Stonewall Riots Research Paper

The civil rights movement of 1960 was a trend that led to the Stonewall riots occurring. The mid-1950s saw the rise of

This investigation assesses the New York City Stonewall Riots of 1969, concerning their influence on the rise of the modern gay rights movement, specifically regarding political emergence, social unity, and demographic shifts. The investigation will attempt to answer the following question: To what extent were the Stonewall Riots of 1969 a catalyst for the LGBT social movement in America?

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York City and it was the starting place of the Gay Liberation Movement. In the 1970s gay men and lesbians started wanting equality because they faced lots of legal discrimination. They didn’t have equal rights because they couldn’t even have consensual sex with their partners and it was illegal in almost all states. So in 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn and gay men fought the police and proclaimed “Gay Power.” This event caused riots between the New York City police and all the gay residents.

Fifty years ago, in the early sixties, being gay was illegal in every providence in Canada, and in every single state in the United States. In the 1950’s, many gay individuals saw the men who had devoted their lives to being out and they knew what a horrible life that made for those men. This caused many gay men to “pass,” or live their entire lives in the closet. They would marry women for the soul purpose of protecting their secret. Before the stonewall riots, many Americans did not even believe gay people existed. Due to the lack of education and bigotry amongst Americans, being gay was very dangerous. Sexual acts in the gay community were commonly done in unsafe places and in public because they simply had nowhere else to go. Homosexuality was not just criminalized it was medicalized (Bawer). If you were gay, you could be subject to go into hospitals and were viewed by society as having a disability and a disease. In April of 1965, the very first gay protest took place in Washington DC. This protest was revolutionary and it began to pave the way for the future of gay men and women and reshape gay culture. In 1969, not long after the first gay protests of 1965, Canada decriminalized homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of one’s own home (Guerre). This was groundbreaking and gave the gay community hope that change was coming. Also, taking place in 1969 were the historic stonewall

The conditions faced by queer people leading up to the stonewall riots were appalling. Laws and Statutes made it legal to discriminate against LGBT+ individuals based on dress and behavior and to limit other basic freedoms as well. In the 50’s and 60’s, 49 of 50 states in the United States had some form of law that stated homosexuality was illegal and was punishable by fines or imprisonment (Staff). Up until 1987, homosexuality was considered a mental illness in the DSM (American Classification of Mental Disorders). In following, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol in New York City up until 1966, thirty three years after prohibition was repealed (History). Under the statement that the gathering

The Stonewall Riots highlighted a key issue in the late 1960s American society. Homosexuality was often seen as an illness and a sin to most people. For example, in April 1952 homosexuality was deemed a sociopathic mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (CNN). This idea was heightened in American society because it was being taught that being gay was one of the worst things an American can be; showing videos such as “Boys Beware”. This all changed after the conflict at the Stonewall Inn; located in New York on Christopher Street. The Stonewall Inn was the place where gays and lesbians would flock to, to feel accepted for once in their lives as many of them ran away or were disowned by their own families. Even though Stonewall was a place of freedom, it was also a place for fear as the police would constantly raid the bar to make sure that alcohol was not being served to gays, as the New York State Liquor Authority deemed it illegal to serve homosexuals. Lasting only three days, the riots were able to help start the transformation of American society to become what it is today. The lack of a formal compromise between the nation and the LGBT community was an advantage for the effects of Stonewall to spread as the conflict was able to bring a wave of acceptance and pushed many of history's gay role models to feel inspired to stand up.

The Stonewall Protests were a series of riots fighting for gay rights in New York City in 1969. The riots at the bar were a major starting point for the fight for equality in the United States. Through the brave citizens who fought for their rights to be equal to everyone else, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, + (LGBTQ+) are so much evident in today’s society. LGBTQ+ rights are not avoided anymore due to the fight for everyone to be created equal, just like what the constitution states. The Stonewall Protests have affected LGBTQ+ rights today because gay marriage is now legal and accepted in the U.S, kids in the LGBTQ+ community can live in a safer environment, and 200 U.S. cities have banned gender identity discrimination.

Gay rights movements in the US can be traced back to the Stonewall Riots that occurred following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City at 3a.m on June 28th, 1969 (“Should Gay Marriage Be Legal?”). In the 1950’s and 1960’s, gay Americans were faced to a harsh anti gay legal system, thus taking away their rights for marriage. This resulted in the Stonewall Riots. Nowadays, 92 percent of the LGBT youth say they hear negative messages about the LGBT, their top sources being school, the internet, and their peers (Growing Up LGBT In America). American youth tends to have many hardships thrown at them by those who aren't like them creating a barrier between each other. F The hate against the LGBT is a major problem in america, stopping us from being a united

Stonewall Inn. The riots of Stonewall represent a huge turning point for the gay community, and

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Such raids were not unusual in the late 1960s, an era when homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. That night, however, the street erupted into violent protests and demonstrations that lasted for the next six days. This was the background of Stonewall Uprising, a documentary telling the story of the massive police raid and the riots of Stonewall in June 1969. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world. (Kanopy) From that moment, homosexual people started to realize that they should fight for their natural rights, spare no effort to achieve American spirit by pursuing equality and freedom and even help push the process of legalizing homosexuality.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” (Martin Luther King Jr.) People say that the 1950’s were a decade of social upheaval and a time of change for the United States. In 1969, the riots of the Stonewall Inn forced the advancement of civil rights for the LGBT community and other intersectionalities of the sort.

Homosexual Americans in the 1950s and 1960s faced an anti-gay legal system. Early homophile groups in the U.S. tried to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored dealing with the situation calmly by educating homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. When the 1960s ended, many social movements were on the move, including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture of the 1960s,Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s and at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia It catered to an assortment of patrons and was known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, transgender people, effeminate young men, butch

The gay liberation movement occurred in Greenwich Village, New York. In June 1969, police invaded the Stone Wall Inn, a bar for gays. The gay people at the club became angered by the police actions, because they felt that it was unprovoked harassment. They fought for several nights, refusing to have the bar closed. This incident, generally referred to as Stonewall, has been noted as the beginning of the awakening of gays into personal and sexual liberation.

June 28 1969 the day LGBT movement for civil rights in the United States of Stonewall the riots brake out a violent demonstrations by members of the gay community. Police are targeting all the gay clubs for money. “In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a group of gay customers at a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn, who had grown angry at the harassment by police, took a stand and a riot broke out. As word spread throughout the city about the demonstration, the customers of the inn were soon joined by other gay men and women who started throwing objects at the policemen, shouting "gay power." Police reinforcements arrived and beat the crowd away, but the next night, the crowd returned, even larger than the night before,

The history of the gay rights movement is a story of hardships and how people came over these hardships. The start of the gay rights movement was the evens at the Stonewall Inn. On the morning of June 28, 1969, the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York City (Benson). The reason the bar was raided was because they may have been selling alcohol illegally but also used that as an excuse to arrest homosexuals. Soon after the raid on the bar, many people rioted against the police ("Gay Rights Movement Launched, June 27, 1969-July 2, 1969"). The rioting lasted for many days and after all these raids the official gay rights movement began. The gay rights movement was expanded and made mainstream with the AIDS Epidemic. In 1981, many young, homosexual men were being diagnosed with a new disease called AIDS ( "The AIDS Crisis"). The disease was originally named after gay people but once immigrants were confirmed to have it the name