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May 20, 2013
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 Gay Marriage: From Stonewall to AlbanyPosted on Jun 27, 2011
By Larry Gross Twoscore and two years ago an urban riot in New York’s Greenwich village became the symbol of a new movement for liberation [see accompanying article on Stonewall], so it is fitting that crowds gathered at the site of the Stonewall Inn to celebrate Friday’s historic vote by which New York became the largest state to legislatively approve marriage equality for lesbian and gay citizens. The struggle for GLBT rights did not begin at Stonewall—that honor, if it is to be awarded to a particular place and particular persons, probably goes to a small gathering of leftist gay men in Los Angeles who founded the Mattachine Society in 1950—but symbols are important, and just as Stonewall became the embodiment of militant queer activism, so too New York’s action last week signifies more than just one more state added to the list of those permitting same-sex marriage.
Advertisement The first full-scale polemic for equality, Donald Webster Cory’s “The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach,” was published in 1951. Cory presented a forceful argument that homosexuals constitute a minority within American society: “Our minority status is similar, in a variety of respects, to that of national, religious and other ethnic groups: in the denial of civil liberties; in the legal, extra-legal and quasi-legal discrimination; in the assignment of an inferior social position; in the exclusion from the mainstream of life and culture.” In a 1963 follow-up book, “The Homosexual and His Society: A View From Within,” written with John LeRoy, Cory restated his thesis “that the invert is a member of a minority group, differing from ethnic and other minorities essentially in that his status as a minority group is unrecognized,” and celebrated the “feeling of group recognition [that] has grown among these people,” leading to the launching “of a struggle for the rights guaranteed to all citizens of a free democratic society.” Describing the beginnings of that movement in “small secret underground groups,” Cory and LeRoy note, “With diminishing secrecy, several distinct groups and societies have found their way on the American scene, fighting a legal, social and political battle in order to help win public acceptance for the invert and his way of life.” By the early 1960s, movement leaders emerged who were inspired by the civil rights movement to proclaim that “gay is good!” They began taking their struggle to the streets, demonstrating in front of government buildings and demanding an end to laws that criminalized gay people and promoted discrimination and harassment. The gay liberation movement in the Stonewall era was a child of its times, inspired by the civil rights, the anti-war and women’s movements, and it shared a belief in the possibility of radical social transformation. Gay liberation was seen as part of the full spectrum of radical social change that the period celebrated, challenging and overturning conventional norms and expectations. Like these other movements, it was also largely a movement of young people, less invested in the status quo and more willing and able to take risks. And risky it was, as homosexual acts were illegal in all but one state, and gay people could be fired or denied housing or access to public accommodation without any legal recourse. Thus, among the first goals of the liberation movement was the achievement of basic civil rights; here, too, the analogy to the civil rights movement and the recently passed Civil Rights Act was explicit. The movement that burst into flames across the country after the Stonewall riots followed in the model of all American minority movements by building its strength in big cities, where the concentration of numbers could translate into voting blocs and financial support for friendly politicians. Eventually, as in the election of Harvey Milk—one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country—to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, concentrated political power in big cities resulted in the enactment of city ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The early successes of the gay movement were quick to bring a reaction from a religious right that was newly energized as a political force after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In 1977 orange juice spokesperson and former Miss America second runner-up Anita Bryant led a campaign to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance in Florida’s Dade County. The campaign, under the name Save Our Children (as Bryant put it, “They [homosexuals] can’t reproduce, so they have to recruit”), was successful, and set the tone for similar fights across the country. In California, state Sen. John Briggs failed in an attempt to outlaw homosexual teachers, in part because labor joined forces with gay activists to defeat the measure. Even former Gov. Ronald Reagan opposed Brigg’s Proposition 6. But the lines were soon to be drawn more starkly, as the Republican Party soon cemented an alliance with the religious right that put anti-gay policies, along with opposition to reproductive rights, at the center of its social agenda.
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By Ehrenstein, June 29, 2011 at 5:20 pm Link to this comment
No YOu work your brain harder, dear.
Larry brought up “Donal Webster Cor” in his essay. But he didn’t tell the whole story of this gay Jeckyl/Hyde. It’s as relavant now as it was when Sagarin finally unmasked himself. (Go “Google”)
“Legally relevant” inspires only laughter in a gay man like myself. I’m 64 year-old. The better part of those years my very existence was completely ilegal.
Can you wrap your tiny mind around that?
Get back to me if and when you do.
Report thisBy Arouete, June 29, 2011 at 4:56 pm Link to this comment
@ yrscrewed, You are totally correct for all the reasons I have said here. I think you are also legally correct about the “forgotten” Ninth Amendment too but sadly it’s a legal dead letter - never been successfully evoked – not ever. Not even once. Perhaps it is time? But no problem, the 1st and 14th will suffice. Great to see all Americans are not bubblegum chewing legal dunderheads who can so easily have the proverbial wool pulled over their infamous eyes.
