Whether or not you are aware of the actual facts of the Stonewall Rebellion as opposed the current artificial and divisive debate that they were Drag Queens or Trans people who were prominent, the main thing people should be paying attention to is that the event was a united community wide response to the oppression of the Gay Community that had, in this case, gone that one step too far.
In the 1950s, the United States went a little overly paranoid seeing enemies of the country everywhere. We had just saved the world from tyranny and in our desire to not let it creep back in the USofA became overly cautious and saw differences between people as possible signs of the weakening of our victory.
The majority was deciding who a real American was, and this favored themselves while reducing those not like them to less.
From 1947, just after the war, until 1961, encompassing the first 11 years of my life, controlling the Gay lives of the Greatest Generation and their Boomer off-spring, and relying on the spreading of false but politically useful misinformation, as part of the Red Scare, the witch hunt against Homosexuals by Senator Joseph McCarthy played a big part and had influence in the years long after Tail Gunner Joe left the scene. The scarier a Communist could be portrayed, the better the results, and the more evil you could add onto a communist the better. They could not be just bad, but had to be real bad, a bigger threat than the already monumentally threatening run of the mill, rank and file Commie.
To this end, McCarthy and his confederates decided that Gay men and lesbians were either as dangerous or more dangerous than communists because, since society forced Gays into the closet threatening them with punishments that usually included jail time, loss of employment and any related certifications, tortuous medical treatments that were based on unfounded theories, and having their lives ruined by having their names, pictures, places of employment, and home address printed in the paper to ensure their lives were ruined.
Because they were thus forced to stay in the closet, the threat of being outed was devastating, and the promise to not tell if they cooperated created the very conditions forced on the Gays while they were being blamed for it.
Victim blaming.
Joseph Mc Carthy claimed that in order for a homosexual to keep their sexual orientation private, they would reveal government secrets to those who were threatening to out them.
So remove the artificial threat and problem solved.
But Bogey-men are easy political tools.
When addressing the need to purge the government and any positions close to it of Homosexuals, Senator Everett Dirksen referred to Gay men as “lavender lads”, and the name Lavender Scare was added to the political lexicon.
The Gays were not being purged for religious objections, although the rationale for oppression would change to that when the religious right began to see Gays were getting their creator endowed inalienable rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Communist threat thing had evaporated and they began to see that the political objections had faded. At this time it was for patriotism.
The Hoey committee, named after its chairman, Sen. Clyde Hoey, held hearings on the Lavender menace and concluded that the State Department was overrun with these “sex perverts.” This went along with another sub-committee report that had concluded that there were at least 3,000 homosexuals, none having been found to have done anything to prove they were a threat, working in the State Department.
The often used tactic, and the reason most moral Gay people will not blithely list names of other Gays is that the mere accusation was conviction. The promise was that in giving up other names a person would be let go quietly. Some steadfastly refused, some gave in after long interrogations in some cases multiple days, some names were offered just to be let go and some as a way to get back at someone for previous offenses because once your name got on the list, it was over.
Then came Executive Order 10450, Signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. It set security standards for federal employment, and these barred the employment of Homosexuals because it had been determined that the conditions created by the majority and forced on them made Gay people a security threat because of the possibility of blackmail.
If you wanted a job, you could not get it, and if you had one, Gay or Straight, you could lose it if someone truthfully revealed you were Gay, or got you eliminated from the competition for advancement by making a claim it was impossible to counter especially when you did not know who the accuser was or could not prove you were not Gay, however that was expected to be done.
1947 had its “Sex Perversion Elimination Program” designed to arrest and intimidate gay men in Washington, D.C.
In 1948 Congress passed an act “for the treatment of sexual psychopaths”. This law had anyone found acting according to their sexual orientation, like Heterosexuals do according to theirs, could result in arrest and a diagnosis of mentally illness even if the act was in the privacy of your own home. This not only forced Gays into the closet but allowed law enforcement to go in there after you and encouraged Mrs, Kravitz to call the police whenever she had questions about the happenings across the street at the Stevens’s home.
Under Executive Order 10450, at least 5,000 suspected homosexuals were fired from their positions with the government, military, or even government-affiliated private contractors.
