the laps of two of these men that were arrested. Despite testimony to the contrary from three other patrons, who claimed there were no sailors sitting on laps, no painted faces or powder puffs, and that there had been no propositioning, the court upheld Benevinci's conviction in a three-two split, so off to the workhouse he went. Talk about some dumb shit to go to jail for.

In 1918, two years after Ben of Inch's arrest, a similar case occurred where a police officer dressed as a sailor, had entrapped, quote, male perverts, male perverts, at a bar at 36 Myrtle Avenue. While still judging it, a successful mission, Frederick Whitten, General Secretary of the Committee of 14, began to worry about this kind of entrapment, adding in a handwritten note that using actual sailor uniforms,

quote, is in flat disregard to a very important federal law. Indeed, it is illegal to wear an official U.S. military uniform of any kind, including a sailor's uniform to impersonate a service member for financial gain or other fraudulent purposes. And Witten was facing another bigger problem as well. The problem was this, as homosexuals, were beginning to be understood as a deviant class of people. Now their very existence needed to be policed.

But laws like disorderly conduct were designed to be brought against activities, not identities. This is why the police made such a big deal about powder puffs and makeup, because wearing clothing of the opposite gender was in illegal, arrestable activity. using sailors to entrap men into unlawful propositions was another way to get around this issue but as Whitten pointed out, it was a workaround that came with his own problems. So what would the solution to these problems be?

In 1923, the New York State Legislature created a specific charge of disorderly conduct degeneracy. Before that law, older statutes like sodomy or crimes against nature were broad and vague. They didn't specifically name homosexuality or even targeted as a distinct identity. Instead, they criminalized a wide range

of sexual behaviors like oral or anal sex. It's fucking insane that oral sex Oral Sex would be outlawed, be illegal. What? Whether between men and women or between same-sex partners. Fucking land of the free, my fucking ass. Land of the bullshit.

In other words, like we said, the law focused on acts, not identities. By the way, every other country is the land of the bullshit in some way or form. But this new law, penal law, 722, Section 8, degenerate disorderly conduct could be interpreted and enforced

against anyone who was looked or even seemed gay. Once this law was passed, the committee of 14, and in particular General Secretary Whitten, kept careful track of how it was being applied. In a 1925 letter to Samuel Bolton, Deputy Chief Inspector of the 12th Police Division of Manhattan, Whitten wrote that he, quote, discovered that in the first four months of 1925, there had been some 250 arrests by members of the 12th Division of men upon the charge of disorderly conduct degeneracy. He called these numbers tremendously startling and wondered whether they represented,

quote, an increase of the evil or increase. increased activity by the police against these offenders. Increase of the evil. I fucking hate that we still have so many idiots like that around today. Man, ignorance has got to be the hardest thing in the world to kill and eradicate. Still, overall, these raids did not reflect how the broader culture thought about gay people, queer people, which was not all that bad, all things considered. As the U.S. entered an era of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity in the years after World War I,

cultural moors loosened in a new spirit of sexual freedom, well, relative sexual freedom reigned. By the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and the seetier sides of Times Square, while the city's first lesbian enclaves, including perhaps Bonnie Stonewall, had appeared in Harlem and in the village. Though New York City was the epicenter of the so-called pansy craze, so derogatory, in fact, gay, lesbian, and transgender performers graced the stages of nightclubs in cities all over the country.

Their audiences included, perhaps surprisingly, many straight. men and women, eager to experience the culture themselves and enjoy a good party. As well as, not surprisingly, ordinary queer Americans seeking to expand their social networks or find romantic or sexual partners. At the same time, lesbian and gay characters were being featured in a slew of popular pulp novels in songs and on Broadway stages and in Hollywood. At least prior to 1934, when the motion picture industry began to enforce censorship guidelines via the haze coat, again, never really been the land of the free. A good reminder of how social progress is not linear.

here, but rather often, you know, two steps forward, one step back, or sometimes one step forward, two or three or four steps back. Clara Bow's 1932 film, called her savage, featured a short scene in which a pair of campy male entertainers sing in a Greenwich Village like Night Spot, a little nod to some in the audience, and on the radio songs including masculine women, feminine men, and Let's All Be Fairies were popular. So what happened to change things?

Well, the pendulum swung back as it seems to always do to some degree. With the end of prohibition, the onset of the Great Depression, the rising tensions that we explode onto the international stage in World War II, queer culture and community began to fall out of favor. Why? Well, let's start with the end of prohibition. The end of prohibition gave moral crusaders like Frederick Whitten the chance to sneak in specifically anti-queer rules into the newly formed New York State Liquor Authority. Suddenly in 1933, while most Americans are down in the Depression dumps and angry and hopeless and looking for someone else to knock down a peg or two lower than themselves, that old misery loves company mindset would have been the imprecise

and disorganized policing of same-sex desire sometimes focused on illegal activities like drinking or gambling, sometimes focus on sexuality, would become a full-scale government apparatus designed to harass and eradicate public gay life. So sad how so many in public queer life. So sad how so many of us meet sex

when times are tough, find a little release from that discomfort by making the times even tougher for those around them. It's like the old terrible, adage goes, you know, about some dude getting bitched out by his boss at the factory and then he gets home and he hits his wife and then his wife beats his kid and then his kid kicks the dog. New state regulations explicitly prohibiting gay men and women from gathering and licensed public establishments, right, or enforced now or passed. The new regulations not only codified, the ban on gay visibility, queer visibility, but raised the stakes for anyone who owned a business and considered bypassing the law since anyone who served a single drink to a queer person or made a single film about a queer person.

or put on a play with queer characters, could and sometimes did have their businesses destroyed. Go woke, go broke, far from a recent threat and logic, or lack of logic, I guess, thought, shitty thought. Public sentiment, of course, overall aligned in support of these laws. If it hadn't, they wouldn't have been passed. Politicians generally followed the culture's lead, not vice versa. Across the country, many blame the economic downturn of the Great Depression

on the atmosphere of cultural experimentation of the 19th. 20s, even though they didn't have fuck all to do with the stock market crash. But you know what? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? Never let the truth get in the way of what you want to believe. As this misguided view became more widespread, darker narratives started to take the forefront true crime narratives found in many of the pulpy noir magazines we have covered here before. Many of these narratives describe sensationalized sex crimes where the villains and perpetrators

were gay men. The actual true crime stats did not back that up. heterosexual white men have produced the greatest number of sexually violent crimes, pretty much always. They did back then, as they still do now, for anyone who wants to look into some FBI crime statistics. But again, fuck truth. I'm going to believe what I want. World War II would also mark a turning point. The war called for national strength, reproduction and family structure, military discipline,

and eradication of anything that could be considered deviance by moralists. To that end, the U.S. military hoping to screen out mentally ill individuals, asked every potential service member questions on their sexuality. Gay and lesbian recruits were now forced to answer questions vaguely or lie about their sexuality in order to be allowed to serve. Otherwise, they would run the risk of being sent home and branded as a sex pervert. By the middle of the war, the military sought new ways to target and expel homosexuals. Instead of charging individuals with sodomy, a court-martial defense, the military began identifying suspected homosexuals as psychopaths. So that's fun. In other words, instead of

charging service members with the crime of behavior or action, the military charged them with, quote, crime of being, as the National World War II Museum in New Orleans put it. Amazing museum, by the way, for military history buffs. Such a move created by an efficient system of discrimination and prosecution of homosexual members of the military. And it wasn't like these service members charged with being, you know, queer just got to go home, being gay, I guess in this case. Service members who were persecuted by Section 8 blue discharge were purged from bases and units and sent to fucking mental institutions. and makeshift quarantine bricks, where they routinely suffered physical and psychological abuse, isolation, and humiliation.

At the same time, the war also unintentionally helped create modern queer communities, though. Despite the threat of persecution, gay and lesbian service members thrived during World War II. As with most young soldiers, many had never left their homes before, and the war provided them an opportunity to find community, experimentation, camaraderie, in some cases first loves. Indeed, service members on every war front enjoy drag show entertainment an entire gay lexicon was developed in lesbian lexicon from the writing's Dorothy Parker

eventually an underground queer newspaper emerged the Myrtle Beach bitch or Myrtle Beach Bell both names sources give that small circulation short-lived newspaper shared news and stories between bases and units in particular many lesbans and the armed forces

rose to positions of influence women's army auxiliary corps member phyllis Abre for instance was featured in propaganda articles because she was seen to represent the ideals of a W-A-A-C. Unknown to the army, they also selected Arby's lover Mildred as another ideal, W-A-A-C, to be featured in propaganda.

But to the rest of the nation, the message was clear. Gay men in particular were a minority that needed to be sequestered, treated, pushed into the shadows if they couldn't be outright fucking eliminated like the Nazis were doing with homosexuals and Holocaust. This new attitude and atmosphere would make the immediate post-war years in America fucking weird. Kind of like shit's fucking weird right now in a lot of ways. Though the country emerged victorious from World War II, and everyone was expected to focus on getting back to, quote, normal, suburban houses, stable marriages, clearly defined gender roles.

Like we saw, the war had actually made parts of being queer easier. Indeed, thanks to the war, many men and women left behind the restrictions of rural or small-town life for the first time pouring into cities where density and anonymity made pursuit of same-sex relationships more possible than ever. But growing gay and queer communities were not the only so-called problem. the war had made men, quote, looked like men. But now those very same men were moving on from military life into suburban domesticity, white-collar office work. Some critics worried that American masculinity was becoming bureaucratic, passive, and feminized. I guess that was like the people saying that were like the equivalent of Fox News pundits back then.

Could most of America's men wind up gay if they did too much paperwork? Could sit in a cushy chair at a nice calm office day after day where the heavy, thing you lived as a stapler, make a straight man think stuff like, I think I would like a cappuccino and some cinnamon coffee cake. And then you know what else sounds good to snack on? Some balls. Yes, first cappuccino, then coffee cake, then balls, and I stroke a cock until it comes on my face. Perhaps that strange atmosphere could have persisted, tense, but overall stable. But it wouldn't, in part, thanks to the research of one man. In 1948, biologist, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey published sexual behavior in the human male.

From his research, Kinsey concluded that homosexual behavior was not restricted to people who identify as homosexual. In fact, 37% of men he surveyed had enjoyed homosexual activities at least once. Even more, and this is in an atmosphere, a very oppressive atmosphere,

even more to stabilizing than the number itself was what it implied. The popular assumption in mid-century America was that homosexual men were visibly identifiable outsiders, effeminate, theatrical, obviously different, and you could use those markers of difference to quickly identify and marginalize them. But Kinsey's findings suggested that many men who outwardly appeared completely conventional,

veterans, husbands, businessmen, churchgoers, deep-voiced fucking manly ass bears with big pecks, calloused hands, firm, jaw lines, and big old rock hard cocks, but also maybe sometimes small, not intimidated, but still able to get the job done so don't mock them, cocks, had engaged in same-sex behavior at some point. That introduced a new cultural anxiety. What if homosexuality was invisible? Damn you, Satan! What if it existed beneath the surface of ordinary American life?

This fear landed in the American zeitgeist, precisely as the Cold War was teaching Americans to fear other hidden enemies. Indeed, during the early Cold War, the U.S. became paranoid, maybe even more so than today. Obsessed with infiltration, subversion, secret loyalties, long before people were able to channel those fucking weird feelings into places online and over shit like QAnon. Nominally, the fear was about communist infiltration, but as Senator Joseph McCarthy popularized the idea that enemies could look perfectly respectable while secretly undermining the nation from within,

this focus expanded to include homosexuality, hiding in plain sight. And soon a new narrative developed if gay men could conceal their identities. They could be blackmailed, or, excuse me, rather, if they needed to, if they wanted to conceal their identities. Therefore, homosexuals,

were deemed to be, quote, security risks and could not be trusted in government, military, or sensitive institutions. And to the country at large, homosexuality and communism seemed like they went together hand in hand. Both communists and gay men in particular were thought to be morally weak,

or psychologically disturbed. Both were seen as godless, both purportedly undermine the traditional family, both assumed to recruit, to fucking groom, shadowy figures with a secret subculture. Unlike communists, however, homosexuals were being uncovered

as investigators dug into federal employees' personal lives, a fact that encouraged the federal government to keep digging. As a result, more than 4,380 men and women would be discharged from the military and around 500 fired from their jobs with the government because they might have been queer. A post-war DEI purge. This would become known as the Lavender Scare. On December 15th, 1950, a Senate report literally titled,

Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Pervoir. in government was distributed to members of Congress after the federal government had covertly investigated employees sexual orientation at the beginning of the Cold War. The report stated that since homosexuals, quote, constitute security risks to the nation because those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons. Other institutions would rally around this belief. In April of 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance in its first publication

of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, more commonly known as the DSM. Following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower got his cock sucked by his vice president, no, signed executive order 10-450, which banned homosexuals from federal employment, either directly in the government

or any of its private or for any of its private contractors. This illogical witch hunt trickle down into local governments and law enforcement as well. Police departments expanded surveillance of supposed gay bars, parks where dicks were thought to touch, gathering places where one puss might be fingered by the owner of another puss. If this shit spreads, who's going to be left to play with all the dicks? Just other dicks.