@ Ehrenstein. Thanks but the link is too cryptic and too much of a needle in a haystack. What are you trying to say? A clue please. And you totally miss the very astute point of yrscrewed. Work your brain harder, s/he has something very legally relevant to say. Of course we won but you don’t seem to be able to follow yrscrewed’s point farther then a civic center pigeon can fly.
@ diman, As I and yrscrewed point out there is far more here than can be grasped by one-dimensional a pea-shooter brain.
@ Bruce Bethany: Thanks I truly laughed out loud. Very on point. Whenever I see the bar owners hitting the community for a $5.00 cover (drink not included) to purportedly raise money for AIDS or civil rights I run, do not walk, the other way. All tax free and unaccountable cash of course. Ask for transparency? Show us exactly what you took in and where it went? Fuggetaboutit! Given the damages they have done to this community by exploiting sex and profiting off of bigotry I’d dammed well think they’d cough up a lot more conscience money after all the livers they have rotted.
The companion piece here is interesting but the bar owners could not hope for better PR shill propaganda. These scumbags are no civil rights heroes. They are no different than the “colonialists” the Black Panthers burned out of the hoods as the community chanted “bury baby burn!” Painting them as civil rights heroes or even sanctuaries makes me want to vomit. Not much has changed since Larry Kramer wrote “Faggots” which is as relevant today as it was 25 years ago.
Report thisBy Ehrenstein, June 29, 2011 at 9:56 am Link to this comment
“This has nothing to do with “Civil Rights.” My concern is with the Bill of Rights not with the right to marry anyone. Get over it already.”
No, YOU get over it. WE WON—LIVE WITH IT !!!!
Report thisBy Ehrenstein, June 29, 2011 at 9:54 am Link to this comment
Nice round-up, Larry. But you forgot to tell the FULL story of “Donald Webster Cory”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sagarin
Report thisBy yrscrewed, June 29, 2011 at 8:57 am Link to this comment
All marriage laws by the states were discriminatory, was this bill any better? All Homosexuals could marry anyone they wanted to in a “Church” same as [what] they called straight. So Homosexuals are [crooked] and Heterosexuals are [straight], I never got that one but it seems to derogatory toward the Homosexuals. I don’t know it just seems that way.
Marriage laws were instituted by the south to prevent inter-racial marriages. Although a Marriage contract is nothing more than a contract. There were no laws against this particular contract because it could have been done in private with the parties thereto.
So what they have the right to contract!
This has nothing to do with “Civil Rights.” My concern is with the Bill of Rights not with the right to marry anyone. Get over it already.
Besides the 9th Amendment is the one that should protect all the Homosexuals and everyone else.
Report thisBy diman, June 29, 2011 at 6:00 am Link to this comment
And who are you kidding people, the bill is not about equality in a broader social sense, it is all about ability to put your spouse on your company’s health insurance plan, so sad that even the most noble and socially just causes fall prey to the realities of the capitalist predatory society.
Report thisBy diman, June 29, 2011 at 5:55 am Link to this comment
By RenZo:
“This is but one small step in the fulfillment of real civil rights for Americans. The next steps are food, education and healthcare for all. All… as in Every One.
Don’t stop here”
Actually, no, not the universal health-care, food and education, things that are 100 times more important than two gays getting legally married, the right to adopt children, this is what is going to be next.
Report thisBy Bruce Bethany, June 28, 2011 at 5:26 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I was around in the Stonewall era in Greenwich
Report thisVillage. I’m not gay, but I’d like to set the record
straight. The Stonewall was one of several gay
bars in the area, all owned and run by the
Mafia.The clients of these joints were ripped of
unmercifully, paying double for watered down
booze to have a place to cruise and meet others
of their persuasion. New York laws at the time
prohibited bars from serving gays. I worked in a
Village bar where the police would send an
undercover cop to entrap some guy and then
threaten to close down the bar. The solution? A
heavy payoff to get off the hook. The gay bars
run by the mob were immune because there
was systemic corruption involving the police at
every level. The Stonewall should not be a
symbol of Gay Liberation. It was a ghetto of gay
enslavement.
By John, June 28, 2011 at 2:29 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@ Arouete: All well-said. I totally agree and thanks for the links. This article does fine till he gets to Obama and then we arrive on four flat tires. Then again the name Annenberg was never a name I associated with intellectual integrity or honesty in advertising. Just goes to show that pelf can buy anything.
If saccharine sycophants and pandering pettifogs could fly that ballroom would surely have been an airport. Pretty disgraceful isn’t it? The ‘states’ rights’ rubbish is right out of the Reagan play book. And still politicians can get away with that crap. That’s what happens when we so slash education we have already dumbed it down.