The fear of the loss of everything in your life, the outward presentation of your socially acceptable self, while being denied the more fulfilling life, albeit it controlled by others, drove some people to commit suicide.
Frank Kameny, an astronomer, fought his dismissal from a government related job all the way to the Supreme Court and founded the Mattachine Society, an early and visible Gay Rights organization and the first Gay rights organization to rally in front of the White House openly while proclaiming proclaiming “Gay is Good”.
Since then, as the Gay Community, all its letters, started getting their political rights as citizens, the religious right, beginning with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majuority’s support of Reagan and the payback he thus owed, wanted to deny the community their Constitutional Rights on the grounds of one denominations religious beliefs within a larger religion with varying beliefs on a variety of subjects.
The Constitution might grant all citizens the inalienable rights with which we are endowed by our creator, but these should be denied on religious grounds to Gay citizens.
In 1973, a federal judge ruled that sexual orientation alone wasn’t grounds for termination from federal employment, and in 1975, the Civil Service Commission had announced that gay people could no longer be barred from federal employment based solely on their sexuality.
While the religious right and the far right of the political parties were incensed by this, many in the Gay Community assumed the oppression was on the way out as society was growing in its understanding and acceptance of Gay people. This assumption was false as the religious got the government to let AIDS take its course because they said it as just killing us, we got Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell as a result of lobbying for Gays to be able to serve their country but only so long as they stayed in the closet which, again, created opportunities for blackmail, and the Defense of Marriage Act both of the last two taking years to expunge and which only really came into existence in the first place because Executive Order 10450 stayed on the books until 1995, when President Bill Clinton rescinded it.
In January 2017, the State Department formally apologized for the Lavender Scare which was part of my life for the first 67 years as all related to it determined what of my life and those like me had to be hidden, or else, with most I knew and know choosing to stand on principle and face the “or else”, and seeing good people hunkering in the darkness of their closet in order to keep their jobs even to the point that in a state like Oklahoma, twenty years after a suit against a state law barring Homosexuals from teaching for no other reason than their sexual orientation was found unconstitutional, teachers were still guarded about their personal lives hoping to not be found out and lose their jobs.
In a statement, the then Secretary of State John Kerry said,
“In the past—as far back as the 1940s, but continuing for decades—the Department of State was among many public and private employers that discriminated against employees and job applicants on the basis of perceived sexual orientation, forcing some employees to resign or refusing to hire certain applicants in the first place. These actions were wrong then, just as they would be wrong today.”
Lavender purges were an easy go-to as politicians who created the monster are the only ones who can control it, especially as they can morph their creation according to need.
In the present political climate, having no real policies to push, the religious and conservative right, seeing their traditional targets and desired practices losing to the Constitution, are desperate for that issue over which they have complete control and within that can control others. Unfortunately for their side, they are blind to the changing attitudes of society, especially among the young who really cannot see the value in some of the old thinking that people, as embodied by the religious right and the MAGA crowd, will just not give up.
Strict gender division based on old beliefs as opposed to growing information are being desperately clung to by those who cannot let go or they lose their identity and purpose somehow.
And, so, rather than learn what being Transgender is all about, these people crave for the simple ways of the past when people could demean others and treat them accordingly with no consequences.
They have decided after ignoring Drag Queens or enjoying their entertainment value, like they love woman on woman porn but are quick to make Lesbians the enemy, these people have to put Drag Queens in the cross-hairs because without any policies to promote, M&Ms, Mr. PotatoHead, and Legos are just not cutting it as targets, and have moved on to Drag Queens as if they just appeared of a sudden and haven’t been here already in such notable forms as Rudy Giuliani.
To show they were serious about addressing the needs of the people of the state, jobs, inflation, housing, healthcare, after prioritizing the state’s needs, the first bill of this legislative session passed by the Tennessee General Assembly bans hosting Drag shows in public venues or anywhere minors might be present. To justify the bill as protection from a threat, the bill labels Drag as “an adult cabaret performance” so that it sounds threatening and chose to define an “adult cabaret performance” is one that “features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration.”