We'll all be gay soon. Meanwhile, state governments and city officials strengthen sodomy laws and sexual psychopath statutes. While schools and universities dismissed teachers suspected of homosexuality on the grounds that they endangered the children. We must protect the children. They undermined public morality. no evidence for those assertions existed, but again, believe, you know,

whatever you want to believe, right, no matter how dumb it might be. That's part of freedom. Media coverage would sensationalize these witch hunts and a barrage of articles, journalists shifted away from using the modest and veiled language they'd used before and instead used derogatory slurs

and sensationalized descriptions to the type of immorality that was taking place across a country. For many queer people, these scare tactics worked, right? They stayed in the closet. They got married to someone, they were not attracted to.

They ruined their lives in addition to their own. They tried to ignore the sense that they were not living life as true versions of themselves. I'm strongly assuming that suicide rates for this population soared. But other queer people, they started to wonder, could it really be that being queer was immoral, communist, and anti-American? Or was the public just believing a bunch of bullshit? One person who believed in the bullshit version there was Harry Hay. Harry was the leftist son of a wealthy conservative family.

who had dropped out of Stanford University in 1930s and eventually joined the Communist Party, which was also anti-gay, for the record. Cannot only blame religion for homophobia, truly. People forget or have never learned that historically atheistic communists around the world and men like Hitler, who was deeply anti-religious, have often been much harsher towards queer populations, sadly.

Harry Hay, who was leftist, but not homophobic, had never gotten married and had a family before Alfred Kinsey's work led him to question the dominant thinking around same-sex desire. Excuse me, he had gotten married and had a family before. His membership in the party was important for how he was beginning to think about social change. Despite being anti-homosexual, the party was working towards many things Harry did believe in, things like anti-discrimination laws in the workplace and guaranteed medical care. For Harry, working with the party was kind of like going to activist school, taught him everything he needed to know about starting an underground organization,

one that could improve the lives of everyday people while staying undercover enough to keep its members out of danger. In 1950, Harry and some of his friends, Rudy Gernrich, Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull, and Dale Jennings. It might have been Gernreich. I'm going to say Rudy Gernreich, actually. Gathered in his living room when Harry's wife and children were about to plot a queer revolution.

Discussing their new group's founding theories, he declared that homosexuals were an oppressed cultural minority, a statement no one in the U.S. had articulated yet, at least not to any historian. knowledge. Their first step to planning this revolution was simple. They needed a name for the group, and they came up with the Matashin Society. Before I describe this society, let's take our second and two Mitcho's sponsor breaks. Thank you for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard some deals that you loved and used our landing codes or landing pages and sponsor codes to get some good savings.

Now let's hear about the Matashine Society. The name was inspired by the medieval Italian Matashinos. Troops of truth. telling court gestures who traveled from village to village satirizing everyday life in songs and sketches. The Manasin Society would be the first homophile organization, an organization dedicated to the appreciation of homosexuality. For safety, members were discouraged from using their real names on membership lists so they could not be identified by the government. Within the group, nobody could quite figure out how to go about getting the cultural acceptance they wanted. How would they get a seat at the table? Should they take to the streets, protests, stand up for

themselves? Most of the group's leadership believed that the best thing to do was have its members dress and act conservatively with short hair, jackets and ties, and to exhibit restrained behavior, the idea being that mainstream society might be more likely to accept them if they, for a lack of a better way of describing it, behaved well. As the group's charter would put it,

their aim was to, quote, eliminate discrimination, derision, prejudice, and bigotry, and assimilate homosexuals into mainstream society by cultivating the notion of an ethical homosexual culture. Not everybody agreed with these tactics, though. It may of 1953, because the group was moving in an even more conservative direction, literally all of the original members resigned,

including Harry Hay. And the Matashian Society was not the only group experimenting with organizing. In many ways, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were a classic lesbian love story. They met in 1950, became a couple in 1952, bought a house and moved in together on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1955, adorable, and they truly were adorable, if you have ever seen picks or, you know, video footage of them.

They would remain together for over 50 years until Dell passed away in 2008. Back in the 1950s, Del and Phyllis had everything except mainstream acceptance and lesbian friends. They knew a gay male couple, though, and this couple would introduce them to another lesbian couple, and now Del and Phyllis thought, why not start a social club? Why it's such a loving, harmless thing? The first meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis, the DOB, was in October of 1955, naming the group inspired by the songs of Billetis, a collection of lesbian poetry, written by a French writer named Pierre Louise.

It was an obscure name, which was purposeful. They had chosen it because most people would not be able to figure out what it meant. And that was perfect with the group's initial purpose, to have a social outlet in a place to dance since it was literally illegal for a woman to dance with another woman in public. And again, Land of the Free? quickly became clear that the group needed to be more organized, and they elected Del Martin as president. Dell decided that the group should not focus on dancing.

It should focus on why the fuck are lesbans not allowed to dance in the first place, wherever they fuck they want. Now the DOB would switch its focus to education, teaching people about lesbians. This meant convincing straight audiences that lesbians were not any different than normal people, right? Lots of normal people like to have their pussies touched. It also meant convincing closeted lesbians that their lives would not be over if they came.

out that they were not sinful, they were not dirty, but they were not any of the many things they've been told over and over again growing up. Until the late 1960s, the daughters of Belletus and the Matashin Society would be the only major gay and lesbian organizations in the U.S. They provided support networks, discussion groups, where queer people could safely meet and talk about their experiences. They defended people who were arrested because of their sexuality, right, helped them get legal representation.

They fought discriminatory policies by employers and government agencies, right? Hail Nimrod, a lot of noble shit. But above all, they promoted the idea that homosexuals were a legitimate minority group deserving equal rights and dignity. And that fucking mattered. But for many queer people, it did not matter enough. No matter how respectable the movement tried to be,

police could still storm into a bar, drag people into the street, arrest them for a bunch of bullshit, like existing as they were, and fuck up their lives. So soon, some decided to take matters into their own hands. In May of 1959, everything was business as usual at Cooper's Donuts. A diner in L.A. Skid Row, where drag queens were known to get

together in the early morning hours and eat some delicious treats. Fuck, I miss donuts. Why can it be good for me and my blood sugar? If Cooper's donuts existed now, it was not just a safe place for drag queens, but was also a safe space for raucous gay orgies. And they somehow made and sold donuts that tasted exactly like regular sugary donuts, but were somehow zero carb? Oh boy.

I was strolling in and dodge as many stray dicks as needed in order to get myself from tasty maple bars, chocolate frosted cake donuts, and apple fritters. Oh, oh, sorry, excuse me. Oh, oh, oh, pardon me. Sorry about that. Oh, whoops. Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to step on your foot.

Oh, shit, that was a dick. Whoa! Did not mean to grab, ah, grab that. Just grab my donuts. No, no, no, extra frosting. Thank you. Hot damn, you guys are athletic. Sorry.

Unlike the two gay bars, it was situated between Herald's and the Waldorf. Nobody came to Cooper to do anything even close to illicit. Unless by illicit, you mean having way too many carbs right before bed, which is a great way to spike your triglycerides and increase your risk for heart attack. or stroke, but not that stroke. Not a good stroke. Drag queens and trans women, fresh off work, came here to unwind, sip down some watered down coffee, smoke some cigarettes,

eat a late night, tasty-ass snack, hoping to pass a few quiet hours before they had to go on to their next task, whatever. But on one night in May, sources don't say exactly what night that piece would be shattered when the police burst in. Immediately the cops demanded to see everyone's IDs. Back then, the law in Los Angeles stated that if your gender presentation did not match the gender on your ID if you were trans, even in female clothing. As many of the performers were, you could be arrested and taken to jail.

What the fuck? You have the freedom to conform, to respect our authority. This time, though, when the cops went to make their arrest, there was going to be pushback. As a police arrested five patrons' bystanders began to protest. They started throwing coffee cups, spoons, whatever else they could get their hands on. In the end, as the story goes, some historians question the specifics of all this. the police drove off without the people they had arrested. For one night, queer Angelinos had fought back in one.

The victories like that were extremely rare. Across the country, police raids, arrests, harassment remained a fact of daily life for queer communities. Even in cities where queer people supposedly had legal protection like in San Francisco, where city ordinances allowed queer people to assemble in public places, that safety could disappear overnight, as it did in 1961, when Mayor George Christopher orchestrated a campaign to shut down as many gay bars as possible. Yep. even in San Francisco queer communities

were not safe from local state-sanctioned harassment. As part of this effort at about 3.15 a.m., September 14th, 1961, police raided a one room after-hours club called the Tay Bush Inn, located on the corner of Taylor and Bush Streets.

More than 200 people were packed inside the bar at the time, according to when it says the police let the, quote, respectable-looking people go, along with those who had political connections. Then they rounded up and arrested the rest. In the end, 103 people, 89 men, 14 women arrested and taken to jail.

If that wasn't bad enough, the San Francisco Examiner ran a story listing every one of their names, addresses, and places of employment. Fuck you. Just like the police told them to do. But in the instance, the mayor's strategy actually, in this instance, actually it largely backfired. Once that report about how those with political connections

were let go, the mayor started looking less like a moral crusader and more like what he actually was, just a corrupt fuckhead autocrat. Writers at the San Francisco Chronicle, particularly columnist Herb Kane, would point out the mayor's hypocrisy, and the queer community started to rally. The local chapter of the Matashin Society

quickly became active in restoring the queer community's right to assemble. Meanwhile, Jose Saria, a drag performer at San Francisco's Black Cat Nightclub, decided to run for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. As the first openly queer candidate running for a public office in the U.S., a win for Saria, was highly unlikely, and in the end it did not happen, but he did respectfully well on election

day. Much better than almost anyone thought he would. Thanks to these forms of protests, bystander action, and engagement with the wider world of politics, word of organizations like the Matashin Society, would start to spread, and more people would get involved. And one of those people was Frank Kameney, a man now sometimes referred to as the father of America's gay rights movement. And like many gay men in the 20th century, on the surface, Frank had lived a quite conventional life, born in 1925 in New York City to Ashkenazi Ashkenazi, yeah I said right

Ashkenazi Jewish parents Frank sailed through high school and graduated when he was 16 years old went on to Queens College to study physics but his studies were temporarily interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II After the war he returned to Queens College graduated in 1948 with a physics degree smart dude

from there it was on to Harvard University where he would earn both a master's degree and doctorate in astronomy super smart dude after a brief teaching stint at Georgetown University, he was offered a job in 1957 by the U.S. Army Map Service. Everything was going perfectly. He had gotten his education.

He had been a soldier. Now he was on to a respectable career until the U.S. Army discovered that Frank Kameney had an arrest record. So what happened? A few years before he had applied for the job, Frank had been traveling cross-country to complete his doctoral research. When he was groped, didn't even want to be groped by another man at a San Francisco bus terminal.

That's it. Fully clothed. Plain-clothes officers witnessed incident and arrested, comedy, for engaging in homosexual behavior. Once the U.S. Army found out about this, this groping, they fired comedy, and then deciding that wasn't enough,

they took it a step further. They decided to make an example out of him. In 1958, comedy was banned from any U.S. government employment. He appealed the decision, even tried to take it to the Supreme Court, but the decision stuck. He was stunned. Frank had worked so hard to finish his education, and now at 33 years old, his career was over.

all because of some unwanted attention, mind you, in a bus terminal. And the experience woke him up and radicalized him. He knew he was gay, but he also knew that that had nothing to do with his professional life. But now that he had found himself boxed out of a legitimate career, well, what was he going to do? He decided to devote himself to political activism. In 1960, Frank and his friend Jack Nichols co-founded the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Madashine Society. Up to this point, the Madagin Society had been pretty secretive, as I mentioned. Indeed, membership lists were heavily protected.

Most people, again, did not use their real names. They were still trying to figure out how to help people without compromise themselves. And that was slow going. So Frank decided fuck that. Frank Jack and some members of the Daughters of Belitist began to organize pickets, the first of which took place at the White House, in April of 1965, very public protests. Like the platform of the Matashin Society dictated,

they made themselves look, quote, respectable by wearing suits and dresses. even so it was still shocking for many to see queer people out and about not hide in the shadows instead proudly declaring that they deserve equal treatment but when it came to queer liberation the movement still had a long long way to go it was still hard to get widespread support because most gay and lesbian people had internalized the negative attitudes from the larger culture many of them had simply gotten married and hoped the quote strange desires they felt would go away like too many people do today thank you conversion counselors you mindless twats other psychiatrists and psychologists hoping that doctors would cure them.

