Time has almost no meaning in 2020, which somehow manages to feel like it’s only just begun and like it’s lasted for at least 10 years. This Pride Month in particular has been quite the decade.
It’s certainly been a historical one for our community, marking 50 years of publicly celebrating LGBTQ Pride. The first march which morphed into the festivities we hold today was held June 28, 1970.
Christopher Street Liberation Day was designed to serve as an annual reminder of the Stonewall Riots, which one year prior launched the LGBTQ civil rights movement. Our community challenged abusive authorities for the first time en masse, signaling enough was enough.
Their days-long, riotous response was a product of its time. Marginalized communities across the nation had begun to speak out and stand up; demanding the equality promised to every American that so many of us are still fighting for today.
That battle was on full display this June in our nation’s highest court when the Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ workers were protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No longer could we be fired just for being LGBTQ.
The legislation was conceived in response to the injustice Black Americans faced in 1963, which in 2020 has only evolved into other forms of horrific hatred. Streets across the globe, filled with protestors forced to proclaim Black Lives Matter, prove that’s the case.
But the Civil Rights Act’s extension to LGBTQ Americans is just one of the latest examples of how tied LGBTQ civil rights are to the fight for racial justice. It’s a connection that LGBTQ historian Edmund White discussed last year.
White was present for Stonewall, then as a self-described “middle class, white 29-year-old who’d been in therapy for years trying to go straight.” He explained that it wasn’t those who looked the most like him who initially fought back. Instead, the LGBTQ liberators were people of color who were “resisting the police, of all things!” He was soon grateful, as generations of LGBTQ Americans would come to be.
“Whereas gays had always run away in the past, afraid of being arrested and jailed, these Stonewall African Americans and Puerto Ricans and drag queens weren’t so easily intimidated,” White wrote. “They lit fires, turned over cars and mocked the cops, even battering the heavy Stonewall doors where some policemen were retaining members of the staff and customers.
“When someone shouted ‘Gay is good’ in imitation of ‘Black is beautiful,’ we all laughed,” he continued. “We went from seeing ourselves as a mental illness to thinking we were a minority.”
Credited among the Stonewall leaders is Marsha P. Johnson, the Black, transgender woman who helped usher in LGBTQ civil rights. But while her brave fight would go on to inspire LGBTQ Pride celebrations across the globe, far too often they ignore the parts of our community that made them possible. Or as White summarized, “the first group to benefit from the freedoms won 50 years ago were white men. Now the struggle continues among young lesbians, people of color, the trans population – and all those living under dangerously rightwing, hostile religious regimes.”
That was made clear just days before the Supreme Court’s favorable ruling. On June 12, as our community reflected on the four-year mark of Pulse in an already socially-distant Pride Month, the Trump administration finalized a rule eliminating health care protections for our transgender siblings. During a global pandemic.
The attack was just the latest effort from D.C., which advocated against the court’s ruling and subsequently denounced it. It was further proof that equality and justice are on the ballot in the coming election – making it more essential than ever that the most privileged members of the LGBTQ community work to protect the most marginalized. It’s certainly what the most marginalized among us have always done in reverse.
Black, LGBTQ lives gave us Pride and fought for our rights in every battle that came after. They matter. We must all speak out and stand up beside them.
It’s also imperative that we listen to them. Black, LGBTQ voices from throughout Central Florida and Tampa Bay allow us to do exactly that in this issue’s in-depth coverage, sharing their experiences and asserting that Black Lives Matter. All of them.
That’s evident in our news coverage. Tampa Bay leaders organize a vigil showing “Together We Rise” and Central Florida’s Contigo Fund launches new efforts. We also speak with actress Ana Ortiz from “Love, Victor” in Arts and Entertainment.
Watermark strives to bring you a variety of stories, your stories. Please stay safe, stay informed and enjoy this latest issue.