Limited choice of Broadway musicals and real Shakespeare in that state.
The false impression they need to promote is that Drag Performances appeal to prurient interests. However, unless it is in an adults only venue, Drag performances are toned down if children are known to be present or will be, and at Drag Queen Story Hour the kids see a lady, well dressed and finely coiffed reading Goldilocks. If there is anything prurient, it is in the head of the guy sitting in the back in militia drag trying to find something lewd in the story, perhaps fixating on the mention of beds and a little blonde girl jumping from one to the other.
What they are defining is Burlesque, the well-established bawdy genre of scandalous humor, high glamor, and elaborate staging, often involving the removal of clothing, while a Cabaret is a form of entertainment featuring music, dance, song, and/or drama with the necessary costuming remaining on.
So, going for the subliminal, they took the definition of one thing that could be considered low class, added male and female impersonators to it where it hadn’t been before, and claimed that definition applied to another less offensive thing so it would now sound bad, and people would reject it.
Under the bill, hosts or performers in a drag show with children present would be charged with a class-A misdemeanor that comes with a fine of up to $2,500 and a side of up to one year in prison. Further violations would become Class-E misdemeanors with one-to-six years of prison time and up to a $3,000 fine.
Being on a roll, the Tennessee House also passed a bill which bans gender-reassignment surgery for minors, something that is not done, so they certainly stopped that right quick, and bars “hormone or puberty blockers” that help “gender dysphoric” youth.
These laws take life-saving healthcare options away from trans youth and their families and, while demanding parents have the right to decide what other parents’ children can read, they promote denying the parents of these children the parental right to make decisions regarding healthcare. While the bill’s sponsor claims that his objective is to protect children, it is clear he is speaking only of the cis-gender heterosexual ones like the ones he assumes his own children are and those perceived to be regardless of their actual reality.
15 states have introduced legislation that prohibits drag shows in public venues because as people see Rupaul’s Drag Race, they see the art/performance form for what it is, just that, and with Mrs. Doubtfire and Medea, along with having survived Bugs Bunny, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Rudy Giuliani, Flip Wilson, and Harvey Korman, most people are not threatened by drag shows in restaurants and bars and “Drag Queen Story Hours”, and this means the fringe is losing yet another monster under the bed , the one they can control because they created it, and when they lose that, they lose their power and with that their authority to (mis)lead people.
When your ideology is based on the concept of a shepherd and his sheep, it is not a good thing when people see that the wolves from which you protecting them are just cardboard cut-outs
Although the explosion that began the Stonewall Rebellion was a spontaneous unified community reaction to one oppressive act too far, the energy of the present artificial battle over whether it was Drag Queens or Transgender people who started it all by one of them throwing a fictitious brick, or shot glass if you subscribe to that modern version of the story, one or the other tossed by someone who was admittedly not there, could be harnessed to fight back against this new Lavender Scare this time clearly led by the Drag Queens and Transgender Community with the rest of us joining in and having a Stonewall II take place at every state capitol that is considering or has passed a foolish and misguided, totally political law against Trans people and Drag Queens.
The Stonewall Rebellion was not a one-night thing. People returned a few more nights to keep the protest going, and things began to change.
Sitting up here in the virtual Gay Paradise of Massachusetts after a life of rallies, protests, advocacy, and related legal entanglements for the sake of Gay rights around the country, enjoying what I had fought for, it is rather disheartening when, after an ostentatious rally or protest against such laws there is the quiet going home and bitching and moaning about the situation demanding someone do something and checking on the internet to see if anyone is, with no one going right back and protesting again.
Sadly, this is often how it is even in those places most vulnerable and under attack.
Cheese and Rice, are people waiting for a fictitious person to throw a non-existent shot glass or brick before we go beyond talk and tweets and show our displeasure by ongoing demonstration of any size but powerful because of persistence?
As the nuts go after good innocent people who want to be themselves or entertain others to make their days better the way they know they have the talent to, there is just too much silence and invisibility.
In the 80s, the slogan Silence=Death was directed toward those who sat silently as we died.
This time our own silence, that of the “Lavender Community”, is letting some of us die.
No more purges.
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