Sometimes these ended in electroshock therapy or even lobotomies. Thank you quacks, which left many people with full or partial brain damage. How were these queer societies supposed to combat decades, if not centuries, if not millennia of conditioning that led to people messing with their fucking brains? How would they convince people that they were not damaged when that was what they've been told their entire lives? Meanwhile, by the early 1960s, a campaign to rid New York City of gay bars was in full effect by order of Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., who was concerned about the image of the city in preparation for the 1964 World's Fair. The city revoked the liquor licenses of bars undercover police officers, or that undercover police officers,

where they'd worked to entrap many homosexual men previously. One story in the New York Post described an arrest in a gym locker room in a fucking gym locker room where the officer, the undercover officer, grabbed a man's crotch while moaning, and then when a bystander asked if the guy whose crotch had just been grabbed was all right, the by the bystander got arrested by the cock squeezing cop. What the fuck?

Sounds like that officer may have taken that job specifically so he could get his manhands on some man dick, as opposed to trying to stop manhands from touching dick. No gays can hide from New York City's finest. NYPD Sergeant John Rock is tough. On cock. Hey, hey, what do you think you doing wearing those tight bike shorts in public, you sexy little twink? You want some attention?

Is that what you're trying to do with my city? I'll give you some attention. I'll find out how straight a gear you are. You like that? You like that when I grab your limp cock? Let's see how long it takes for it to get hard when I rub it, when I grope it. Okay, still limp, I see. I'll play you game.

How about now? How about now when I spin up my palm and really louve it up all nice like? Huh? Okay, still... How about now when I grab your hand? Put it on my already very hard cock. Go ahead, you deviant. You're a sexy little twink. Go ahead and stroke my cock, I dare you.

You like that, don't you? Even though you're still trying to trick me and you're straight with that limp bullshit, all right. All right, how about now? How about when I start sucking it? You're not you? You fucking like that?

I suck in that cock, don't you? Now start sucking my cock. See if you don't get hard. And when you do get hard, sticking to my ass. Stop jicking me off. See how long it takes me to come, you sex, little twink.

No gays can hide from New York City's finest. NYPD Sergeant John Rock is tough on cock. So that just happened. I imagine we might. We might get some interesting emails regarding people trying to explain what kind of podcast they were listening to right there. Anyway, face with this kind of bullshit,

the new gay rights organizations, queer rights organizations did not know what to do. How would they continue their protests? How would they organize them? What was the right date of protests? How would they organize a bunch of small regional clubs into a bigger cohesive movement? After the April 17th picket at the White House,

Craig Rodwell, owner of the Oscar Wild Memorial Bookstore in Greenwich Village, very likely the first queer bookstore in the U.S., proposed the idea of an annual Fourth July picket. To spread the word, the daughters of bellatists in New York City and Washington, D.C. chapters of the Manasheen Society combined to become a larger umbrella group under the name East Coast homophile organizations, organizations or echo.

Echo would be responsible for organizing annual events that reminded the country that queer communities, specifically gay and lesbian communities primarily, had been denied the supposedly American rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Those three principles enshrined to the Declaration of Independence. As such, the Fourth July protest would be called the annual reminders. And now their first big protest was on. On July 4th, 1965, queer activists all adhering to a strict dress code of dresses for women and jackets and ties for men carry their signs and marched on Independence Hall in Philadelphia. As radical as the event was, there was almost zero news coverage of the annual reminders. And unfortunately, what little coverage existed was negative and sensationalistic.

Confidential magazine, a tabloid-style publication, ran a story in its October 1965 issue, dismissively titled, Homo's on the March. wasn't exactly the kind of thing that made these groups which had poured hours into coordinate of these marches feel like they were making an impact. Soon some would think that this kind of action protesting in the streets wearing your best straight-looking clothes was not the right way to get the cops to stop ruining people's lives. Then again, they also were not willing to riot.

So what could they do? Well, Dick Lich, fuck yeah, Dick. And Craig Rodwell, oh, fuck yeah, Rod, Rod and Dick, who were the president and vice president of the Madisonian Society of New York, decided to try something new. On April 21st, 1966, Dick, Craig, the fucking Rodman, and their friend John Timmons, not as good of a name,

went bar hopping at Greenwich Village. The men were excited via the Matashine Society, they've been able to get the newly elected mayor, John Lindsay, to end the campaign of police and trappant in New York City. Now they were turning their focus to the state liquor authority, like we covered in the 1960s, the state liquor authority, the SLA, had regulations of prohibited bars from serving drinks to people who were known or suspected to be gay or lesbian.

even if a person looked gay or lesbian, whatever that fucking means. Bars could refuse to serve that individual. And that was exactly what Dick, Craig the Rodman. And John hoped these bars would do. They wanted to be refused service so they could make a formal complaint to the SLA. To broadcast their message,

they also invited four newspaper reporters, including Thomas Johnson, fucking Johnson, hell yeah, from the New York Times, and photographer Fred Cockencoc, no, Fred McDera, from the Village Voice. first up on their pub crawl was the Ukrainian American Village Restaurant

this bar had a sign that actually said if you are gay please go away which of course made them walk right in but the journalist showed up before the men did it accidentally told the bartender about what the group was up to and the bartender closed for the night rather than deal with that commotion well fuck that guy

the second bar on the list was called Dom's oh fuck yeah it was and it had a similar sign but Dombs was closed bartenders probably partying with some folks from subs. So the group decided to go for the biggest bet yet. Howard Johnson's housed in a building with a bright orange roof at the intersection of 8th Street and 6th Avenue. And after the men were seated, they handed the server a written note that said, We are homosexuals.

We believe that a place of public accommodation has an obligation to serve an orderly person and that we are entitled to service so long as we are orderly. Well, the waitress called the manager over, and the manager said, Go ahead and serve them. Hell yeah. Technically, this was a victory, except the men had hoped that they would be refused service.

Their next try, YKKKees, an even bigger bust. Not only did the bartender serve them, he gave him drinks on the house. Fucking love whoever that was. With four bars already attempted, the men were not making progress. We're also getting drunk.

At this point, their friend Randy Wacker, I mean Wicker. Randy Wicker, joined them. And they headed to Julius's bar, located only about a block from the Stonewall Inn. There had been a raid there a few days before, seemed like, you know, they were going to be denied service.

Just as they had hoped, when Dick announced that they were gay, the bartender put his hand over the glass, he had been about to give them, and the iconic moment was captured by Fred McDera. This evening would become known as the sip-in. But the media coverage would not be as positive as they hoped. The New York Times headline about the sip-ins would read three deviates, invite exclusion by bars. My God. However, the Matashine Society then challenged the liquor rule in court and the court's rule that gave. had a right to peacefully assemble, which undercut the previous SLA contention that the presence of gay clientele automatically were grounds for charges of operating a disorderly premise.

With this right, established a new era of licensed legally operating gay bars began. At same year, 1966, marked a turning point for Bonnie Stonewall, the bar and restaurant that would become known as Stonewall Inn. A fire all but destroyed the property. In the aftermath, Tony Lauria, known as Fat Tony, purchased the property. and fat Tony did a cheap renovation on the property. Year later, re-opened the stone wall in as a gay bar. So was Fat Tony gay?

No, not at least publicly. Probably not at all. He was an Italian-American mobster. Indeed, in those days, the mob had almost complete control over the queer social scene in New York City. Did you see that coming? Mafiosos had figured out that they could purchase cheap properties in the city, turn them into gay bars, get around state liquor laws,

by operating as private bottle, clubs, aka organizations where membership was nominally required. After all, liquor licenses were expensive and could be revoked if the police discovered you were serving, you know, queer patrons, or if you were getting up to any other illegal activities, which the mafia certainly was. In other words, this workaround was a cheap way to set up shop. The mafioso's made money, stayed undercover alongside their patrons, had an excuse not to invest much in the ambience, since after all, they would just be serving queer people.

To that end, the newly opened Stonewall Inn was indeed a fucking dump. The glasses were dirty. There was no running water behind the bar, which is why the glasses were dirty. The place abounded with safety, health, and fire code violations. Not to mention the fact that if you went there, you might find yourself rubbing shoulders with some very dangerous men. Well, Fat Tony owned the bar. The real man behind the operation was Matthew Maddie the horse. Ianello, the capo of the Genovese crime family. Maddie the horse owned most of the underground gay bars and clubs in New York City. And he bribed the NYPD was. large payments so that they would leave his establishments alone.

For the Stonewall Inn, he paid about $2,000 a month. A lot of money now, way more back then. But even that was not enough to protect them from semi-regular rates. Despite paying for protection, but not always getting it, Maddie was still making money hand over fist. Selling alcohol that was stolen or bootlegged, driving up the price of drinks and watering them down. But the real money came from extortion.

And Ed the Skull Murphy. I love how these guys always have fucking nicknames. one of the crew members in the Genovese crime family was the ringleader. It has to have one of the most badass mafia nicknames I've ever heard. A former pro wrestler, the skull, worked elaborate blackmailing schemes

on his own customers. He would steal patrons wallets to discover their identities, send his gangster friends to the unsuspecting patrons home, posing his officers from the police, moral squad, and then the officers would keep quiet,

they would say, but only for a price. This, in fact, was how the Stonewall Inn made the big bucks. By shamelessly exploiting their own patrons who were doing their best to live in secrecy. The skull might have been fueled by some self-loathing to do this. In 1978, he would come out as gay himself. And then he would go on to speak publicly about gay rights

and apologize profusely for his role in the hurt he had caused countless men and women. Didn't see that coming. Still, even though it was dangerous, excuse me, the Stonewall did offer a place to hang out and to dance, perhaps the only gay bar in the city that was also truly a dance club. That was valuable. As Jerry Huss, a Stonewall patron would describe it, the bar itself was a toilet, but it was a refuge. It was a temporary refuge from the street.

So what would it be like to go in? Visitors to the Stonewall Inn were greeted by a bouncer who would inspect them through a peephole in the door. The legal drinking age was 18, and to avoid unwittingly letting in undercover police, visitors would have to be known by the doorman or simply to, quote, look gay. However, only a few people in full drag were allowed in by the bouncers. Mostly the clientele were gay men, but a few lesbians came to the bar as well. homeless male teens who slept to nearby Christopher Park sometimes try to get in

get customers to buy them drinks As visitors entered the bar They left their coats at a check-in On their left A set of doors led to the first room Where the long black plywood bar would On occasion feature a dressed-up go-go dancer Although the bar served a variety of people

This first room was usually crowded With Chino wearing more straight-laced patrons Looking to have a drink and chat at the tables lined up along the walls Maybe meet somebody for some romance Those looking to dance entered a set of side doors That led to a second room Which contained a large dance floor

The dance floor was thick with the smell of cheap, popular perfumes Taboo and Ambush Perfumes mostly worn by the drag queens Patrons fed quarters into a jukebox Usually picking Motown or pop songs And they dance freely with same-sex partners In the black walled room Which was lit by pulsing gel lights

Or black lights The regular lights would only come on When the bar was tipped off about an incoming raid At that, people would stop dance and separate by a few feet, hoping that that would be enough to avoid an arrest for lewd conduct. For fuck's sake.

What a bunch of nonsense? Why do some of us do this shit to others? I guess a lot of us are just fucking miserable. During a typical raid, the lights were turned on and customers were lined up to have their IDs checked. Those without identification or dressed in full drag were arrested. Others usually allowed to leave. When it came to women, police required that they wore

at least three pieces of feminine clothing. Otherwise, they would be arrested. Typically, employees and management of the bars were also arrested and promptly bailed out by mafia connections. And then when the police left, the night would continue. Drinks, music, and more dancing. Indeed, the Stonewall was so popular because it was the only bar for gay men in New York City where dancing was allowed, but that also put a target on its back,

but a target was sort of unavoidable for any place with a queer clientele, even for non-drinking establishments like Gene Compton's cafeteria. The cafeteria sat in San Francisco's tenderloin district, on a block line with bars, cheap residential hotels, and other business. businesses typical of the city's seedy red light district. This area is one of the few places in that city where drag queens could live openly and also maybe make some money in a variety of illegal ways like sex work or selling drugs. And when they could take a break for a bite to eat and hang out with friends, they inevitably found

themselves at Compton, which was open 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, the management at Comptons did not like this. I don't know what they expected to happen when they opened a restaurant in a red light district, but okay, and employees routinely called the police to clear the place out. Thanks to that, drag queens were frequently harassed and arrested, often for violating Section 240.35 subdivision 4 of the California Penal Code, quote, being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains, or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked. After the raid, drag queens would leave, trickle back in, and then the cycle would start all over. And one morning in August of 1966, a Compton's employee called the police to again get the drag queens out. This time, though, when the police arrived and an officer grabbed one of the drag queens,

she responded by throwing a cup of coffee in his face. Good. With that one action, the restaurant erupted into complete pandemonium. Patrons threw plates, salt and pepper shakers, and furniture, smashing the front plate glass window into smithereens. Some drag queens whacked police officers with their purses, high-heeled shoes, or the fists. When the police started to make arrests, the fighting spilled out under the street, the drag queens shattered the windows of a police car, lit a new stand on fire, and fought tooth and nail,

as police tried to load them into paddy wagons. The riots continued on the next night and into the early morning hours as a large crowd gathered to pick it outside of Comptons. By the end of the protest, the newly installed plate glass windows had been shattered again, right? Good, fuck them,

for calling the cops on their own customers. This riot was not enough to start a social movement, though, and the raids went on. On New Year's Eve, 1967, patrons gathered at the Black Cat Tavern, a gay bar in Los Angeles, to ring in 1968. Moments before the stroke of midnight,

the band began to play Old Lang Sign, and then the room burst into song and cheers. As the seconds ticked down to midnight, faces in the room swive swive swive-faces in the room swive towards each other for a New Year's Eve kiss, and then the beating started. Right when the men in the bar began to kiss, undercover LAPD officers pounced.

