Looking Backward and Forward

Abstract

In the wake of the Stonewall riots in June 1969, The Village Voice published a couple of pieces that provoked even more protests. In “View from the Inside,” Howard Smith described “the gay customers freshly ejected from their hangout, prancing high and jubilant in the street” and “the police had trouble keeping a dyke in a patrol car.” As the riots began, he observed, “the sound filtering in doesn’t suggest dancing faggots any more.” In “View from the Outside,” Lucian Truscott IV wrote: “Sheridan Square this weekend looked like something from a William Burroughs novel as the sudden specter of ‘gay power’ erected its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the likes of which the area has never seen.” In response to the protestors having been maliciously labeled “the forces of faggotry,” angry readers marched on the Voice offices. Yet, despite the inflammatory language used to report the events, the Voice was more prescient than the New York Times which simply published a brief piece after the third confrontation with police, on July 3, at the Stonewall Inn “which the police said was well known for its homesexual [sic] clientele.” The Times didn’t even publish any of the photos taken until 40 years later. Historic events are easier to see in hindsight, of course, but Stonewall has become an important touchstone in gay history and politics. Despite the description of “wrists were limp, hair was primped,” the Voice’s Truscott also foresaw that “[t]he result was a kind of liberation, as the gay brigade emerged from the bars, back rooms, and bedrooms of the Village and became street people,” and he concludes his piece warning readers: “Watch out. The liberation is underway.” As we publish the last issue in the first volume of QED, we take this moment to reflect back on the past year of this journal, as well as the rapidly changing landscape of GLBTQ politics. Forty-five years after Stonewall, we might read the )))