Gay Liberation Movement

A Brief Summary of the Gay Liberation Movement

Even with the erasure of LGBT individuals from the majority of history, there were indeed actually Gay people throughout it! However, the fight for Gay rights and equality really sprouted in 1969, as a result of the Stonewall Riots.

Stonewall Riots

The Stonewall Inn is a Bar located in New York City, that served as the location for the spark of the Gay Liberation Movement. Stonewall was a definition "Dive Bar", and served as a place to go for people who didn't fit the norm, including the Gay community. On June 27, 1969, however, the Bar was raided by the NYPD who had become increasingly hostile to the Gay community in the area (1). Usually, raids like these on the bar were targeting illicit operations and potential legal violations (1). However, this event resulted in the primarily Gay patrons conflicting and fighting with the NYPD outside the bar (1). The raid soon became a Riot against the NYPD with complete chaos erupting. In fact, a reporter who was at the event detailed that the group of LGBT patrons began to berate the bar with debris, including "garbage, garbage cans, pieces of glass, fire, bricks, cobblestones" and more to demonstrate their anger against the raid (1). Another man who was there stated that the attitude among the crowd was of "anger" and that "nobody knew how far [it] was going to go" once it started (1). The protesters aligned in chanting that they would not be ignored nor would they go away, and in doing so and the emergence of more riots against the targeting of Gay communities, they started the plight for Gay Rights which continues to this day.

GLF at UC Berkeley

Soon after the Stonewall Riots, a group of students at UC Berkeley went and established a chapter of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) (2). It's important to emphasize that this was NOT THE GSU established originally as the Students for Gay Power. This rather was a group of revolutionary students who were dedicated to being politically revolutionary and active against discrimination and other forms of LGBT exclusion (2). The GLF led a protest against the criminalization of homosexual activity against UCPD at Spieker Plaza in 1969, the first protest for Gay Rights at UC Berkeley itself. The unique place as a center for protest and activism that UC Berkeley had created in the prior years allowed the GLF to actively work to demonstrate and protest for LGBT equality on campus and beyond in the Bay Area (2).

Post Stonewall Riots

After Stonewall, multiple LGBT activism groups begin to pop up around the country, including the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, Street Tranvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and the Radicalesbians who all were quite prominent (3). However, it's important to emphasize that Stonewall was not this changing event that automatically resulted in the acceptance of Gay communities and Gay equality. Rather, these organizations still had to fight against dominant anti-Gay attitudes and in some cases, laws, that actively discriminated against them. However, the more organizations that were created, the more reach wich the movement itself had (3). In addition, the Gay Liberation Movement combined with the influences of Antiwar Protests, movements for Women's Liberation, Black Radicalism and countercultural activism sparked a massive social change across the country in the 1970s (3). These groups utilized their power and influence to protest against dominant ideologies which sought to limit their freedoms and existences, and for many people, their intersectional identity meant that they fought with and supported more than one movement.

The scope of the Gay Liberation Movement also greatly expanded as a result of Stonewall. What was before limited to a local or regional area soon expanded to entire states and many times, national groups (4). These groups began to utilize their larger influence to change their tactics from grassroots activism to political lobbying and change (4). As a result, even more smaller, local groups of Gay and Lesbian men and women were formed, including the Gay Student Union at UC Berkeley! The growing number of Gay and Lesbian organizations and slowly changing attitudes about homosexuality would have NEVER been possible without the sheer importance and influence of Stonewall. Stonewall really ignited the flame in the Gay Liberation Movement, paving the way for future activism in the years to come (4).

  1. Michael Wilson, “The Night a Dark, Dingy Bar Became a Shrine of Gay Pride,” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 2019.

  2. "Gay Liberation Movement," The Bancroft Library at the University of California, 2002. https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/gaybears/gaylib/

  3. Marc Stein, The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History (New York: NYU Press, 2019). muse.jhu.edu/book/76021.

  4. Marc Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012). Accessed May 5, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.