What a fucking bunch of creeps. This time, however, the officers did not stop at arrest. Instead, they beat numerous partygoers, including a bartender who had to be taken to the hospital for injuries. A fucking bunch of assholes. After news, the beatings got out, a local organization called Pride, personal rights in defense and education, began to organize a series of gay rights protests against police brutality. Pride was a much more radical group than the Madashin Society, but it was not as established. And they saw the Black Cat Tavern Raid as an opportunity to expand the young organization's visibility by distributing newsletters.

That was how Richard Mitch, oh, another Dick, who used the pseudonym, Dick Michaels to protect himself, and his friend Bill Rao, Learned of the organization, both men were especially interested in the newsletter. After joining Pride, Richard and Bill took over the communication side, and in September of 1967, re-branded it as the Los Angeles Advocate. Two years later, the newspaper was renamed The Advocate and distributed nationally, and today it is one of the most widely read queer magazines in the world. Meanwhile, other members of Pride were busy protesting what had happened at the Black Cat, marching, carrying signs, and chanting outside establishments were raised.

had taken place. And now the conservative-leaning, Matashin society started to think, did they need to adjust the way they were going about this? Was protesting messily better than trying to politely win acceptance? Meanwhile, in New York, the tides are turning, but not a good way. Though Mayor John Lindsay had ended the practice of police entrapment against gay men, his re-election campaign in the summer of 1969, big year, would see an acceleration of raids against gay bars. And why? Well, Lindsay hoped he would be seen as.

as a law and order candidate, someone who could guide New York City to the many turbulent counterculture social movements of the late 60s. Raiding gay bars was an easy way to make it seem like the city was maintaining public order. Also an easy way to needlessly be a small-minded asshole

and bully. In the summer of 69, the gay community would experience or queer community would experience another different kind of loss, the death of Judy Garland, the actress famous for playing Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, whose lifelong struggle with alcoholism, her unwillingness to give up

when her performances were getting panned, when her body was being shamed, when her contracts were being dropped, that had helped make her a gay icon, along with her dramatic flair, emotional depth, and spectacular stage presence that fit perfectly into the camp style and exaggerated theatrical aesthetic,

historically celebrated in queer culture. Judy's funeral would be held on June 27th, and many historical reports suggest it was another flashpoint moment where queer people allowed themselves to be authentic in public as they cried, comforted one another, told stories and sang. And some of them took refuge at the Stonewall Inn. When trans-activist

Sylvia Rivera heard about the funeral happening that day, she became, quote, completely hysterical. In her words, she felt that there was no one left to look up to. She'd been planning to stay home and light some candles as a vigil to one of her idols when her friend Tammy Novak called and, sounding more stone than usual, as Rivera recalled, begged Rivera to join her at Stonewall. At first, Rivera worried about whether that would be in good taste, but she quickly relented, popped a black beauty, a prescription amphetamine dye pill, and headed out, knowing that her friend and drag mother Martha P. Johnson would likely meet her at the bar at some point that night. As Rivera headed out, Seymour Pine was showing up for his shift as the deputy inspector

of the vice and gambling unit of the NYPD 6th precinct located in Greenwich Village, and Pine found out some interesting information. That day, the officers at the 6th precinct had received a tip about a mafia racket involving stolen European bonds, and that bars and clubs like the Stonewall in, were mixed up in this operation. In fact, the Stonewall was a front for a wide variety of illegal activities, including money laundering, gambling, drug dealing, processing, stolen goods, all of which the police knew about and all of which were crimes that bribes were supposed to cover. But the bribes did not keep the cops away all the time, as I mentioned earlier. In fact, because they knew about this illegal activity, there were often plainclosed officers inside the Stonewall. And so, with that tip in mind, the officers were on the lookout that night.

two plain-closed women were posing as lesbians while two plain-closed men, maybe one of them was NYPD Sergeant John, tough on cock-rock, were posing as gay men. Seymour Pine and his partner, Detective Charles Smith, were across the street from the bar in Christopher Street Park,

waiting for the signal from the plain-closed cops that meant it was time to go in. But the signal never came. Were the officers in trouble? Had they forgotten what to do? Unsure, Pine and Smith decided to go in themselves. At 1.20 a.m. on June 28, the officers entered the stonewall in.

When they went in, they expected the patrons to obediently line up and march out per usual. As he entered, Seymour Pine, gave his normal opening line, police were taking the place. Right on cue, the music was turned off and the main lights were turned on. Approximately 200 people were in the bar that night. Some of them who knew immediately what was going on, some of them who had never experienced a raid like this before. The ones who did not know what was going on stood there confused while the ones who did began to run for the doors and the windows in the bathrooms. police quickly borrowed the doors though, trapping everybody inside.

As Michael Fader, a patron who was there that night, remembered, things happened so fast, he kind of got caught not knowing. All of a sudden, there were police there, and we were told to get in lines and to have our identification ready to be led out of the bar. And that was exactly what the police expected. Would happen, but it did not go as planned.

The women immediately refused to go with the officers, while the male patrons refused to give over their IDs. Not knowing what to do, the police decided to take everybody to the police day, though they would separate those they suspected of cross-dressing first and heard them into the back of the bar. That took a little time,

and as the process dragged on, the discomfort in the air got thicker and thicker and patrons glimpsed some of the officers groping the lesbians while frisking them those dirty motherfuckers. Now things were even more uncomfortable. As some of the police continued to frisk and grope patrons,

other officers moved to check out the bar's liquor stash. The plan was to put the alcohol in the patrol wagons waiting outside, 28 cases of beer and 19 bottles of hard liquor. The problem was the patrol wagons were not there. Police made the bar goers wait for 15 minutes while they sorted it all out. At this point, some of the people who were not arrested were allowed to leave, and they walked out the front door.

But then they didn't go anywhere. Those patrons stuck around on the sidewalk, and a crowd began to gather in front of the stone wall, swelling to about 100 to 150 people. More people joined, as police hauled people out to release them, and some of them mock saluted the police now, as they were released, drawing laughter and applause from the still growing crowd.

By the time the first patrol car arrived, the crowd had swelled to at least 10 times the number of people that were inside the bar. Officers had to fight through as they began escorting mafia members into the wagon. Next, regular employees were marched into the wagon, but the police had to stop because the first wagon was full and a second still had not arrived.

At this point, a bystander shouted gay power. And someone began singing, we shall overcome. The crowd laughed, though it was clear that they were fucking angry, too. For a moment, everything teetered on a needle's edge. Would the crowd disband? Would the raid continue as usual? As the crowd laughed and grumbled, there was a whack. An officer had shoved a drag queen,

who responded by hitting him on the head with her purse. As the cop launched at the performer with his club, the crowd started to boo. Pennings, then beer bottles, were now thrown at the wagon as a rumor spread to the crowd that patrons still inside the bar were being beaten. And then there was seemingly some confirmation of this rumor. As the crowd watched, a lesbian woman was forcibly,

arrested and handcuffed. She was fighting back, fighting like hell, being hit, then dragged to the front of the stonewall in, then over to the paddy wagon, and then somehow she escaped. The police captured her again. Now they dragged her back to the paddy wagon. She again fought. She slipped away again. This happened, according to account, several times over the course of about 10 minutes. Finally, when she screamed that her handcuffs were too tight, an officer clubbed her in the fucking head with his nightstick. So who was this woman? Lucifina incarnate, motherfuckers. Hey, Lucifina. Maybe. Probably. We actually don't know her identity for sure.

She's known today only as the Stonewall lesbian. Some sources think that she was Stormy De Lavery, a well-known drag performer who had been born in New Orleans to a wealthy white man and his black maid, a woman sometimes referred to as the Rosa Parks of the gay community. When she was still a teenager, Stormy left school to join the Ringling Brother Circus, where she had jumped horses and rode side saddle.

After a couple of injuries, she joined a mixed-race drag troupe, called the Jewel Box Review, dressed as a man, while the others who were all men performed as women. The group toured regularly in venues like the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. And Stormy was known for her deep voice,

jazz-inspired rhythm, and gentlemanly persona. Most, though, seemed to doubt it was Stormy, who only came forward as the Stonewall lesbian in 2008, 39 years after Stonewall. They say that if Stormy had been there, she would have been instantly recognizable as a celebrity.

So who knows? Back to the moment when the cops were finally dragging her toward the car, this Stonewall lesbian. Even though her head was bleeding, the woman, whoever she was, kept fighting. Finally, she looked squarely at a bunch of people in the crowd and shouted,

why don't you guys do something? And the crowd did. That was the match, lighten the fuel moment. They fucking exploded. Literally, every single person burst into flames and burned down the entire block. No, figuratively. People started pulling the cobblestones from around parking meters and trees, throwing them, breaking windows.

The people have been handcuffed and put in the wagon, promptly escaped, ran off. Some people tried to overturn the fucking police car. In response, a police car sped away, much to the chagrin of Inspector Pines. who urged them to come back quickly. And now all this chaos was drawing more people who yelled to ask what was going on. Someone declared that the bar had been raided because they didn't pay off the cops,

referring to the mafia. Someone else shouted, let's pay them off. As coins, beer cans, glass bottles flew towards the cops. The officers looked around for anything they could use in return and found a construction site a little ways away with a stack of bricks.

The cops now launched the bricks back of the crowd, managing to disperse some of them. But they were outnumbered by somewhere between five and six hundred people now. Five hundred and six hundred people. Now the cops just decided to grab who they could. One of the people they grabbed was a man named Dave Van Runk. Van Runk was a folk singer, Greenwich Village resident,

who had participated in the Beatnik riot in Washington Square Park earlier that decade after folk music was banned by the New York City Park Commission. In 1969, Van Runk lived at 190 Waverly Place, a block away from the Stonewall Inn, and his apartment was a gathering place for up-and-coming folk stars like Bob Dylan. He has been referred to as the Mayor of the Mayor of the Mayor of the City of the of McDougal Street. The night of the Stonewall Inn,

the night it was raided. Van Ronk was at a nearby bar called the Lion's Head Tavern. As he left, he saw the commotion, and in his own words, I was passing by and saw what was going down, and I figured they can't have a riot without me.

Van Ronk was not gay, but he had first-hand experience with police violence, both at the beat Nick Wright, and at various anti-war demonstrations. As far as I was concerned, said Van Runk, anybody who would stand against the cops

was all right with me, and that's why I stayed in. every time he turned around, the cops were pulling some outrage or another. Van Runk would be the first of 13 people arrested that night. But for every person the cops arrested, there were dozens more on the street shouting and throwing things. And without any police cars, it wasn't like the police could take them anywhere. So what would the officers do?

They decided to go back inside the bar with the folks they'd arrested. For a moment, it seemed like the police had made the right call, getting out of the throng for their safety. But then the rioters started to come for them, started to break in. Garbage cans, bottles, rocks, actual garbage, you know, bricks, hurled at the building, breaking the windows. Witnesses would later say that so-called flame queens, hustlers,

gay street kids, the most outcast people in the gay community, were the ones responsible for the first volley of projectiles aimed at the building. In addition, they pulled a parking meter from the concrete and used as a battering ram to break in. Well, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once wisely, said, a riot is the language

of the unheard. And it is so true, keep refusing to give people a voice, and eventually they will choose violence rather than stay silenced. Suddenly there was fire. The mob lit garbage on fire, stuffed it through broken windows, filling the dim room with smoke.

Police quickly went to grab the fire hose, hoping to douse the fire and repel the protesters, but the hose had no water pressure. By this point, the crowd was almost inside. Fist broke through the plywood coverings and the windows, and the police quickly unholstered their pistols, threw open the front door,

threatening to shoot if they came any closer. As that happened, someone scored a lighter fluid into the bar. As it was lit and the police took aim, sirens were heard and fire trucks arrived. But the fire trucks were not the only ones on their way. Reinforcements were arriving for the police, too. The tactical patrol force, or TPF, had been formed in 1959,

decade earlier, as an experimental squad mostly to contain street crimes like muggings and robberies. The NYPD viewed the TPF as part of the city's larger strategic plan to quash the kind of general unrest that sometimes seems endless in a big city. 1960s saw a lot of unrest, not disorganized crime, but deliberate protests

in the name of civil rights, anti-war sentiment, gay rights, queer rights, feminism, and the TPF was essentially the ones who dealt with the protesters by any means necessary. In order to qualify for the TPF, officers had to meet very specific standards. For starters, first, they had to be total fucking assholes who did not care about social justice or marginalized communities whatsoever. None of that woke DEI bullshit.

