We wanted to be ourselves, to be, to laugh and play in joy! We rioted to be gay.” - Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee member, 1974Ī groundswell of deep systemic anger, defiance from a community on the edge of revolution, and the fervent freedom that comes with having nothing to lose came together to form the perfect storm that night.
Tired of being threatened and harassed and entrapped and told what we were, what to do, and how to do it, when to do it, how to feel, what to say, how to be, what to be.ya can’t be it outside, nor can you inside! We rioted because rich, or poor, young or old, we dared to be ourselves. “We were tired of being targets of manipulation and exploitation tired of being maggot excuses for raids upon our assembly, tired of being someone else’s scapegoat for some other reason. So that night when the police raided the Stonewall Inn, they got a lot more than they bargained for. Everyday life for a gay person in the ’50s and ’60s included the very real threat of being strangled, shot, jailed, blackmailed, evicted, fired, excommunicated, forced to undergo electroshock therapy on your genitalia, or, if you were one of the unlucky ones, going in for an analysis of your “sexual perversion” and coming out with a full frontal lobotomy.
