As we await the Supreme Court decisions on Prop 8 and DOMA we should be aware of how far we've come and that the struggle is not over.
Lest we forget:
From Out of the Closets, "My Soul Vanished From Sight: A California Saga of Gay Liberation" by Konstantin Berlandt
The bars are havens for that until-that-day crowd...
Limits: No dancing except in the back, no dancing close, no kissing. The bar is owned by a gay commune who work together to keep it open. Jim, one of the owners pulls Neil and me apart, "If you want to do that, go home and do it." Your kiss is obscene!
...
Outside on the street the men from the bar separate, no touching, thaey walk off passing as straight men. The bedroom is a closet, the bar is a closet, the closet is a jail cell. You're let out if you can go straight, act straight, and don't get caught.
From Out of the Closets, "The Closet Syndrome" by Stuart Byron
From the beginning of the gay liberation movement, the Stonewall riots of June 1969, the Times and other elements of the mass media have misunderstood just how traumatic and new and courageous is "coming out." It is famous that the riots were covered in the Times on inside pages while at the same time - the very same time - front page attention was being given to some trees chopped down by vigilantes in a homosexual cruising area in Queens. In the perspective of events, of course, the paper was dead wrong: the Queens trees represent a minor incident in gay history; the Stonewall began a movement and an era.
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