Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406260092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE DORNING CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
All this would have been impossible 25 years ago, when police raided a bar called the Stonewall Inn. That was the night the gays fought back, and it was the night the gay rights movement was born.
Out of the bar riot came a cultural revolution. Stonewall and its legacy have pushed the most intimate issues of sexuality into the open and are now forcing society to rethink some of its most fundamental institutions, such as marriage and military service.
Twenty-five years ago it would have been unthinkable for Hawaii to consider same-sex marriages, as its legislature did earlier this year.
It would have been unimaginable for the armed services to acknowledge gay soldiers and sailors in their ranks, as the military has done by removing its blanket prohibition on homosexuals.
And it would have been unbelievable for students in public elementary schools to bring home a textbook titled "Heather has Two Mommies," as children may in the handful of school districts that include the book on lesbian families in their curricula.
Such monumental and controversial changes have divided the country, but more subtle shifts may be just as profound.
Back in 1969, gay men went to the Stonewall Inn because it was one of the few places in the city where they could dance together. There, behind blackened windows and Mafia lookouts, they could hide away for a few hours from a society that made it illegal for men to dance in couples or for bars even to serve a homosexual a drink.
But when police entered on June 28 of that year, the gay patrons, including a kick line of taunting drag queens, didn't scatter, they battled.
For William Wynkoop, 78, a gay man who witnessed the disturbance at the Stonewall, the most significant change since that night is simple. "It's the ability to say the word `homosexual,' " the retired English professor said.
As Wynkoop remembers it, society once referred to them only as "degenerates" or "perverts."
Homosexuality is no longer an unmentionable deviancy. It is on the airwaves and newspaper pages, in the movie theaters and political debates. And especially, as more gay people reveal their sexual identities, it is a word Americans are hearing describe their colleagues, friends and relatives.
Twenty-two percent of Americans know that a close friend or relative is gay or lesbian, according to a poll taken for CBS News in 1993.
In a Time/CNN Poll released last week, 52 percent of Americans said that while they personally would not enter a "homosexual relationship," they considered gay relationships acceptable for others. Just 35 percent thought so in 1978.
Beyond being acceptable, gay relationships increasingly are being formally recognized and publicly sanctioned.
Forty-three years into Wynkoop's relationship with his partner, Roy Strickland, the couple's commitment finally was recognized by New York City in March 1993. The two men registered as "domestic partners" after the city passed an ordinance granting the status to gay couples.
The couple plan to participate in today's Stonewall anniversary march.
This past week, 11,000 athletes and many more spectators have been celebrating their homosexuality in the Olympic-style Gay Games in New York.
Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came to the opening ceremonies and Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo shot hoops with participants. All over the city, same-sex couples have been casually holding hands as they strolled the streets.
But for all the tolerance and even acceptance gays have achieved in a quarter of a century, homosexuality still disturbs many people. Many gays say they don't feel safe declaring themselves as such.
Sizable numbers of Americans consider gay relationships, such as the union of Strickland and Wynkoop, an abomination and regard as offensive the implicit blessing bestowed by legal recognition of those relationships, polls show.
Parents still cry when they learn their children are gay. Friends still draw back. Office colleagues still snicker. And, sometimes, antipathy toward gays still is expressed with fists and baseball bats.
The religious right, in the name of protecting traditional family structures, has made a priority of halting and even rolling back the legal advances of the gay rights movement.
Initiatives opposing civil rights protection for gays will be on fall election ballots in six states, according to the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. And in 23 states, laws remain on the books making homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime.
Even now, at the Stonewall, the singular landmark to gay self-assertiveness, the manager, Peter, will not give his last name to a reporter.
"I'm not `out' with my family," Peter explained, referring to his parents' ignorance of his sexual orientation. In fact, on a recent night, about half the customers in the bar - many in New York for gay pride celebrations - would not give their names.
But in a country where blacks and women have struggled for civil rights since the 19th century, the advances of gays in a quarter-century seem swift and significant.
The nation has 133 openly gay elected officials, including three in Texas, according to the Victory Fund, a political action committee for gay candidates.
Gay youths have formed officially sanctioned support groups in more than 100 high schools, including Minnesota, Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts, where they have the endorsement of the state's Republican governor, William Weld.
Domestic partnerships between members of gay couples are recognized officially in dozens of cities. Likewise, some of the nation's largest companies, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Warner Bros., grant partners of their homosexual employees the same benefits heterosexual spouses receive.
Gay parents, once almost automatically deemed unfit, are adopting children and winning child custody in divorce proceedings. A Virginia appeals court last week reversed a judge's decision to deny child custody to a lesbian mother simply because of her sexual orientation.
Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is now illegal in eight states and at least 87 cities and counties, according to the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced federal legislation Thursday to guarantee gays equal rights in employment, a bill that was co-sponsored by 28 senators and endorsed by the AFL-CIO.
The success of efforts by gays to penetrate the mainstream of American society can be tracked in the popular culture.
On network television, a lesbian lawyer appeared on "L.A. Law" and Mariel Hemingway kissed Roseanne Arnold on "Roseanne." Hip MTV's cinema verite serial "The Real World," in which a group of twentysomethings share living quarters, currently has Pedro agonizing over a marriage proposal from his lover Sean.
In print, supermodel Cindy Crawford suggestively shaved the openly lesbian singer k.d. lang on a recent cover of Vanity Fair, and a character in the comic strip "Doonesbury" has come out of the closet. Newsweek's best-selling issue last year featured a cover story on lesbianism.
But old fears and prejudices linger. Chip Kine, a 25-year-old Texan with clean-cut looks, has his own method of fighting them.
Visiting the Stonewall while in New York for the Gay Games, he explained that, during his frequent road trips, he makes a practice of eating at truck stops and roadside restaurants and engaging the waitresses in conversation.
With his tips, deliberately large, he leaves a small card. It reads, "You've been tipped by a gay man, does that matter?"
In the 1990s, often, it still does, but perhaps less and less.
Memo: NOTE: below