Each June, we celebrate the Stonewall Rebellion through a kaleidoscopic set of events. This year, I will be less celebratory and more cautionary.
As a gay educator and historian, I’ve danced to a memory of Stonewall, often forgetting these rebellious queers’ gritty agendas and street tactics. What might we learn from this Stonewall history and its aftermath in the era of Trumpism?
Stonewall radicals’ messages like “Out of the Closets, Into the Streets” sparked Gay Liberation Fronts in 36 states and Gay Liberation Day marches that transformed public awareness — and generated conservative backlash. In 1977, singer-activist Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign overturned Florida’s Dade County anti-discrimination ordinance.
Like dominoes, other cities repealed similar ordinances. In return, more queer activists were galvanized. The 1978 rejection of California’s Proposition 6 crippled this anti-sexualist momentum. The next year, at least 75,000 people marched on Washington. By then, lesbians and gay men held elective state and federal offices and 24 states had repealed sodomy statutes.
Sexual minority organizations mushroomed during the 1980s. During this first decade of AIDS, former President Reagan abjectly failed to address the public health crisis. His 1986 budget proposal reduced funding by 11 percent. Outreach efforts were further crippled by the 1987 Helms Amendment prohibiting federal monies to “promote homosexuality.” During this age of madness and malaise, the situation required direct action.
A new iteration of queer radicalism emerged when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) confronted those deemed complicit. For instance, the largest protest since the Vietnam era shuttered the Food and Drug Administration for a day.
The effectiveness of direct action coupled to conventional tactics was apparent. The Ryan White CARE Act, for example, was enacted in 1990. Mainstream national organizations painted a mural of humanity on the interminable wall of heterodoxy, distancing degeneracy from decency. As in other civil rights struggles, in this brief but critical moment, radicals had roused assimilationists, intensifying the struggle.
Such synchronicity, however, was rare — nationally or locally. After years of lobbying Congress, national gay and lesbian organizations settled for former President Clinton’s compromise “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993, creating more problems for uniformed queers.
Locally, Washington Post Magazine ran the headline “Showdown in Rehoboth” when the homeowners’ association of this Delaware beach town, confronting an “invasion” of queers, distributed bumper stickers pledging to “Keep Rehoboth a Family Town” and enacting ordinance toward that end.
Engaging in earnest dialogue and sharing heartfelt experiences, Rehoboth’s gay leaders sought to “Create A More Positive Rehoboth.” They believed that sharing relevant “harm-related personal experiences” would more likely foster respect for those holding different views on moral issues, especially if there is willingness and ability to communicate.
Over time, local attitudes gradually changed. Nationally, the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision overturned sodomy statutes, Congress repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010 and, 12 years later, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act before vacationing at his Rehoboth Beach home. For progressive activists, it appeared that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Unitarian minister Theodore Parker had originally penned an earlier version of this quotation in his 1853 sermon, published seven years before the onset of America’s first Civil War. During this era of brother fighting brother and communities divided, blood-stained battlefields were our only common ground.
Historically, violence has often been a factor in this bending when our moral universe and our notion of justice become bifurcated. Bending occurs most fully when those divided by deeply held convictions enter the public square with mutual respect, a willingness to listen, and an openness to new information and understandings, as was the local case in turn-of-the-century Rehoboth.
Since Donald Trump descended into American politics, the public square — along with a shared moral universe and notion of justice — has shrunk. Hate crimes have increased against family planning clinics, queer bars, drag queen story hours, and against the trans and gender-non conforming people.
These attackers, like those of Jan. 6, were fed from a MAGA menu of falsehoods, fears, and fantasies. Today, policing the body politic is well underway as state legislatures dust off century-old abortion laws and the Republican Congress endorses a national abortion ban.
Hannah Arendt famously observed that one can do evil without being evil. We do evil by acting justly as individuals yet benefiting from social injustice. We do evil by ignoring our slow-boil into fascism. We do evil by clinging to an illusion of normalcy.
Perhaps, the Day One dictatorship promised by Trump will be forestalled by his loss in this fall’s elections. Perhaps, a Biden victory will not result in a repeat of Jan. 6 — or worse. Perhaps our moral universe will bend more toward justice. Perhaps not.
This year’s Stonewall events should be a time for preparation, not celebration.
Dr. James Sears is a historian and educator. His latest book, “Queering Rehoboth Beach,” has just been published by Temple University Press.
