The Stonewall Riots: The Gay Liberation Movement Of The 1960s

The Gay Liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s arose amidst cries for civil rights, gender equality, and an end to American participation in the Vietnam War. Gay Liberation marked a revolutionary acknowledgement of gay rights in the United States; historians and activists argue that the Stonewall Riots of 1969 prompted this development. The Greenwich Village uprising was the first instance of gay resistance to win widespread media attention, albeit mixed. The Stonewall Riots acted as a catalyst for the Gay Liberation movement, as did the event’s presence in local and national newspapers, regardless of the shifting degrees of support the media coverage lent to the rioters.

Subcultural movements defined the 1960s. Because of the prodigious “baby boom” in the United States after World War II, an unprecedented number of young people were alive in the 1960s to ignite liberal protest movements and express their characteristic discontent with the status quo. As they experimented with recreational drugs and nonconformist lifestyles, they pushed issues of race, gender, and the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War to the forefront of the American consciousness. Among these causes was the gay rights movement. Despite the radical climate of the 1960s, early gay rights groups were led by the conservative, homophile Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles in 1950. The organization responded to negative stereotypes and emphasized the gay community’s presence in conventional society; they adopted this approach in 1953 after facing early opposition to more radical strategies. Of the society, David Carter writes, “The founders of the Mattachine Society used the word homophile because they believed that this new term, w...

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...ment and put gay rights on the front pages of newspapers across the United States, and it is still remembered well into the twenty-first century. President Barack Obama mentioned Stonewall in his 2013 Inaugural Address, the first inaugural address to reference gay rights. He asserted, “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths -- that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall...Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.” Despite immediate negative media coverage, the Stonewall Riots increased awareness and encouraged the United States to recognize an emerging call for equal rights. Because, to quote Oscar Wilde, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”