june

6 min readJun 1, 2022

Fresh and alive and gay and young
June is a love song, sweetly sung

June, as the cast of Carousel sings for us, is once again bustin’ out all over. For many, it’s the end of the school year or the beginning of summer shenanigans, but for queer folx, June marks the beginning of Pride season. Why June? Around 1am on June 28, 1969, resistance by the patrons of the Stonewall Inn sparked the Stonewall Riots, but of course the story, as it’s been told, retold, poorly told, reconstructed, and told again, is more interesting than these basic facts.

In those days (and today, in some parts of the world…and in some parts of this country), just walking into a gay bar or any establishment that openly catered to non-heterosexual people came with risks. Casual heterosexism in the form of vulgar and crude appraisals of queer people, harsh and violent language, and pseudopsychological and theological degradation were the norm at home, in schools, in the workplace, and in the public square, and anyone who challenged those norms, either openly identifying as queer or advocating as an ally, were labeled as deviants and perverts, accused of Communist allegiances, and left vulnerable to verbal and physical attacks. Being non-heterosexual and expressing anything beyond cisgender normativity were arrestable offenses, and police frequently raided establishments that catered to people who weren’t welcome to gather together anywhere else. Bar owners paid off cops to avoid raids, but that never provided a solid shield. Police would often raid the places they were profiting from anyway, and blackmailers preyed on customers and threatened the stability of their personal, professional, and civic lives. Despite such tenuous protections, the bars were among the few places where queer people could gather to affirm their dignity, let their guards down, and get laid without fear of repercussions

From the start of the 20th century, groups like the Society for Human Rights and the Mattachine Society worked to establish equal rights for queer people, but most in the burgeoning movement adopted a strategy of assimilation, not agitation. As the civil rights movement for Black people and for women accelerated in the 50s and 60s, people on the margins were increasingly dissatisfied with playing nice and the snail-pace of progress.

Then Judy died.

From her launch as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was a favorite of gay audiences, both as a performer whose voice uniquely captured the mix of pain and joy and sorrow and beauty of life and as a person who openly supported her queer fans. As the story goes, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn on the night of her funeral, the gays had had enough. Word spread quickly, and people flooded Christopher Park, the small plaza outside the Stonewall, to, for the first time, fight back. A police phalanx was greeted with a kick line. In the course of the first night of rioting, the bar was destroyed, but people kept coming. By the time the riots concluded six days later, the rioters changed the course of queer activisim by throwing out the old playbook and elevating the experience of queer people to the national radar.

Judy gets a lot of credit for Stonewall — probably too much. Perhaps that’s because cisgender, gay, white men dominated the narrative. Credit really should go to trans women of color and drag queens — Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Zazu Nova, Jackie Hormona, Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. DeLarverie was probably the first one to throw a punch at the bar. Most will agree now that one or two people can’t be credited for the riots — it was a collective experience, a collective response, and a collective effort in its aftermath. Within fifty years, the fight for “gay rights” grew from minor victories to equal marriage, a very real and very symbolic victory in establishing the equality of queer relationships. The unpronounceable initialism that evolved reflects the growing recognition of the distinct experiences of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people — gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, pansexual…and yet, when anyone sees “LGBTQ+” they understand its clunky attempt to represent the folx who share the common ground of marginalization in a cis-hetronormative world.

A year after the Stonewall Riots, the first Pride parade was held in New York, and simultaneous demonstrations popped up in major cities. At some point, communities started grabbing different weekends in June and then throughout the summer for their parades, both avoiding pigeonholing pride into a single date and enabling the ever-expanding roster of activists to join in festivities around the country. Parades and festivals expanded, and by the time I was marching with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus in the late 90s it was such a popular community event that politicians and local businesses clamored to participate and demonstrate their support.

In the last few years, though, June has been greeted as the beginning of pandering season. Suddenly, print and TV ads start featuring queer couples and families are everywhere. Every corporation, politician, and civic organization suddenly has a bold statement about LGBTQ+ people and the continuing fight for equal rights. And every fucking store is pushing branded Pride merchandise. I’m not bothered by the broad support intended by these gestures; I’m bothered that these gestures too often diluted by companies’ failure to support queer employees, by politicians’ hypocrisy voting against equal rights and protections.

I don’t know what to do about it. Other smarter, more impactful people are working on it, and I’m grateful for their guidance about which politicians to vote for, which products to avoid, and all that. That said, I think we all have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to contribute to the observance of Pride. Whether to commemorate Stonewall, to agitate for justice and equal rights for all marginalized people, or to demonstrate to the world what our lives look like and require, each of us can contribute to the narrative. Every person who identifies with one of the letters in the Grand Initialism has a story to tell, a story of life through their eyes, ears, feelings, relationships, and desires.

A few years ago, I started a practice of reflecting on the people and experiences that shaped me and informed my identity as a gay, cisgender, white man. Last year, I published 25 of these short essays on An Injustice!, a publication on Medium. Someday, I might be able to spin these into a book (anyone know a publisher or literary agent?), but in the meantime, I hope to expand this list by continuing to identify books and movies and performers and thinkers who have impacted the way I know myself and others, the way I understand my desires and needs.

If you’re interested, links to the series published last year are below. If you think they’re interesting, if you think storytelling is a better way to celebrate Pride than filling the coffers of Big Hypocrisy, please share them with friends or on social media. Or, tell your own story. Who are the people who shaped you? What are the books that expanded your horizons? What are the movies and TV shows that gave you a voice when you didn’t know you had one or showed you a life you didn’t know you could live? Or, better yet, ask someone for the privilege of hearing their stories. Ask (nicely — it’s not your right to hear their story) a queer friend about coming out, about their role models or the fictions that gave them hope.

june

Written by Bill Hulseman

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