Second, they had to have tiny fucking dicks and the rage that often comes with that. Third, they had to have very emotionally distant and or physically abusive fathers who never showed them love or fully approved to them no matter what they did. For real now. They had to be young and tough. The average age of TPF officers was 24, most of them at least six feet tall. Military experience, a big plus in many ways. The TPF was more like a military operation than an ordinary police squad. And overwhelmingly, TPF officers were white and conservative, which did not endear them to a politically active community of color in the 1960s.

and when the TPF arrived at Stonewall, the message was clear. It was time for the protesters to get the fuck out. Bob Kohler, a gay activist who was walking his dog by the Stonewall that night, saw the TPF arrive, he said, I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over. The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been because everybody else had rioted.

But the fairies were not supposed to write. No group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill. When they showed up to the Stonewall Inn, TPP officers were dressed in full-on riot gear. Helmets, body shields, nightsticks. They began swinging those nightsticks of people,

often going for headshots. That actually had a name. It was called braining, a tactic to temporarily stun someone or knock them unconscious, which usually entailed concussions, skull fractures, sometimes death. Whoever was not knocked unconscious

will be quickly arrested. With larger numbers now, police detain anyone they could and put them in patrol wagons to go to jail. Though Inspector Pine would later recall that, quote, fights erupted with the transvestites who would not go into the patrol wagon. His recollection was corroborated by another witness,

someone across the street who said, all I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously. And good for them. Also, a more appropriate term for that is now cross-dresser, or transgender or trans if they actually identify as the other gender. As the crowd kept fighting, the NYPD and TPF lined up in a V and began to descend upon the protesters.

usually this would cause riders to retreat, but this time they didn't. Instead, they scattered like mice, avoiding the swinging nightsticks. They ran behind the wedge formation and threw bottles, coins, and other objects at the police. When the police reversed formation,

they found themselves facing multiple kicklines of cross-dressers mimicking the Rockettes from Radio City Music Hall. Seriously, I watched some videos from people who were there. This is real. Sophie Evans found the same thing in her research.

In loud mocking voices, to the tune of the old vaudeville song of Tara-rah, Boom Dea, which I guess was the then popular Howdy Doody Show theme song, they began to sing. We are the stone wall girls. We wear our hair in curls. We wear our dungarees above our Nellinies. Nellie in this case meant feminine.

I didn't have the melody right either. Similar to other slurs like Sissy, often used derogatorily. One person who was there said the last two lines he and his crew sung were, We don't wear underwear to show her pubic hair. This level of coordinated mockery, fantastic. Chef's Kiss. The fact that the protesters were lining up and singing at all was shocking to the police, and their surprise gave the rioters the upper hand momentarily.

But the TPF was still better, organized, stronger, and equipped with real weapons, and they managed to drive them back, swinging their nightsticks and scattering the protesters through the village's maze-like streets. Or did they? Craig Rodwell reported watching police chase participants through the crooked streets, only to then see them reappear around the next corner behind the police, chasing them back. Also, members of the mob stopped cars. over turning one to block Christopher Street, Jack Nichols, and Liz Clark in their column printed in Screw, declared that massive crowds of angry protesters chased the police for blocks screaming, catch them.

Some real Scooby-Doo shit. By 4 a.m., the streets were mostly clear. Many of the people who have been in the crowd now gathered on stoop, sir at Christopher Park, dazed and struggling to comprehend what they had just seen. Nobody knew what had happened. They couldn't figure out if the pushback against the police had been planned by some group, or if it had been an organic expression. of decades of pent-up rage. As they struggled to figure out, the whole neighborhood was eerily quiet.

There was also electricity in the air. Thirteen people have been arrested. Some in the crowd have been hospitalized, and four police officers have been injured. Almost everything in the Stonewall Inn have been broken. Floors lit it with smashed payphones, toilets, mirrors, jukebox, cigarette machines. During the day of Saturday, June 28th,

people from all over the city, most members of the queer community came to stare at the burned and blackened Stonewall Inn. graffiti appeared in the walls of the bar, declaring drag power, they invaded our rights, support gay power, legalized gay bars, along with accusations of police looting and questions as to whether or not the bar would be open that night. Seymour Pine, for one, hoped it would not be.

He planned to finish the raid of the bar that night, dismantling everything and closing it for good, but that would not happen. Somehow the bar did open the second night, you know, the night after this, despite his busted condition and it drew a fresh crowd of rioters. many of them were the same people who had been at the riot the night before. Some of them were known as police provocateurs, curious bystanders, or even tourists. All these different kinds of people were amazed by what they saw. Men openly embracing other men, women openly embracing other women.

As one witness described it, we were just out. We were in the streets. Now instead of hundreds, thousands of people would allegedly crowd the village's narrow cramped streets. How beautiful! The throng surrounded buses and cars harassing the occupants, unless they either admitted they were gay or indicated their support for their demonstrators, right? Admitted they were gay or queer. And then Marsha P. Johnson arrived.

And who's Marcia? A very important figure in the history of transgender rights, sometimes known as the saint of Christopher Street. Marsha born August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, one of seven children. Her father, Malcolm Michael Sr., worked at the General Motors factory. Her mother, Alberta Clairborne, cleaned houses for a living. Every week, her family attended services at a local African Methodist Episcopal Church, On the surface, Marcia, her siblings and her parents look like a typical African-American family in the 1940s and 50s. That was until Marcia born Malcolm Michaels Jr. began to wear dresses.

The boys in the neighborhood bullied her relentlessly enough to make Marcia stop wearing girls' clothing for a time. Adults assumed she was gay. And they made it clear that they did not approve. Her mother once said to Marcia that being homosexual was, quote, lower than a dog. Marsha finally stopped wearing dresses after she was raped by an older boy. Fuck. Also planned to get out and live her life. on her own terms as soon as she could. After graduating in 1963, she promptly left for New York City

with 15 bucks in a bag of clothes. In the city, she first began to go by Marsha. Actually, she initially called herself Black Marsha, then Marsha P. Johnson after Howard Johnson's restaurant in Times Square. Whenever she was asked what the P stood for, she would reply, pay it no mind. All right, Marcia. Finding her new identity was straightforward. Marcia knew who she wanted to be, had known since she was a little kid, but founding housing was harder. And she was perpetually. on the streets, sometimes spent on a night or two with her friend Randy Wicker. Other times, she slept under the tables at the flower market at 28th Street. To make money, Marcia started to perform and drag, but that could get expensive quickly, so she had to get creative. Shopping

at thrift stores, picking up discarded flowers from the flower market to make crowns and garlands, which quickly became her signature to look. Despite her cheerful appearance, Marcia struggled. Like many of us, she was complex, not always warm and playful, she struggled with her mental health was arrested multiple times, would offer suffer from psychotic breaks that required hospitalization throughout her life. She's even banned from a number of gay bars throughout the city one time or another. And that brings us to the Stonewall Inn. Some say Marcia was celebrating her birthday on the first night of the right, even though her birthday was not for a few months away. Was she celebrating something else? Maybe the legacy of Judy Garland. What most know is that she

threw something. Some say it was a shot glass. The shot glass heard round the world, as some would dub it. Others say she threw a brick or jumped on top of it. Other say she threw a brick or jumped on of a car, but Marcia herself would say that she didn't arrive until 2 a.m. After the riot was already in full swing. On the second night, though, she got there early, and she started to climb a lamppost with something heavy looking. Soon, the crowd got a good look at her. She was holding a heavy bag, leaning over the hood of a police car. Then she dropped it, and the windshield shattered. Boom, motherfuckers. Shots fired. In the early morning hours of June 29, 1969,

still the second night of the riots, activist Martha Shelley and Marty Robinson stood, made speeches from the front door of the Stonewall Inn. As they spoke, fires burned in garbage cans throughout the neighborhood. More than 100 police officers from the 5th, 6th, and 9th precincts tried to maintain order until the TPF arrived around 2 a.m. Like the night before, there were more kicklines. As Danny Garvin would observe from his friend's apartment across the street, quote, I saw a bunch of guys on one side and the cops, with their feet spread apart and holding their billy club straight out. And these queens all of a sudden rolled up their pant legs into knickers, and they stood in front of the cops.

There must have been about 10 cops one way, about 20 queens on the other side. they all put their arms around one another, started forming a kickline, and the cops just charged with the nightsticks and started smacking them in the heads, hitting people, putting them into the cars. I just can't even get that sight out of my mind. That kick line, which I guess was a spoof

on their machismo, making fun of their authority. Yeah, I think that's when I felt rage because people were getting smashed with bats and for what? A kick line? Yep. I still believe, by the way, that there are a lot of noble cops out there. That, when done correctly, law enforcement is truly one of the most noble

professions there is, and I have the utmost respect for so many law enforcement officers who risked their lives to do so. I have personally met or been friends with many. But the officers, these kinds of officers. The officers that charge and beat those protesters that night? Fuck them. I hope on some other night, they were the ones getting their asses fucking beat. I hope they got sent to prison themselves. Got fucking brutalized in there. With great power comes great responsibility to not be a cunt, or at least you should. Being a crooked cop, about one of the lowest of the low, in my opinion. The second night, the protesters were more prepared to fight back. And when police captured a rioter, the crowd would surge ahead and pulled them away from law enforcement.

By four in the morning, though, things had quieted down once again. By Monday, June 30th, things in Greenwich Village were calm. Some of that was thanks to some rain that would continue throughout the next day, Tuesday. When the rain poured down, Craig Rodwell and his partner, Fred Sargent, took the opportunity to get the word out about what had happened Stonewall, what the community now needed to do. Indeed, there had been some press coverage of what had happened, but none of it really discussed the magnitude of the event.

The New York Times ran two stories about the Stonewall riots, but both buried deep within their metro section. One of them titled Four Policeman Hurt and Village Raid read, Hundreds of Young Men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that the police said was well known for its homosexual clientele. The young men threw bricks, bottles, garbage, pennies, and a parking meter at the policeman, who had a search warrant authorizing them investigating reports that liquor was sold illegally at the bar. on Monday, June 30th, 1969, the New York Times printed a follow-up story, another blink and you miss it piece of coverage that focused on the rowdiness of the crowd.

From this, it was clear who had the press's sympathy. So Craig and Fred decided to go for some DIY press coverage. They personally distributed 5,000 leaflets that called for queer people to own their own establishments, for a boycott of Stonewall and other mafia-owned bars, and for the public to put pressure on the city government to investigate the raids. Fuck yeah. But not everybody in the queer community thought the Stonewall Rights was a good thing. To many older homosexual men, especially many members of the Matashian society,

the display of violence and effeminate behavior felt embarrassing after they had worked for years, sometimes even decades, to convince people that gays were, quote, respectable. Randy Wicker, who had marched in the first gay picket lines before the White House in 1965, said, quote, screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I had wanted people to think about homosexuals, that we were a bunch of dress. drag queens in the village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap. On Wednesday, July 2nd, some more media coverage seemed to back the Mattachine Society's view up.

Sheridan Square this weekend, wrote reporter Lucian Truscott for the village voice, looked like something from a William Burroughs novel as the sudden specter of gay power erected its brazen head and spat out of fairy tale, the likes of which the area has never seen. The forces of faggotry spurred by a Friday night raid on one of the city's largest, most popular and longest-lived gay bars rallied Saturday night in an unprecedented protest against the raid and continued Sunday night to assert presence, possibility, and pride. Meanwhile, for the New York Daily News, Jerry Lisker wrote,

Last weekend, the Queen's at turn commando and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted tactical patrol force. Queen power reared its bleached blonde head and revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. Queens, princesses, and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could lay their polished manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers,

lipstick tubes, and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants. So, not cool. On the day the Village Voice article was published, this fucking dismissive piece, a crowd of, you know, insulting,

a crowd of angry protesters marched down Christopher Street to the Village Voices' offices threatening to fucking burn them down for their shitty hot take on the nature of the writing. Once more, the tactical patrol force showed up. A street fight ensued between police and demonstrators. Shops were looted by some opportunists, scores of people were injured, and five people were arrested. But still, word was getting out that the queer community was fighting the police and seemingly

holding their own. Indeed, the mob of people that stormed the village voice now included other protesting groups that had been unsuccessful in their confrontations with the police and wanted to learn the Stonewall Riders' techniques. By the end of the confrontation, which lasted about an hour, it was clear that the tides were turning, even if they weren't turning as fast as some of the protesters hoped. As described by one witness, the word is out, Christopher Street shall be liberated. But all of this presented a conundrum. What were gay advocacy groups supposed to do now? They didn't want to advocate for lawlessness and violence, but at the same time, it was clear that dressing in your Sunday best and peacefully protesting on a designated day wasn't getting shit done.

