Happy Pride Month from The Best Damn Newsletter in New Jersey!TM In living color and with more content online at issuu.com/gaamc/docs!
CHALLENGE T he New sl etter of the Gay Act iv is t Allian ce in Morris Cou n t y S e r v i ng New Jer sey’ s G LBTI Commu n it ies Con t in u ou s ly S in c e 1 9 7 2 V o lu m e 40 , I ssu e 5, J u ne 2 0 14
June's Boon by Sherri Rase
This month is Pride Month in the New Jersey, the United States, and many parts of the globe. This is the month that we commemorate Stonewall and Sylvia Rivera, who threw the Shoe Heard Round the World. Many attribute the Stonewall Riots in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 to overwhelming grief over the death of gay icon Judy Garland that made the injustice of a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village completely intolerable. When the raid happened, the patrons refused to give their IDs to the police and a scuffle ensued. That was 45 years ago this year, and the anniversary falls on the Saturday before NYC’s Pride Parade down 5th Avenue. So much has happened and still, so little. The burgeoning LGBT movement began much earlier than Stonewall…the question is when. Did it begin after World War I when women and men settled in Harlem and Greenwich Village to continue to experience the freedom they knew? Did it begin in California where military veterans converted caissons into clubs for people who found camaraderie and love in war? Did it begin with Harry Hay’s Mattachine Society in 1950? The gays didn’t want him because he was a Communist; the Communists didn’t want him because he was gay; yet Hay made a movement among like-minded male homosexuals in California and shortly thereafter women formed their own organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, to organize around their interests. Stonewall was the flashpoint, but homophile movements had been gathering steam. Randy Wicker organized a group to picket the Whitehall Street Induction Center in New York in September 1964 after confidentiality of draft records of gay men were compromised. In December 1964, also in New York City, four gay men and lesbians protested at a speaking
engagement by a psychoanalyst who characterized homosexuality as an illness. In April 1965 in Philadelphia, a protest was held after a restaurant refused service to people who “looked” gay. ECHO (East Coast Homophile Organizations) consisted of separate lesbian and gay rights groups who banded together for specific actions like the demonstration they organized at City Hall in Philadelphia that year, a very visible symbol of freedom. They met every year thereafter to picket in their “Annual Reminder”, the final chapter occurring in 1969, about a week after the Stonewall Riots. The marchers included nowfamous activists Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, Kay Lahusen, Randy Wicker and others all marching in genderappropriate work attire. But now after the Stonewall Riots, the gloves were off and groups like the Gay Activist Alliances and Gay Liberation Front began taking LGBT rights to the streets, much like counterparts in the civil rights movement. Christopher Street Liberation Day in 1970 commemorated the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. A new era was born and the closet door was kicked down, with sometimes bloody clashes. At times back then, LGBT people were working together but most often groups each had different agendas to pursue. These days we march together, but we still have ego problems. We are not the voting bloc that the Black and Latino caucuses have worked so hard to create. Now is our time, now is the push, now we have momentum but only if we can work together. The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis wanted to show that LGBT people were the same as “normal” people and we all wanted the same things. Yet from the mo(continued on page 3)
Inside Challenge Challenge Information .................................... page GAAMC Events.............................................. page What's happening at our Monday meetings Bulletin Board.............................................. page Upcoming Pride Events................................... page Gleanings.................................................... page Q-munity Calendar........................................ page
2 2 3 3 4 6
GSE Receives Award from NJ Association of School Psychologists .................................. page 8 This Month's Contributors ............................... page 8 Board Minutes for April 2014........................... page 9 Dancing To Architecture ................................ page 10 Music reviews and news with a queer ear The Little Box of Concerts ............................. page 10 GAAMC Information ...................................... page 12
Inside Challenge Online More Dancing to Architecture™ ~ E x p a n d e d Little Box of Concerts™