Happy Pride! And now here's some history!

[Saviolo]

At the urging of La Lioness Priyanka, making an OP of this, in response to people complaining that BLM is "taking over" Pride events:

The gay civil rights movement was really birthed in the Stonewall riots in New York city in 1969. The police were constantly and repeatedly raiding gay clubs and bars and putting the photographs of the people in them in the newspapers, effectively ruining their lives. In many ways, being gay was still illegal back then. You could lose your job you could lose your housing. Many of these gay men didn't live openly, and had tried to start "normal" lives with marriages and kids. So on top of the stress of having to have two lives, they then had one of those lives ruined just to go and spend time in a place friendly to one of those lives.

And who were the main movers of the Stonewall riot? It wasn't a pretty white boy named Danny as the movie (Stonewall 2015) would have you believe. It was largely black drag queens and trans women who were throwing shoes and bricks, and those were certainly some of the first bricks thrown. It was also homeless queer youth (kicked out of their conservative homes and forced to live on the streets). So, in some very real ways, black voices were the first in the North American queer civil rights movement.

Fast forward to today. Can you name any prominent gay people? Are they all or mostly white? Ellen, Anderson Cooper, Lance Bass, Rosie O'Donnell? POC feel a great deal of alienation from mainstream gay culture and the mainstream queen civil rights movement today, which is overwhelmingly white.

This is the very definition of intersecionality. Toronto Pride invited BLMTO to lead off the parade last year, and they also staged a sit-in for about half an hour to protest a few things, mostly dealing with at-risk communities, trans youth of colour, as well as the presence of the Toronto Police marching in uniform and armed in the parade (citing three very recent highly publicized killings of POC by Toronto Police in which only one officer was charged and none were convicted), which is entirely valid. Of the several founders of BLMTO, one is gay and one is trans, so they are part of both communities. Black people in Toronto do not feel safe around armed police (given that they are still being carded regularly at a vastly disproportionate rate to white citizens) and demanded that police not be allowed to march armed and in uniform in the Pride Parade next year.

So, in the context of history, it's perfectly logical. The Stonewall Riots weren't about gay marriage, they were about police violence. The police have an incredibly checkered past (and present) with the gay community. I'm a gay white man, but I have to be an ally to my queer POC friends. All of my black friends in Toronto have had negative encounters with police. They are arresting and mistreating trans youth of colour. Pride isn't just a parade for queers to show how "normal" we are to straight allies to make them feel comfortable, it is a political action in the face of a political structure that still wants to keep queer people and POC down.

We're pretty lucky in Canada, by and large. But please remember that in many states it is still legal to be fired or evicted for being gay or trans. BLMTO takes a long tradition of black activism in the queer community and directs it to things that are still going on. Why should the police get a nice big free PR boost by marching with big smiles in the Pride parade if they're not going to address systemic problems within the police services regarding how they treat queer people and POC the other 364 days a year?

[hrmjustin]

1. So are we going to tell gay cops they can't March?

[Saviolo]

2. Not in the slightest

That was what the media narrative was here in Toronto: That gay cops had been "banned" from Pride.

It was no such thing. They could come and march and take part in Pride all they wanted, they just could not do it armed and in uniform.

[hrmjustin]

3. Well here in NY yesterday the protestors stopped the March in front of the gay cops group GOAL..

... and told them to get out of the parade.

That really pissed me off. Not that they stopped the parade but that they told the cops to leave it.

[Saviolo]

4. Uniformed police officers?

The police are marching in the Pride parade as a political action. They are using the big grins of their happily marching members of the police services as amazing PR and doing nothing to address systemic racism and mistreatment of queer and trans youth. Pride is a political event from the beginning. If you're expecting it to remain unpolitical, I've got some bad news for you.

If queer POC don't feel safe marching around uniformed and armed police officers because they've seen too much news about the police shooting and killing unarmed black people, then maybe it's the police that should make some changes and not the black people just getting used to having them around.

[hrmjustin]

7. Have you been to NYC pride ever?

All it is is cops everywhere protecting us.

And the cops have been marching for decades in uniform and I can't remember an official complaint.

[Saviolo]

8. Exactly the same in Toronto

The the police are still there to protect us (because they get paid to do that), but this year they weren't allowed to march armed and in uniform. They were allowed to be in the parade as citizens, but not uniformed and armed police.

POC are being shot by police and officers are not being charged, so queer POC don't feel safe around armed and uniformed officers. As an ally of my black gay friends, I support them in this. If the police want to make some real changes wrt. how they treat POC on the streets, and address the systemic racism in their ranks, they can come back to the parade in uniform as they have for years.

[hrmjustin]

9. Well in NYC they will March in uniform.

[Saviolo]

10. Great, good for them

Get back to me when they make real, systemic changes to they way they treat black people, queer POC, and trans youth.

[hrmjustin]

11. Well it would be nice if we can get GOAL and BLM together to talk about

these issues.

[FreeState]

5. Request....

I've seen several people say it was the drag queen, but I can't find any real evidence either way.

[Saviolo]

6. It was a riot, so it wasn't started by one person, clearly

But at the epicenter were people like Marsha P Johnson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_P._Johnson

widely recognized to be one of the pivotal figures in New York queer culture at that time, and present at the very beginning of the Stonewall riots.

Sylvia Rivera's involvement is less clear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera

But another pivotal figure in the early queer rights movement emerging from New York in the wake of Stonewall.

A hugely significant portion of the people at event that became the Stonewall riots were queer POC, with many drag queens and (what would now be referred to as) trans women. Along with many lesbians and queer men fighting together against police incursions into queer space, it was an intersectional birthplace of the gay civil rights movement.

[FreeState]

12. Right - but here is my issue (sorry I am a stickler for facts when it comes to history)

You stated:

"And who were the main movers of the Stonewall riot? It wasn't a pretty white boy named Danny as the movie (Stonewall 2015) would have you believe. It was largely black drag queens and trans women who were throwing shoes and bricks, and those were certainly some of the first bricks thrown. "

The only evidence I see of that is the second source (Rivera's) first-hand account, that was published decades later, that has never been collaborated by anyone else. This isn't enough sourcing for most peer-reviewed history journals to publish.

[Saviolo]

13. So, in the community at the time

It was largely subcultures at the edge of society. Queer POC, drag queens, and homeless gay youth.

If you're asking me who threw the first stiletto heel, I think that detail will forever be lost to history, but the people who were at the epicentre were the ones occupying that space at that time, and they were mostly black and there were a number of drag queens and trans women in that space at that time.

[The Polack MSgt]

14. Kick and enthusiastic rec

well done Saviolo