We didn't think we could change anything. "It was so much violence up to that time on the part of the police, so much discrimination," Boyce says. There were regular arrests for homosexual acts or for not wearing at least three pieces of clothing that police considered appropriate for a person's sex.
New York's LGBT community had already endured years of police raids on gay bars and beatings on the street. "What we used to normally do at the time was look at the raid, see people coming out, who got arrested, and be glad it wasn't you," he says. He says he expected to see a routine scene. On that hot and humid night in New York's West Village neighborhood, Boyce walked over to a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn after he heard that a police raid was underway. "It sounded like screaming and real cries of agony and desperation finally being released," recalls Martin Boyce, 68, who participated in the riots in the early hours of June 28, 1969. The Obama administration is taking steps to name the first national monument dedicated to the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.Ī likely location is in New York City, where the Stonewall riots sparked the modern gay-rights movement almost a half-century ago. But is hostility only for the literalist? I think not.20160530_me_long_a_symbol_stonewall_inn_may_soon_become_monument_to_lgbt_rights.mp3 Resistance to such dangerous notions that God needs both a Prosecuting Attorney and a Public Defender is the only avenue left. Some people are literalist because they see any deviation from what they have always been taught and believed as a threat not only to their security but in fact a threat to the very world! Others rally to the cause of literalism because they passionately believe to do otherwise is an act of betrayal so sinister as to warrant literal hell fire! But for whatever the case dialogue is not an option. Yes when all is said and done they both posses the same dynamic though I think it can be argued that one tends to embrace violence more readily than the other. Have you ever noticed the hostility evident in the world of religious literalism! I can’t address the pervasive problem in Islam with literalism, as I am not a Moslem, but I can as a Christian do so in Christianity. Unlike the trend in trendy tourist USA it was not an “open bar” a “metrosexual bar” or a ” non gender specific” bar nor did it try and reach out to the ultra cool straight women and men who think they are really “hipsters” by going to a place that was at least known as a gay bar! No it was a good old fashioned take it or leave in your face gay bar complete with some truly unattractive drag acts worthy of the term camp!īeing 67 I have had the opportunity to observe many things in many places. It was like stepping back in time to when gay bars were gay bars.
Speaking of bars John and I went to the Woodshed in Charlotte since it was almost in spitting distance of our hotel. What do gay bars and Pentecostalism have in common? They both at least most of the time are a place and a culture where what you see is what you get! You don’t care what the larger culture thinks of you and you understand that a great deal of life is sometimes just pure camp! You are what the Good Lord made you and calls you to be and you don’t have to understand a shift in the social and theological paradigm to understand that!