This June month, we remember the revolutionary spirit of the LGBT community at Stonewall
I am writing these lines after hearing of Johnathan Joss’ passing at the hands of a vicious, random homophobic attack on June 1st. Johnathan was Indigenous as well, and was best known for his roles on King of the Hill and Parks and Recs where he played Indigenous characters.
He was gunned down in the presence of his husband at their old home, which had been burned down in January in another attack, all in the span of a few minutes.
In the United States, June is Pride month. This is something that, to my knowledge, no other country does. I often say that the United States can be both very progressive in some aspects, and very backwards in others. Certainly in other countries, such random attacks born of hate do not happen as easily. There are no politicians and even police — as this FBI tweet made at the start of Pride month shows — that incite attacks, and then wring their hands trying to wash themselves clean of responsibility. There are no influencers weaseling their way into saying “kill trans kids”. There are no “bathroom bills”.
In this tweet, the FBI itself — the federal police — repeats to 1.2 million people the lie that doctors are out there performing unchecked surgeries on minors.
Let’s talk about gender-affirming care for a minute, then, if the FBI also thinks it important. When a man receives hair transplants in Turkey, he is undergoing gender-affirming care. Taking anabolic steroids, growing a beard for aesthetic or fashion purposes, undergoing gynecomastia surgery - all of this is gender-affirming care. A man taking viagra is gender-affirming medication. Women growing their hair out is gender-affirming too.
A big recipient of puberty blockers, which delay the onset of puberty, are (cis) girls, because they undergo puberty younger with each generation. While numbers are not readily published, this population receives puberty blockers at least at the same rate as trans youth do.
Yet nobody is as concerned about this as they are about the 0.6% of the US population that is transgender.
And we see above the very deadly repercussions of this “concern”.
Likewise, (cis) men are the biggest recipients of hormone therapy — testosterone boosters. If a blood test shows “low” testosterone (lower than doctors have agreed is the “normal” level), you can be put on testosterone therapy the same day.
But facts, studies and the reality on the ground is not important to ideologues. There is no amount of papers you can send to a transphobe or homophobe who has made it his mission to kill gay people. One is, at this stage, well past the point of being reasoned with.
We can recognize that nobody is as concerned about gender and genitals as homophobes are all we want — they are the ones telling you to “go to Gaza and see what happens” if you dare support Palestine and be gay — but this won’t change their mind.
Conversely, such repression also inevitably fosters a revolutionary spirit. I think of the ADA for example, the Americans with Disabilities act, which forced all cities and businesses in the US to provide accessible accomodations for disabled people. This is something that the rest of the world has not caught up with yet — many places in Europe are utterly inaccessible if one has a disability. But the ADA was not given out of the kindness of Washington’s heart. In 1990, disabled people abandoned their assisting devices at the bottom of the stairs to the Capitol (the parliament building) and crawled up the stairs, despite their disabilities, in what is known as the Capitol Crawl.
Stonewall.
In June 1969, more than half a century ago, the New York Police tried to raid the Stonewall Inn, then an LGBT bar. Just a note: I use LGBT by old habit, but in each instance I include all identities.
The raid was conducted to harass and repress this marginalized minority, and for no other reason. One can argue that being gay was illegal at the time and the police was simply applying the law, but this would ignore that the police was — and continues to be — very happy to conduct these raids. In this case, like many times before, they had no reason to go to Stonewall. They just wanted to harass and silence a minority, like they still do today. It was reported just a few days ago that ICE pretended to be utility workers to gather info and arrest someone. They don’t do this because it makes their job easier or more efficient — they have a ton of ways to do that already. They do it because they like it, because it makes them smile to deceive people like this and have authority over them.
And if you think this is unique to the United States, it’s not. Soon enough, this repression will come to your country, if it hasn’t already. Especially as the US sponsors programs to promote their ideas, through the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) to name just one. The NED is a CIA front — as they admitted themselves — that sends millions around the world to sponsor “democracy” programs that actually paves the way for further destabilizing actions around the world, either through regime change, more covert CIA operations, or outright invasions. Their 2024 grant listings show that they are active in essentially all continents.
