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“They would scurry off, people who were let go by the police would run off.” “Gay people just took it,” historian Lillian Faderman, author of The Gay Revolution, told me. Police would barge into these establishments to harass and beat up the patrons. This meant that bars were one of the few, if not the only, spaces where police officers knew they could openly target gays and lesbians.įor a long time, this was simply the way things were. In the 1960s, community centers or meet ups didn’t exist for LGBTQ people as they do now. That might mean a departure from the joyful and triumphant marches in years past-we are still in a pandemic, after all-but it may spur some much-needed progress on an issue that is too often neglected. One of the ways they can start is by refashioning this year’s Pride Month in yet another way: by embarking on a long overdue conversation about how anti-Blackness has long manifested within queer spaces. According to the Human Rights Center, Black transgender women face the highest levels of fatal violence within the LGBTQ community-and are less likely to turn to the police for help for fear of revictimization by law enforcement personnel.īut with LGBTQ organizations now thrusting themselves into the national fight against racism, it’s time for them to take a hard look inward. Yet some queer people are more at-risk than others. CBE was contacted about it as a potential discrimination case. gay bar than the rest of the white patrons.
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In 2018, an Atlanta gay bar owner posted on Facebook that “if the South had won, we would be a hell of a lot better off.” Fowlkes told me of an incident from two weeks ago when a group of Black men were seated at a different section of a D.C. Unfortunately, stories like these are all too commonplace. One bar owner was caught on YouTube saying racial slurs. In 2017, for instance, Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations ordered 11 gay bars to take a training course on the city’s anti-discrimination laws after there were reports of them denying Black people entry for vague dress codes and bartenders giving preferential treatment to white gay men. One of the biggest obstacles they face, he told me, is not just acceptance in straight society-but in white LGBTQ society. “But it’s empty if there is no action behind it.”įowlkes is the founder of the Center for Black Equity, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing equality for Black LGBTQ people. “The statement is great for solidarity,” said Earl D. “We understand what it means to rise up and push back against a culture that tells us we are less than, that our lives don’t matter,” they said.īut while LBGTQ groups have emphatically supported the Black Lives Matter movement, some civil rights activists argue that they haven’t done enough to stamp out racism within their own community. On May 29, four days after Floyd’s murder, more than 100 LGBTQ organizations released a joint statement condemning racial violence. No doubt, that was part of what compelled so many in the community to speak out. In the 1960s, for instance, it was common practice for cops to threaten and harass gay bars. This makes sense: Gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals have also been victims of systemic oppression.
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Quickly, it became apparent that LGBTQ people were playing an outsize role at the protests, where pride flags have been common fixtures. Countless Americans decided to get out of their homes and onto the streets-furious over police brutality and widespread racial injustices. Then, on May 25, police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, sparking mass protests and riots. Naturally, more than 500 parades and festivals scheduled for June’s Pride Month were cancelled in major cities across the world, from New York City and Washington, D.C., to London and Paris. When the novel coronavirus arrived to America earlier this year, states and municipalities implemented physical-distancing measures to mitigate its spread universities sent college students home and businesses were forced to furlough or fire millions of employees due to the economic fallout. Pride Month was always going to look different this year-at least, once the pandemic hit.