Stephen Holden reviews a new film released tonight, "Stonewall Uprising": Surely an extraordinary and offensive piece of commentary
for comparing gay bars to black churches during the civil rights struggle. Just
to be clear: Michael in no way recommends this film (which he hasn’t seen).
Excerpts from:
June 28, 1969: Turning Point in Gay Rights History
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
New York Times
Published: June 16, 2010
“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous.
He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a
heterosexual marriage.” So declared Mike Wallace in authoritative voice-of-God
tones in “The Homosexuals,” a tawdry, sensationalist 1966 “CBS Reports”....
The most thorough documentary exploration of the three days
of unrest beginning June 28, 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a seedy
Mafia-operated gay bar in Greenwich Village, turned on the police after a
routine raid, “Stonewall Uprising” methodically ticks off the forms of
oppression visited on gays and lesbians in the days before the gay rights movement....
At the time of the riots, homosexuality was illegal in every
state except Illinois.
Before the laws were changed, one commentator observes, gay bars offered the
same kind of social haven for an oppressed minority as black churches in the
South before the civil rights movement....
As one rioter remembers: “All of a sudden the police faced
something they had never seen before. Gay people were never supposed to be
threats to police officers. They were supposed to be weak men, limp-wristed,
not able to do anything. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them
and attacking them and beating them.” It was the first stirring of what came to
be known as gay pride....
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/movies/16stone.html?partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099