That question was particularly relevant to the upcoming weeks. July 4th, 1969 was supposed to be the next annual reminder in Philadelphia, but most activists felt that compared to the to the Stonewall rights, the annual reminders had run their course. They weren't that effective. They didn't want to wear traditional outfits and picket quietly. They wanted to stand up for themselves. Ultimately, leaders decided to go forward with the annual reminder,

though, and protesters reluctantly agreed to follow the dress code and remained silent during the picket, well, most protesters. Not everybody followed these directives. For a moment, the protest was silent, respectful, just like it always had been. But then two women stepped out of the single-file

line and held hands, which was a violation of the Medellin Society's demonstration guidelines. Frank Camany, again the man sometimes referred to as the father of America's gay rights movement, who was participating, was furious. But Craig Rodwell spoke up for the women, encouraged other couples to hold hands, too, and soon the whole thing devolved into one big argument. That annual reminder got more attention, though, than the ones that had preceded it. As participant, Lily Vincennes would remember, it was clear that things were changing. People who had felt depressed now felt empowered.

After the March, Craig Rodwell returned to New York City to determine determined, excuse me, to change the established quiet, meek ways of trying to get attention. One of his first priorities was planning Christopher Street Liberation Day, and he wanted the Madasheen Society to support his new plan. But the Madagin Society didn't exactly know how it was going to navigate the post-Stonewall world. On July 9th, more than 100 people showed up to a Madasheen Society meeting. All of them wanted to know, how would the group move forward? How would gay rights move forward? Its leaders stuck to their old script. Educate heterosexual people. act respectively, their version of what they thought that was,

and worked towards acceptance, not radicalism. But the group, the majority of the people there, not having that. When a Mattachine officer suggested an amicable and sweet candlelight vigil demonstration, a man in the audience fumed and shouted, sweet? Bullshit! That's the role society has been forcing these queens to play.

One person proposed the formation of a new group called the Gay Liberation Front, and the crowd went nuts. That was the death knell for the Madashine Society, and it would be their last official meeting in New York. The Gay Liberation Front, aka the GLF, would take over. Unlike the Matashian Society, the GLF was not a single-issue group. In addition to fighting for queer rights, they opposed other social inequities, such as racism, class oppression, sexism, oppression of third-world countries.

Many of their members also active in the anti-war movement, and the group actively supported the Black Panther Party. Within six months, the Stonewall riots, the new GLF activists started a citywide newspaper called Gay. Meanwhile, they also organized dances and clothing drives, but their broad focus on all of society's ills will distract from the core mission of queer liberation. For one example, when Bob Kohler,

that guy who had been walking his dog past a stonewall inn on the night of the riot, asked for clothes and money to help the homeless youth who had participated in the riots the club's membership did not agree or ask him to write a proposal. To see if it was feasible, they just droned on and on about the downfall of capitalism. By the fall of 1969, some GLF members were unhappy,

with the way that the group was being run. They were trying to do too much shit at once. At least four members, Arthur Evans, Jim Owls, Arthur Bell, and Marty Robinson began talking about breaking away and forming their own group. On December 21st, 1969, a group of about 20 people met in Arthur Bell's apartment, and together they formed the Gay Activist Alliance, GAA,

which focused solely on gay and lesbian rights. Their constitution began, we as liberated homosexual activists demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings. And this was important. because the raids had not stopped after Stonewall. While the Stonewall in itself was no longer functioned as a bar,

it was up for rent by October 1969, there were always more gay bars to target. Indeed, in March of 1970, deputy inspector Seymour Pine raided the Zodiac and 17 Barrow Street, both gay clubs, 17 Barrow Street. Soon after that, the police raided the snake pit, an after-hours club with no liquor license

and arrested 167 people there. One of them was Diego Villales, an Argentinian national so frightened that he might be deported, that he might also be outed that he tried to escape the police precinct by jumping out of a two-story window, and he fell and impaled himself on a 14-inch spiked fence. Holy shit. Miraculously, he survived while he was in the hospital.

Hundreds of members of the queer community held a death vigil protest outside the hospital. Also, GAA members organized a march from Christopher Park to the sixth precinct in which hundreds of gay men and lesbians and liberal sympathize peacefully confronted the TPF. They also sponsored a letter-writing campaign to Mayor Lindsay, in which the Greenwich Village Democratic Party and Congressman Ed Koch sent pleas to end raids on gay bars. It felt like change, positive change might finally be in the air. June 28, 1970 marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

To commemorate the events of the previous year, activists especially Craig Rodwell, organized Christopher Street Liberation Day in New York City. widely recognized today as the first gay pride march in U.S. history. Pretty fucking cool. The New York March began on Christopher Street right outside the side of the Stonewall Inn and stretched for 51 blocks to Central Park. Thousands participated, many carrying signs and banners openly identifying themselves as gay or lesbian, including Marsha P. Johnson, who was now a member of both the GLF and the GAA,

Fuck Yeah, bro. Although organizers only received the parade permit shortly before the march began, and participants encountered relatively little resistance from onlookers. The Times were a changing. One New York Times account noted, there was little open animosity and some bystanders applauded when a tall pretty girl carrying a sign, I'm a lesbian, walked by.

Simultaneous marches also took place in Los Angeles in Chicago, signaling the emergence of a coordinated national movement for gay liberation. One made up with thousands of collaborating gay rights organizations. That was something that Frank Comedy had never thought possible, and he slowly realized that it was all thanks to the stonework. riots that he had disagreed with so much, you know, when they actually happened. As he put it, by the time of Stonewall, we had 50 to 60 gay groups in the country a year later. There were at least 1,500.

By two years later, to the extent that a count could even be made, it was 2,500. Similarly, Randy Wicker went back on his previous belief that there was something disgusting or unseemly about how the Stonewall rights had gone down, later describing his distaste as one of the greatest mistakes of my life. Meanwhile, the GAA kept working. In 1971, the group rented a firehouse in New York City's Soho neighborhood, and that firehouse became the GAA's headquarters. Compared to the GLF, the GA used more conventional methods to achieve change. They fought to overturn discriminatory laws.

They worked to hold politicians accountable to the queer community. However, the GAA, probably best known for what became known as the Zap, a direct confrontation with a public figure regarding queer rights, designed to embarrass a political figure or celebrity and gain media attention. One of the GA's early zaps targeted New York City Mayor John Lindsay, who refused to meet with the GAA and take an active stance on queer rights issues, largely because he feared it would hurt his political career, of course. So the GAA responded by zapping that motherfucker.

On opening night of the 1970 metropolitan opera season, members of the GAA infiltrated the opera house, shouted gay rights chants as Lindsay and his wife entered the building. Seeing how effective the GAA was at getting people's attention, other gay activist groups, began to also use this non-violent political tactic, queer group to. activist Mark Siegel, who witnessed the raid and uprising at the Stonewall Inn, became known for his television apps. Some of his targets include the Tonight Show, excuse me, starring Johnny Carson, and the Mike Douglas show.

His most famous app took place on December 11th, 1973, on CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Mark and a friend lied their way into the CBS television studio. While Walter Cronkite was anchoring the live broadcast, Mark ran in front of the TV camera, holding a big sign that said, gays, protest, CBS, prejudice. Walter Cronkai kept his composure and later to his credit met with Mark Siegel and arranged meetings with CBS's top management to discuss news coverage of gay issues and queer issues. Hell yeah. And so on May 6, 1974, CBS Evening News and Walter Cronkite broadcast a new segment about gay rights. There were other important zapping successes as well thanks to a zap at the American Psychiatric Association Conference in 1970.

In December of 73, the APA voted unanimously to remove homosexual. as a mental illness classification from the DSM. And more change was coming. In January of 1974, Kathy Kozichenko, Kosochenko, excuse me, became the first openly homosexual American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council.

Three years later, Harvey Milk, opened the gay man who won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He would use his position to introduce legislation that protected gays and lesbians from being fired from their jobs. He ran a successful campaign against proper Opposition 6, an initiative that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers. Unfortunately, that would make Harvey a target. And on November 27, 1978, Harvey Milk, and progressive mayor, George Moscone, were both assassinated.

Shockingly, the man charged with the killings was not some wild-eyed lunatic, as Time Magazine later wrote, but former city supervisor Daniel James White. Earlier that month, White had resigned his post on the board of supervisors, citing his inability to support his family on the position's salary of $9,600. $500. Five days later, though, changed his mind and wanted his job back. Mosconi, a popular progressive mayor, initially agreed, but as it turned out, it's not that easy to rescind a resignation, particularly one for public office. Mosconi would either have to reappoint White or find someone else, and in the meantime, Harvey Milk got involved. The progressive milk, along with others on the liberal side, lobbied against giving White, who was a conservative, his seatback, and these voices eventually won the mayor over.

On November 27th, Moscone was slated to announce that he was appointing a milk-based, moderate liberal Don Horanze to White's old seat. That information made its way back to White, who fucking snapped. He arrived at City Hall the next morning with a 38 caliber revolver. To avoid metal detectors, he snuck it in through the basement window. He then found it, barged into the mayor's office. The two men briefly talked before three shots rang out. Moscone's aides assumed it was a car back firing or shot on the street,

so no one intervened, as White then breathed out of the mayor's office en route to Milk's office. Harvey, may I see you for a minute? White allegedly asked. And then after a brief chat, he fired his gun again. In the end, White was only convicted on two counts of voluntary manslaughter, and his lenient seven-year sense for fuck's sake, spurred San Franciscans, especially members of the city's queer community, to riot in May of 79.

Before moving on, to close out this little story, a little side quest, some good news, two years after White was paroled for two brazen murders, he murdered himself. While in general, I do not add, advocate for suicide in cases where there was such a travity, a travesty, excuse me, of justice as this, I do appreciate an asshole taking himself out when the justice system has failed to do so. Back to queer rights now. On May 22nd, 1979, approximately 10,000 people gathered on San Francisco's

Castro and Market Streets to commemorate what would have been Milk's 49th birthday. That turnout galvanized more people to get involved. And on October 14, 1979, an estimated 75,000 people came to the national march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights demanding equal civil rights for gay people. Year later, on July 8, 1980, they would get what they wanted. On that day, the Democratic Rules Committee officially stated that it would not discriminate against homosexuals. As they're at their national convention, which began on August 11th, the Democrats would become the first major political party to endorse a gay rights platform, and then various

states would follow suit. 1982, Wisconsin would become the first U.S. state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It would take it to the 1990s, though, for the federal government to roll back some of that McCarthy-era discrimination. Finally, in December of 93, the Department of Defense would prohibit the U.S. military from borrowing applicants from service based on sexual orientation. Applicants shall not be asked or required to reveal whether they are homosexual. State of the new policy, which still forbade applicants from engaging in homosexual acts or from coming out. That policy would become known as don't ask, don't tell.

policy partially rolled back in a way by the Trump administration and their soulless fearmongering and scapegoating and othering of transgender, which has nothing to do with their moral stance and everything to do with political posturing. Political bullies targeting small outsider voting blocks, that'll probably sadly never fully go away. In 1996, in the case of Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court decided that Colorado Second Amendment, which denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination,

was unconstitutional calling them a special rights. And we could go back and forth through the slow legislative progress for gay rights in the U.S. literally decades of back and forth as cases crawled their way up to the Supreme Court, states passed legislation, and then walked it back. And finally, gay marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. But let's refocus on Stonewall. What happened to some of the people we've covered today?

Well, the 1973, Craig Rodwell, moved the Oscar Wild Memorial Bookshop out of the tiny store front at 291 Mercer Street to a larger space on the corner of Christopher Street and the aptly named Gay Street. He sold the bookstore in 1993, three months before he sadly died of stomach cancer. Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop remained open until 2009, when it then closed his doors permanently, but had a long run. Following year, 2010, Seymour Pine, that inspector who led the raid would die at the age 91. He had retired from the sixth precinct back in 1976. Before he died, he apologized to the queer community for leading that. raid. Better late than never. Frank Kameney would die in 2010 at the age 86 back in 71.

He would become the first openly gay candidate for Congress when he ran for the District of Columbia, although he did not get it. He spent much of the following decades challenging the military's ban on gay service members and speaking to closeted service members about the toll that living a fake life had taken on them. In 1980, Kameney even helped NSA linguist. Jamie Shoemaker became the first openly gay government employee after Shoemaker's superiors discovered his sexuality and attempted to persuade him to resign. Finally, on June 29, 2009, John Barry, director of the Office of Personnel Management,

formally apologized to Camany on behalf of the U.S. government. Barry, who has openly gave himself, presented Camany with the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the OPM's most prestigious award. And what about Marsha P. Johnson? Well, not good news here. In her later years, Marsha would be widely lauded as the woman who threw the first brick at Stonewall,

although we now know this is not true, since she didn't show up until well after the throwing started. that probably got confused with her dropping the heavy bag on the police car during the second night of the rights. Some historians argued that the growing emphasis on Johnson's role reflected a broader effort to recognize the contributions of transgender people, drag queens, homeless youth, and people of color in the uprising. As popular retelling to the Stonewall riots increasingly centered on white gay men and police conflict alone, figures like Johnson came to symbolize the wider and more diverse of queer community that participated in and shaped the rebellion. In any case, post Stonewall, Marsha would join a variety of gay rights organizations.

who advocated for her when she was arrested at various protests, as I mentioned. The same time, she and Sylvia Rivera led a group called Street Transvestites for Gay Power, Star, which organized protests demanding better treatment for transgender people. Johnson Rivera even also ran a shelter out of a trailer for about 20 homeless transgender youths, supporting these kids through begging and sometimes sex work. Damn, not of the kids themselves. But that came to an end when truck drivers removed the trailer, accidentally transporting one of the use all the way to fucking California in the process.