Through the prism of the NED and other programs such as USAID, the United States transforms both the ideas and the material reality of sovereign countries from the inside, and end up forcibly exporting their own politics — politics which lead to recurrent school shootings, and the shooting of a man in front of his partner.
In 2024, the NED gave half a million dollars (!) to the Europe-wide “International Republican Institute” to “bolster Europe against the subversive tactics of the Chinese communist party”. But who voted for this in Europe? Who was consulted? I sure wasn’t. The US uses the rest of the world as its playground, deciding what people should believe, and make the imperial machine run smoothly. Nobody wants an “International Republican Institute” in Europe.
Sorry for taking all these detours. But I want to show that some truths are universal, and that all minorities are in the same boat. If a hole in the boat is not plugged, all will sink together.
On June 28, police raided Stonewall, as they often did. Nine little piggies entered the bar and started arresting employees for selling alcohol without a license. Remember that the police are not judges; they do not have to have evidence of charges to arrest people. This gave them an excuse to start clearing the premises, using force against the patrons if they “resisted” this intrusion, and find more charges to pin on them. The police came in to engineer a problem where there was none.
A crowd quickly grew outside the bar. The police started using violence to enforce their authority, again creating a problem when everything was going fine before their arrival.
In a context of civil rights debates going on at the time — many patrons of the bar were not white — the straw broke the camel’s back, and the crowd began fighting back. They threw all they had at the police: coins, bottles, and even bricks. There is a debate over who threw the first brick; for a long time, it was believed to be Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, but she denies this.
Quickly, the police retreated into the bar and barricaded themselves in. They were outnumbered by 500 people. Remember: there are more civilians than there are police, even if they call reinforcements. Over 45 minutes, fires were set to the bar. Ultimately, firefighters came to the scene with the NYPD’s Tactical Patrol Force to try and break out the trapped pigs.
Police tried to make arrests and brutalize some protestors, but for the most part, because the patrons knew the neighborhood, they were able to make use of tactics to elude and run the police around. By 4 AM, the streets were mostly cleared but this was only the beginning.
All in all, only 13 people had been arrested that night (from a crowd of 500+), though several had to be hospitalized for the injuries inflicted by the police. All were LGBT.
The following nights, unrest continued around Stonewall. Thousands gathered on June 29, just a day later. Clashes with police continued, and dearrests were made as well. On the second night, only 3 people were arrested.
The protests ended around July 3 as they lost their momentum, a common pattern in spontaneous uprisings. But their legacy was huge: the Stonewall Riots were a catalyst for LGBT representation in the political sphere, and not just existing as a social group anymore. Up until then, the community was largely hidden, due to stigma and laws — and this was (and still is) true in countries other than the US as well.
Immediately after Stonewall, LGBT people around the country started mobilizing and organizing for their rights, in many different ways. To this day, Pride parades are being held every June around the world, because LGBT identities exist around the world. Advocacy groups born from Stonewall continue to exist, and have worked to destigmatize gay and trans identities, and other minority identities as well. For a long time for example, asexuality was thought not to exist.
June remembers not just the Stonewall riots themselves — though I don’t particularly like the word riot, as it implies lawlessness and unjust violence — but the broader catalyst and movement as well. It doesn’t matter if you are LGBT or not. I am reminded here of the words, “Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.”
On virture of living under an hegemonic system, all oppression becomes connected. Ultimately, all oppression of minorities will be in service of that system. This is why there is never any contradiction in supporting groups and people that you yourself may not be a part of.
I would regret it if I didn’t make a connection to Palestine at this time; Words may fail us at times to describe the horror we witness, but we must find the words nonetheless. No food has made it to Gaza in months, and Palestinian babies are dying of starvation. The IOF has ramped up bombing runs in an unprecedented destruction of what remains of the Strip. All of this with complete impunity. The same oppressive structures that criminalize LGBT existence are the ones that enable the genocide in Gaza today. Solidarity is recognizing that the fight for liberation is a fight against all structures that decide who gets to live and who must be sacrificed, and Gaza is a red line that is being crossed every day by these institutions.
Thank you for reading.
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