Unlike the so-called civil rights lawyer Obama I actually practiced law, *in the courts* for decades and you are correct. If any attorney tells you that ‘equal protection’ of the law and ‘fundamental’ rights are matters of ‘states rights’, that such rights may be subject to a vote, or that respect for deeply held religious beliefs are a legitimate reason to abrogate those rights when clerics act in a secular capacity as public officials, then you should know one thing for sure: you are being bamboozled by a fast-talking a shyster and a pettifog. Any attorney who so advises his client arguably commits malpractice and better make sure their E & O insurance is paid up.
This is Kabuki Theater and I presume Obama would, privately, have agree with all you and your terrific links have said. He knows perfectly well that this is an issue that SCOTUS will have to decide for ALL states. But when people like him are given an affirmative action leg-up and special access to superior education only to use it to exploit ignorance I find it deeply, deeply, troubling. It presents serious ethical issues when any attorney makes such statements. Turn your back and RUN (do not walk) the other way. Which is *exactly* what I did.
His ‘states rights’ rubbish is disgrace to his own mixed race-parents who were married under such Jim Crow laws and had to live in California or Hawaii till Loving flushed the same ‘states rights’ nonsense down the legal toilet where it belongs.
Frankly I thought I was going to vomit. There he was feeding intellectual and legal rubbish to a room full of “educated” people, many of whom were lawyers or hold themselves out as “advocates” as he sucked out their money, and there was nary a bubble of pretest - not one pathetic whimper. Not even one!
I could not have thought of a better, more prefect example, of the gutless Versailles courtiers of the bankrupt liberal class that Chris Hedges has passionately slammed. I figured if these gutless ‘Gucci-shoed bubble-gum liberals’ (love the choice of words btw!) want to sit there and suck up that kind of despicable legal doggerel then let them. When they are betrayed, they can not cry ‘victim’ but should go off in a corner and lick their self-inflicted wounds. I was out-the-door.
Report thisBy Arouete, June 27, 2011 at 8:42 pm Link to this comment
And I will apologize to you. You did a great job on both articles.
I am just so tired of hearing that same rubbish that should not get past a second year law student. We are now TWO decades into this marriage issue and it is still possible for politicians (so-called ‘civil rights lawyers’ no less!) to get away with cavalierly tossing over the same legal insults. And NO ONE calls them out! This is thanks to our sycophant “Gucci-shoed” LGBT self-anointed ‘leadership” that have so failed miserably in their duty to educate that they have left us with a loose confederacy of vapid bubble-gum dunces.
As the Bay Area Reporter opined years ago, “If one of Obama’s law students gave his answer on a right to marry hypothetical s/he’d deservedly flunk the exam and might better serve the interests of justice by selling shoes at Macy’s.” http://ebar.com/common/inc/article_print.php?sec=guest_op&article=73
Report thisBy Arouete, June 27, 2011 at 8:10 pm Link to this comment
“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” (Janet Malcolm)
Where does propaganda stop and journalism begin? Again thank you. This is a rather good nutshell summary - until you really blew it. Journalism is more than he said / she said. And this is a LEGAL not a MORAL issue. Can we please talk about the LAW and stop begging the EASY question.
“Obama, ... is unwilling to demonstrate moral leadership. ... he took a “states rights” position on this civil rights issue: “Traditionally marriage has been decided by the states and right now I understand there’s a little debate going on here in New York,” he said to laughter.”
The statement is worthy of outage. If sycophants could fly that room was an airport. Where is the outrage?! Laughter? It should have been ridicule. This is legal no-brainer. “Traditionally marriage has been decided by the states”? “States rights”? Rubbish! Claptrap! Balderdash! WHERE ARE THE ACTIVISTS? WHO has the audacity to ask this so called civil rights lawyer what part of Loving v.Virginia he doesn’t get?
Thanks for the wonderful bibliography and beg-the-question editorial however this is not a question of “moral leadership” but basic law - the man is a so-called civil rights lawyer! This is right from the pen of a “courtier.” (are you reading Chris Hedges?)
Sorry but here is where you fall down as a journalist. (Are you reading Chris Hedges?!) When are pundits going to do their substantive homework? This argument should not get past second year law student. Why do activists suck up such same tired segregationist garbage and pander to pettifogs?
See “Untangling Barack Obama’s audacious mumbo jumbo” at http://ebar.com/common/inc/article_print.php?sec=guest_op&article=73. This guy got the legal dynamic down rock solid years ago! Never refuted because it’s factually and legally irrefutable.