Marsha would then work to establish Star House, a version of the program that had actual apartments, but she often, as we mentioned, struggled with her mental health, excuse me, due in part to her frustration over the unwillingness of the broader queer community to recognize the unique needs of transgender people. She would spend most in 1980s performing with various theater groups, although she was hospitalized frequently for mental health issues. And then she disappeared. On July 2nd, 1992, soon after that year's pride rally, Johnson left Randy Wicker's apartment. At first, Wicker assumed that she had left for Los Angeles,

which she said she was going to do. But when he didn't hear from her, he filed a missing person's report or tried to, but the police wouldn't actually let him. Then on July 6, Marsha P. Johnson's body was discovered floating in the Hudson River. It was collected by two police boats, which then deposited it on the pavement nearby,

where it sadly remained for a short time, sometime, before being taken by a city corner. she was only 46. So what happened? Did she die by suicide? That's what the police ruled, though her friend and fellow activist Sylvia Rivera would doubt that, saying she and Johnson had made a pact to die together

when the time came. Others thought Johnson may have been suffering from a psychotic break and just tried to swim across a river. Randy Wicker thought his friend was murdered. And several other activists would confirm that Marcia had been chased by a group of homophobes on the night of July 4th. So fucking sad.

And now let's return to the core topic here. What happened to the Stonewall? Well, the gay bar named New Jimy's. Opened at the Stonewall site in May of 1990, bearing a plaque commemorating the site's history. The next year, New Jimies was renamed the Stonewall Inn, possibly to capitalize on the building's history, but it didn't work.

Now there were a lot more gay bars in the city, and the Stonewall Inn was never busier than 50 or 60 people on the best nights. In the late 90s, the space would be renovated, turned into a multi-floor nightclub. In 2000, the Stonewall Inn became a national historic landmark, but then that didn't help its business much either. Throughout the 2000, Stonewall's beverage suppliers were busy suing as operators, few patrons were showing up, and it seemed like the world had moved past the location of the Stonewall rights.

The owners could not justify paying the monthly rent, which had ballooned to $20,000 for a few people to walk in, look around and go, huh, cool, and then leave. So would the Stonewall survive? Around 2007, the bar was taken over by a businessman Bill Morgan, Tony DeSico, Kurt Kelly, along with the bar's first lesbian investor, Stacy Lentz, and they managed to keep it going. The bar was still not a gay hot spot, but, you know, it ran, mostly catered to tourists, city kids, what one source describes as bridge and tunnel gaze, but then came to the pandemic. With the bar, as most public places were closed, it seemed like the Stonewall's days were finally at an end, but luckily, crowdfunding managed to pay the rent while the Stonewall was closed, and the bar reopened in July 2020 with a limited capacity.

Soon a visitor center would go up next door, opening just two years ago, June 28, 2004, or 2024. The Stonewall is still open today, but still faces challenges. Like a recent one from the federal government, in February of this year, the federal government removed the pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument, replacing it with an American flag. This was in accordance with the Department of Interior's requirement for federally maintained park to fly only the American flag, the department's flag, and the prisoners of war flag. The backlash, the pride flag being removed from the Stonewall Inn was swift,

and numerous organizations sued the government. Fuck yeah. to restore it and that worked. And it went back up April of 26. Hail Nimrod. Some shit is worth fighting for. We can hope that that's the end of it, but it won't be. Ignorance and hate will forever have to be fought.

They're never fully eradicated. A huge thank you to everyone who did fight at Stonewall and at other riot or protest or sit-ins or sit-ins or sip-ins, you know, et cetera, for queer, but really just human rights. They say there ain't no rest for the wicked. I would argue there's less rest. for the good, which makes it that much more impressive to me when the good continue to stand up and fight. And now let's hop on out of that timeline.

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. The Stonewall riots. Do that story go how you expected it to? When we think of Stonewall, if you do think of it, it's criminally undertaught. We often hear the cultural myths that have been repeated so many times. They're almost like facts, you know, Marsha P. Johnson and the first brick, or how it was the very first gay rights protest in the U.S., there's even the myth, that it all started as an outpouring of agony after Judy Garland's funeral, and though that is potentially why some people were at the bar that night, that wasn't really a factor in what happened, the mythologizing even

leads the average person to think that the protesters won, that the city was liberated from bar rates, that queer rights and broad acceptance followed immediately afterwards, or that queer community, or that the queer community didn't have to deal with more discrimination as time went on, which they definitely did, especially during the AIDS epidemic. And homophobia has been on the rise again as far right radical Christian nationalism has also risen. So why do all these myths about Stonewall exist? Well, for one thing, there's just not a ton of documentation in an era before cell phone footage and ring cameras, before actual interviews with those who were there, you know, before they were conducted and posted on places like

YouTube. All people had to go on with their memories. Some saw Stonewell as a riot, others sought as a revolution, others saw it as a fun night out that happened to take a bad turn. Some remember their friend being there when they weren't. Others later inserted themselves into it. Some figures like the Stonewall lesbian were never conclusively identified while Marsha P. Johnson took a center stage and later retellings, even though she likely came late, very late to the first night. In Marcia's case, one of the reasons that her role was exaggerated was because it spoke

to how many trans women and drag queens participated that night, that Stonewall was not just about gay liberation, but queer liberation as a whole. But the other reason those misconceptions exist might be more fundamental to how the queer rights movement acted in the years afterwards. Stonewall was not the first queer riot, but it was the first one to be commemorated in a large-scale organized way. And instead of turning that commemoration

into a sad, solemn observance, activists turned it into something else. A celebration where people danced in the streets, sang and shouted joyfully, and simply were themselves in public. To set the blueprint for pride marches, to turn it into a movement, Stonewall had to become a narrative,

something that people could understand easily. That's why the first brick becomes so important. It gives the protesters a flashpoint moment. a second when everything shattered in the world was born anew. As we know, though, that wasn't really how it happened. Stonewall was not an organized protest, nor was it disorganized. Many activists were there, but the people who incited most of the action were the ones who had been mostly left behind by early attempts at organization, those who did not look respectable according to society's standards for how men and women should present queer people who were homeless and teenagers.

In reality, Stonewall was much more complex than its later retellings. like pretty much all historical events. And that is why it makes it worth diving into. And now, after all of that information, who, before jumping into some takeaways, a personal note for this episode. I will try to make it through this with dry eyes. We'll see.

Burying my uncle Paul Cummins back in 1995 when I was a senior in high school, left a big impression on me. Didn't even get his own tombstone. His cremation urn was buried in his grandmother's plot in Riggins, Idaho by just my father and me. no one else was there for it. This guy was one of the first babysitters I ever had.

He lived with us. My dad and mom and I, and then my little sister off and on for a few years when I was a little guy in Anchorage, Alaska, dressed me up for Halloween, turned me on to cool music like aha. And he was also gay, but born to the wrong family to be accepted.

Son of a zealot, a son of a Pentecostal doomsday hellfire and brimstone pastor, and his even more judgmental wife, unaccepted by his parents, Unaccepted by most of his brothers outside of my dad, he was an outcast. And he fell into hard drug use, fueled by shame and judgment, ended up living on the street during the height of the AIDS crisis, ended up doing sex work, got HIV.

HIV turned into AIDS. And this beautiful, funny, warm, and witty, stylish, caring man ended up dying in a San Francisco hospital bed, wasted down to nothing, a living, barely living skeleton who spent his final days with his mother at his side, his very unsupportive mother who did not nurture him or give him comfort in his final moments,

but instead judged him, begged him to repent who he was, to say he wasn't who he was, became so hysterical and harsh with him. She was nearly kicked out of the hospital, should have been kicked out. She tormented him until the very end, and how fucking tragic.

And wildly unnecessary, she could have just loved him. Everyone could have. They could have just loved him. They could have just let him be who he's born to be. It's so fucking easy to do that, to just love people.

So fuck her, and my grandpa forever for not doing that. they embodied that quote of There's no hate like Christian love And I know that a lot of Christians are not like that But some fucking are And shame on them Shame on all of them for that

I have no tolerance at this point in my life For that kind of hate Because there's no justification for it Religious or otherwise Two years ago I went to a service For one of my good friends from college Jose Garcia Toughest kid I knew from those days

The first to stand up for someone for being bullied A dude through a mean punch Wasn't afraid to get hit either Fucking tough dude Strongest guy I ever worked out with at the gym back then. Straight A student. Funny. Easily, the most handsome man out of our friend group.

We all wanted to be Jose. But Jose didn't want to be Jose. He came from a deeply Catholic family, came out after college, and they were ashamed of him, rejected him to some degree. Guys looked like a fucking model, made an awesome living in the medical field, lived in New York City, fell into hard drug use due to self-hate more than anything. It was just so shocking to so many people. He did not return a lot of my final text to him in his last years.

cut himself off from a lot of the people who cared about him, right? Just the self-loathing and then he died by suicide. His family could have just loved him. Could have just accepted him for who he was. It was so fucking easy to do. He was such a lovable guy. There's just no need for all this hate. You get angry when you see two dudes kissing on a TV or in public.

Get over it. Fuck you. Fuck you for not letting them love each other like you want to be loved. It makes you uncomfortable. Then go to therapy, you ignorant fuck. and I say that as somebody who was an ignorant fuck. Let them love. Let the transgender kid feel love.

The gay kid, the lesbian kid, the bisexual kid, all the queer kids and queer people. They're hurting nothing but the feelings, the fragile feelings and sensibilities of the ignorant. Full stop. Let me repeat that. They are hurting nothing but the fragile feelings and sensibilities of the ignorant. One of my best friends is gay. He and his partner are some of the best people I know. I truly love them.

Vacation with them. want to pour into my relationship with both of them, so much more. And I love them for who they are because they're fucking awesome, smart, strong, hardworking, silly, caring, empathetic, funny as fuck, compassionate, worldly, adventurous. And I hate that when we are all out in public together, they have to worry about being affectionate. Lindsay and I don't, but they do. Right? They don't want to bother anyone. Well, I want to bother the people who are bothered by them.

I want to cave their fucking heads in in moments. Just leave them alone. You know, it's just so easy to do. just let them be. If they make you uncomfortable, it isn't because there's something wrong with them. It's because there is something wrong with you. My daughter Monroe came out to us casually as a lesbian. A few years ago. She just graduated high school with honors, by the way, and so proud of her. Even more proud of her for refusing to be anything other than authentic. And I'm so grateful that I get to be the one who gets to be her dad.

Not somebody like my ignorance and small-minded and frankly hateful. They're both dead and I do not miss them, grandparents on my father's side. They would have hurt her so much. But me, I get the privilege of loving her. And I could not love her more. She is so smart, so evolved, so kind and funny and beautiful and fun loving and spontaneous and caring and motivated and so many things. And if you want to limit her rights, you are my fucking enemy. You are small. You are hateful. You are pathetic and sad. And she is so much bigger and better and stronger than you. Let her be. Love her. Love them all. So happy Pride Month, Meetsax. I have love for you.

I'm sorry that you were born into a world full of people who think being as strong is based on being scared of others and bullying them. Real strength is love. I'm sorry for any of you. They didn't have a dad to love you like I love Monroe. It is certainly not your fault. I wish you nothing but the grace to unapologetically unapologetically. be who you were born to be. And I got a big hug for you when I see you.

Hail Nimrod. And time now for what I imagine will be a wildly anticlimactic top five takeaways. Time shock. Top five takeaways. Who, number one. In the very early morning hours of June 28th, 1969, the NYPD, led by Sergeant John Tuff on Cockrock, Or Inspector Seymour Price, descended on the Stonewall Inn

for a routine raid of the mafia-owned establishment. The police thought the raid would take place as usual that everyone at the bar would line up, hand over their IDs and those arrested

would be taken to the police station. But that didn't happen. First, the crowd refused to hand over their IDs and while police sorted out the confusion and tried to get patrol cars

to come to the bar, a crowd gathered outside the stone wall. Man, emotions. It's a lot of emotion, of course. When a figure known as the Stonewall lesbian shouted at the crowd to do something,

they responded in full force throwing stones, cups and pennies at cops forced them back into the Stonewall in and even lighting the place on fucking fire. Number two, by far the most iconic moment of Stonewall riots were the kicklines, moments at which the TPF, which was basically the NYPDs,

riots suppressing force, tried to advance on the protesters and found themselves face to face with a rocket-style lineup of drag queens kicking and singing, I fucking love it, so does Luzafina. These moments showed that brutal force was being used against people who were just out having a good time,

celebrating themselves. their identities, their communities. And this would be absorbed into the first pride marches, first pride parades, which were commemorations of Stonewall. Number three, for years, gay activists, queer activists did not know how to get their message across to politicians. Was it better to dress conservatively and pick it as the Mattachine Society believed?

