“I’m a Stonewall skeptic. I don’t doubt that it happened, but I question how it has been used over the years. Because this is a big anniversary year, there is a compulsion to heroize the people who were there and elevate the event.
Those sweaty summer nights of rebellion were certainly important and unique and have reverberated for 50 years. However, an event like the Stonewall uprising was inevitable—young people with 1960s political impatience and righteous indignation had a lot of LGBTQ+ history to fuel them. Other protest and resistance had already happened in places such as Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Much of the staying power of Stonewall’s reputation rests upon the Pride marches that began on the first anniversary of the uprising.”

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