See also “New York Marriage Equality Law Violates Federal Constitution” at
http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/06/26/new_york_
marriage_equality_law_violates_federal_constitution
And see “Mr. President: Just say ‘No!’ to Gay Jim Crow.” at
http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/06/24/
mr_president_just_say_no_to_gay_jim_crow
Where is the outrage? I don’t mean to be disrespectful of your effort but I am sooo tired of smarmy politician pettifogs and vapid propagandists who have nothing of substance to offer but just dishing out and rehashing the sameol sameol.
Again, “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” (Janet Malcolm)
Report thisBy Arouete, June 27, 2011 at 3:34 pm Link to this comment
@ jmunro43, Thanks for the Democracy Now link - I missed it. To answer the question: No, it is not a Sign the GOP Aims to Leverage Gay Support in 2012? As this article at salon points out there is still the same canker in the rose. See “New York Marriage Equality Law Violates Federal Constitution” http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/06/26/new_york
Report this_marriage_equality_law_violates_federal_constitution
By Arouete, June 27, 2011 at 3:22 pm Link to this comment
An excellent report thanks. Very informative.
See also “New York Marriage Equality Law Violates Federal Constitution” at
http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/06/26/new_york_
marriage_equality_law_violates_federal_constitution
A very interesting analysis. Talk about drilling beneath the headlines! The Salon article is the best legal analysis I’ve seen. And no the writer is no relation.
I must say, some of the comments I’ve reviewed in response to this superb Truthdig article are deeply troubling. Of course, only those cowards and bullies assured of anonymity would dare make such scurrilous remarks in a public forum. I suspect even they would be deeply ashamed if their identity became known. Such trolls are like cockroaches: shine a light on them and they scurry and hide under the toilet from whence they came. Of course, this is the problem with the First Amendment: we must all tolerate a lot of excrement.
Report thisBy Paul, June 27, 2011 at 2:53 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Thanks Mr. Gross for an excellent report.
I must say, some of the depraved responses are rather unsettling.
But there is another dynamic here that readers might want to consider and this writer’s analysis really blew me away. See “New York Marriage Equality Law Violates Federal Constitution” at http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2011/06/26/new_york_
Report thismarriage_equality_law_violates_federal_constitution
By John, June 27, 2011 at 2:49 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@rollzone “i have nothing against f*aggots
having rights, but not at the expense of marriage.”
WOW! I had no idea Truthdig attracts such depraved readers. This bigot with a pea-shooter has the manners of a barn-yard animal and the social skills of Jared Lee Loughner. Really scarry. Let’s hope this guy is on the no fly list. What rock does this creep live under?
Report thisBy RenZo, June 27, 2011 at 2:12 pm Link to this comment
@ roll(over)zone (under me, right here)
Report thisWhat does “at the expense of marriage” mean, practically.
Oh…..and has any human ever consented (without violence ahead of time) to combining DNA with you to produce “a new life that bonds you for life”?
Were you and the human married?
Was a hybrid produced?
Thank you.
By Stuffed Animal, June 27, 2011 at 12:10 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I wonder why Leftists, who would never dream of calling the movement for African-American Civil Rights “nigger activism”, are so eager to slap the word “queer” on anything involving the Gay Rights movement? It’s ignorant and offensive. Larry Gross, and all his Q-word loving colleagues should be ashamed of themselves; they are unwitting (or witting?) tools of the heterosexist status quo. Like our oppressors, they insist on labeling gender non-conforming people with insulting terminology. And I’m not just talking about Straight people here: LGBT folk who try to normalize hate speech are no better than the hetero-bigots.
Also, Mr. Gross doesn’t know his Gay (not queer) history! The LGBT Rights movement was pioneered around the turn of the 20th century in Europe, particularly in Germany. The first real Gay activist was probably Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who was later persecuted by Hitler for his advocacy. Ignorance is definitely not bliss; anybody who writes about the equality struggle should care enough to research its origins. They should at least care enough to speak of LGBT folk with respect.
Report thisBy RenZo, June 27, 2011 at 12:04 pm Link to this comment
I didn’t think ahead when I moved back to Albany, NY seven years ago, but now that I have, I have a reason to stay here. It was never before on my agenda, but I will now consider all reasonable offers of matrimony…..
Report thisThis is but one small step in the fulfillment of real civil rights for Americans. The next steps are food, education and healthcare for all. All… as in Every One.
Don’t stop here.
By jmunro43, June 27, 2011 at 10:27 am Link to this comment
This legislation is a definite step forward. How big of a step is now in the hands of
Report thisthe 44 states that haven’t yet legalized same-sex marriage, but regardless, New
York has done it’s part for now in the fight for equal marriage rights. I don’t know
what will happen now, but Democracy Now! did a better job than I can of
analyzing the political implications of the decision, check it out:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/27/is_new_york_equal_marriage_bill