Should you educate people like the daughters of a bellitus tried to do? After Stonewall, this happened with the Gay Liberation Front Two, which tried to expand this messaging to fight classism and racism. But ultimately, was perhaps too broad. When it comes to starting a revolution, there are a lot of ideas out there, but ideas may matter less

than the day-to-day realities of the discrimination of minorities face. What we can say, though, is that when people get pushed far enough, they will eventually fight back. So stop fucking pushing them. Number four, the Stonewall Inn is still around today, though it's not really the seedy locale

it was when the mafia ran it. Indeed, the space at 51 and 53 Christopher Street has a long and fascinating history, dating back to when it was used as these stables for horses that would make deliveries, to Sacks Fifth Avenue. Later, when cars became more abundant,

it became Bonnie Stonewall Inn, by all accounts, a straight establishment that the name may have been a coded message to lesbians. In recent years, the Stonewall Inn has faced many challenges, high rents, the pandemic,

the bullshit with the pride flag, but it still managed to stick around as an important monument in the history of gay liberation, queer liberation, as a national historic landmark. Number five, new info. We talked a bit about how you can see

the pride flag outside Stonewall today. as well as in many other West Village establishments. But do you know who invented the Pride flag? Gilbert Baker, a Kansas native, who had served in the military before being dishonorably discharged for his sexuality designed the Pride flag in 1978,

after Harvey Milk's successful election. Gilbert's friends encouraged him to embrace the optimism of the moment and design a flag for the community, something that would be instantly recognizable, and he would. Some sources say Harvey Milk asked him to make the flag directly, but that's unclear. Gilbert thought about the design for a while, but couldn't come up with anything.

Then at a show at the Winterland Ballroom, Baker watched the crowd move around him. As he put it, dance fused us, magical and cleansing. We were all in a swirl of colors and light. It was like a rainbow. With that idea and a thousand bucks given to him by the Gay Freedom Day Parade Committee,

Gilbert created two 60 by 30-foot rainbow flags for the Gay Freedom Day Parade, June 25th, 1978. In his view, the colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet represented sexuality, life, healing, the sun, nature, art, harmony, and the spirit, respectively. After Milk's assassination, Gilbert went into business with Paramount Flag Company to make sure that Harvey's legacy would not be forgotten. The demand was so great that it was impossible for them to make a seven-color version of the flag so they settled on the six-color version that's still in use today. Time shock. Top five takeaways.

The Stonewall Rights have been sucked. You know, I could have stopped down, could have stopped recording when I got emotional, but I wanted to hear it. I'm trying to get better at that. I just think it's important. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins.

Thanks to Logan Keith helping to publish the episode, signing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thanks to Sophie for her kick-ass research. kickass, even though she had to say goodbye to her longtime fur baby Lila, rest in peace Lila, may Bo Jengles fine to protect you. Also, thanks to the all seen eyes, moderating the coldly curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over on the Time Suck Surbita and Bad Magic Surbett. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates.

Get your Time Sucker updates. First up, Neurodivergent Fitness Sucker. RIN. Send in a message to Bojangles at Timesuckpodcast.com. with a subject line of I have the answer you seek, Dan. They wrote, Hi, Dan, when listening to the Black Death episode, I found myself saying, make sense,

but Chloe's behavior. Then at the end, you revealed she's autistic. Ah, yes, it made sense to me because I'm diagnosed, I'm a diagnosed level one autistic. Then you began to question yourself. I'm here to tell you, Dan, question no more. I know my people. Almost everything you say in your podcast,

no matter how unhinged, I find myself saying, make sense. In fact, although I do not have a podcast, I do teach fitness on an app where I get to ramble on about whatever I want. I'm talking jokes, trivia, books, history lessons, abstract questions, crime, nerdy facts about anatomy, etc. Basically, I'm the fitness version of you.

I just do it while I'm riding a bike or lifting weights, but with less finesse, I'm sure, and cursing. So I instantly gravitated to your podcast the first time I heard it. I even referred to you when speaking to my husband as the autistic podcast guy who thinks like I do. He nods in recognition. Anyway, you are autistic. You're welcome.

Now you must choose your favorite spoon and describe it in detail. this is a thing I swear Look it up if you don't believe me I prefer small spoons With a smooth handle Metal or plastic Never wouldn't gag Three out of five stars

Apologies for the long email And all that jazz Don't change Because that would mean There is something wrong with us And there most definitely is But I think it's beautiful Rin

At ryn dot Tucker So at ryn dot Tukk ER if you want to see The Female Fitness Otis P-S I was Cumminslaw During the R Kelly episode I was working out my tiny apartment gym that nobody else ever goes to until this fateful day. I had my headphones off

and my phone speaker on because it was alone. Right when you started a peeing sheets rant, two guys walked in. I had to put down my weight, run to turn my phone off. They stood their eyes wide, shocked as I tried to explain it was about R. Kelly and you weren't crazy, nor I, and you were comedian who tell stories. I don't think they bought it. They started frequenting the gym at the same time as me and would always ask what I was listening to and laugh. So thanks for making me the weird gym girl. uh rin uh first off good on you for making workouts fun uh yeah checked it out and and for being disciplined enough to be both strong and ripped well done yeah you're you're beautiful and silly and stay in great shape and uh that's inspiring also uh i had never heard of the autism spoon when i told lindsay

uh she asked if i had any spoon preferences and immediately i was like well yeah i never vocalized it before or thought anything of it but i have strong preferences about a lot of stuff i just thought everybody did. Spoon-wise, I strongly prefer a medium-sized metal spoon, not too small to not be able to get enough food, you know, in my mouth with each bite to eat efficiently and take too long, but also not too big because then the metal touches my teeth, and I really fucking hate that. I also have zero interest in wooden utensils. They are not heavy, not balanced, feel too fragile like they could break and leave splinters in my mouth. I hate the way they feel when they touch my tongue, and I don't like the way they look. I like a heavy metal spoon, well-balanced, one without two deep of a bowl because then it takes too much work to get out the deepest parts of really viscous foods like Greek yogurt. Feels good to say all that. Thanks for the unofficial diagnosis makes you want to get tested even more someday. Next up, a completely insane German sack, Scott, wrote in with the subject line of, you're wrong, motherfucker, to the professor of the peculiar, I hope that that was enough to intrigue you. That title was enough, it was. Dan, because I think I have a

doozy for you. I've been listening to Time sucks in 2018, joined the space reptilian ranks last year, and I'm finally, excuse me, finally riding in with good reason. Like many before me, I want to say thank you for creating time suck, first and foremost. I am too, a knowledge vacuum. My family has left me behind at many a museum. As I read every sign painfully slowly while they wait at the exit, wait at the exit, for me to catch back up. Having this outlet to learn about a plethora of topics I am genuinely interested in with a fun irreverent twist has been amazing. Well, thank you.

As for the headline, in episode 507, the Lost City of Z, you question if the accordion has really soothe anybody. Well, I can 100% confirm that it can. My wife and I were blessed with our first space Newton March, as a parent yourself. I'm sure you can relate with the sheer desperation you can reach when your newborn baby is in the throes of a complete meltdown at 4 a.m. for an incomprehensible amount of consecutive nights. After about 40 minutes of heartbreaking crying, him, not me, I was willing to try anything. And I am not kidding. When I say I tried everything, food, different holds, different movements, different outfits, new diaper, lights off, lights on, skin to skin, no effect.

Someone that I'd tried music. Classical, nothing. Pop, nope, country, rock, rap, ediam, lullabies, musical, songs, and languages I didn't, I don't even speak. Nothing. Well, I was approaching the end of my music rope and said, fuck it, let's try polka. So with nothing to lose, I fired up the beer barrel polka, and that sweet, sweet accordion sound stopped my space news crying in its tracks. Not slowed down, not faded out, stopped. My jaw dropped.

I queued up a few more poca ditties. and he was sound asleep. I come from a German family and grew up with polka at every event, wedding and festival in small town, Wisconsin, so I am probably more familiar than most with it, but it still wasn't an obvious choice

for me, needless to say. I placed him in his bassinet, tried excitedly, telling my sleep wife, my sleep wife, my sleeping wife, that's a very different way. My sleeping wife, I had found the antidote. She told me to shut up and go to sleep, so I sat in bed like a kid on Christmas Eve,

too excited to sleep, regardless of my exhaustion, and pending wake up. up in an hour or two to start the process all over again. But the next morning, I was questioning if I had just been projecting my Germanus onto my little guy rather than awakening some dormant Bavarian gene. So next screaming bout, I cranked up the polka again and silence descended upon our sweet boy. Both our families have now witnessed and used to great effect the accordion relief therapy when they watched our little guy. We've had friends witnessed the phenomenon

as well. It is real. We are already in discussions about having a polka band played his first birthday nine months from now. And if anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, we once had him hooked up to a heartbeat monitor at the doctor's office and watched his heart rate dropped from 210 beats per minute to 120 in roughly 10 seconds after starting his favorite Poka song.

That's wild. So yes, Dan, I can unequivocally confirm the accordion has soothed someone. I've attached to video as proof if you want to see the effect for yourself and I hope you get a laugh. Oh, yes, thank you. Very funny.

Your loyal accordion adoring space lizard, Scott F, I won't make you try the German last name. Scott F. What the fuck? You're going to have to keep an eye on that sweet, sweet boy yours. There is something off about him. That is hilarious. And just a reminder of how subjective art is.

Like a primal level. I referred to Poka as the devil's music for years. It makes me immediately anxious. Also having just gotten back from a trip to Germany to visit my son, Kyler studying there, while it is a beautiful country, it is not my beautiful country. Could not get over the blank so-called German stare.

and the insistence that most public places be treated with the serious reverence of a fucking library. Too stiff for me. So maybe the accordion is part of some kind of innate my dislike of it, part of some innate, you know, resistance I have to German culture overall. But according to 23 and me, I'm mostly Scottish. And I hate the bagpipe, way more than the accordion. I don't even consider the bagpipe an actual musical instrument. It's a torture device. Who knows?

Thank you for the laughs. Love that little poca-loven boy of yours every day. of his life. And finally, from a loyal sack, who wrote him with the subject line of, at least one is listing from beyond. What's up, Danny, fofanny, going to touch up a Danny. First off, thank you for being a place I can fade to, to take my mind off of life. Recently, a sucker very close to me left us. It was suicide. As a person who has struggled with self-harm and self-worth, I was broken. It rained for a week straight, so I had plenty of time to cry at work without judgment. I cleaned pools. I took a break from time suck to

focus on family and also his family, my sister, and their three kids. I was listening to the weirdo wizard magic, excuse me, magician, psychic sex offender when I got the news. I got him into a time sick about two years ago and he caught up in under a year. He would call me every Monday after work to talk about the suck and whatever silly topic he covered. Today I'm listening to 509 and you mentioned in the beginning that someone might be listening from, you know, beyond the grave. I know he has not missed an episode, Anonymous. Rest in peace, my brother. Roll a natural 24 us all. damn anonymous. I'm so sorry you are feeling this pain. Sorry if you're lost, yeah, sorry, they're gone. I hope in regards to your own self-harm and low self-worth tendencies that you

take your mental health even more seriously than you did before than you may have before. Get in therapy if you need it and you probably need it right now due to his loss. If you're not already in therapy, don't tough it out alone. Stick around for your wife, for your sister, for your nieces, and your nephews, and most of all for yourself. I would much rather have you listen from this side of the grave. May Nimrod take great care of your friend in the world after this. May they roll natural 20s every single time. And thanks, everybody.

I'm suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another bad magic productions podcast. Be sure in rate and review time suck if you haven't already. Please don't be hateful or dismissive or disgusted by someone just because they are queer, right? Don't worry about them. Worry about yourself.

Work on yourself. Grow. Evolve. Be more loving. Let them have the same kind of state of the table that you get to have. and keep on sucking. And magic productions. No gays can hide from New York City's finest.

NYPD Sergeant John Rock is tough on cock. Hey, hey, what do you think you doing? We're in their posthum-button flannel. Those tight-ass jeans barely containing your meaty big boy thighs. You're sex your bear you? Oh, you're hoping to get other gays to grab your big, thick, perfectly waxed cock? Is that what you're hoping to do in my? City? Maybe something like

This? Oh, you like that, don't you? You like it when I grab your cock and unbutton your jeans and pull down your box of briefs and stroke your shaft and cup your balls. But then spit on my point finger and slip it into your poophole while I lick your dick passionately and smack it up against my lip the whole bunch.

Holy shit, you're hard because you're so fucking gay. I bet you're gay enough for me to slobber all over that cock before I turn around and stick it to my gap and asshole, aren't you? Bingo! It went right in because you're so fucking gay. Are you gay enough to come deep inside my ass to shoot it into my brain, you're sexual bear?

Are you gay enough to jerk me off so I can come like a straight guy while you gay come? No gays can hide from New York City's finest. NYPD Sergeant John Rock is tough on cock. I can't tell you how hard that may be laughing. I put it together. And finally, whew, emotional roller coaster today. This episode is dedicated the memory of Paul Cummins. And Jose Garcia, hope both of your souls are out there and able to be truly free and gay as fuck for all eternity.

And to everyone who appreciated this episode, I appreciate you.