Stonewall: Beginning of a Global Departure | World | '
When in July the visitors of the two biggest Christopher Street Days (CSDs) across the streets of Berlin and Cologne move, the rainbow flags, show trucks and shrill costumes will remind more than usual of a summer night in New York 50 years ago.
In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police stormed the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village. The run-down mafia bar was at this time – homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder – meeting place of often non-white gays, lesbians, trans people and drag queens. Although the guests were used to the routine harassment of the authorities, the extraordinary thing happened: they defend themselves.
The argument led to days of rioting between the gay community and the police and went down in history as a major catalyst for the modern gay and lesbian movement in the US Within a few months, activists in New York and later across the country founded organizations that who wrote the "homosexual liberation" on the flag. On the anniversary of the uprising, the "Christopher Street Liberation Day", the first Gay Pride parade moved through the Big Apple.
New, radical self-confidence – from Finland to Japan
In fact, homosexuals had already organized themselves before the uprising – as in "homophile groups" who wanted to achieve "something like recognition for a specific homosexual lifestyle in the majority society", as Carina Klugbauer of the Gay Museum Berlin says.
But the commitment to Stonewall was more radical – "in the sense that they did not seek recognition and another pride behind it." Coming out as one of the moving or now normal moments in a LGBTIQ life is to For example, a Post-Stonewall moment, "says Klugbauer, who co-curated the exhibition" Love at First Fight! Queer Movements in Germany since Stonewall ".
August 1970: Policemen Attack Participants in a Gay Power Demonstration in New York
Soon the fight was also led far beyond the USA. In the first years after the uprisings on Christopher Street, gay political groups and organizations sprang up in the UK, Finland, Iceland and Germany, as well as in Israel, Australia and Japan. The events in New York did not always play a role. "I think that it was mainly parallel movements, because at least for German history you can show that in 1969 and the early seventies, you did not know that much about the Stonewall Riots," says Klugbauer.
The liberation movements had emerged in a similar political context but had been triggered by different events. "At Stonewall, it's an attempt to defend itself against police intrusion and police violence, in Germany they go to the cinema and found homosexual emancipating groups," explains Klugbauer – referring to the West German stonewall moment: the world premiere of Rosa von Praunheim's " Not the homosexual is perverse, but the situation in which he lives "at the Berlinale 1971.
Two years earlier, the so-called Gay Paragraph, Section 175 of the Criminal Code, which criminalized sexual activities between men, was liberalized. Praunheim's film, which addressed homosexual life in subculture and called on the scene to fight openly for their rights, caused a sensation.
In the lee of the student movement
After the premiere, lesbians and gays founded political action groups throughout Germany. Elmar Kraushaar was involved in one of them. "We were sailing in the slipstream of the student movement," recalls the journalist today.
At first, abstract debates about "our place as homosexuals in the world revolution" would have set the agenda – until they realized that they were in conflict with a life in hiding. This was followed by: self-awareness, dealing with the fate of homosexuals during National Socialism, the founding of gay collectives, cafés, pubs, publishers and bookstores. "It was all about visibility, about developing a sense of self and a strength that could be turned out," said Kraushaar.
Participants of the first gay demonstration in Germany 1972 in the Westphalian Münster
That can confirm Cristina Perincioli. Born in Bern, the film director and author was active in the lesbian movement in Berlin in the early 1970s. "We said: we are different, we want to discriminate against each other, we do not want to be loved, we do not want marriage, we find family terrible." These were the slogans, "says the 72-year-old.
An unprecedented, publicly demonstrated self-confidence – just one of several parallels to the US movement. According to Carina Klugbauer, an intensive exchange between homosexuals in both countries only took place at the end of the seventies, when, for example, in Germany the first CSDs were organized on the model of the Pride Parades.
"The recourse to Stonewall did not start until you saw these masses on the street in America," says Elmar Kraushaar. "You suddenly discovered this date, but you did not know more than what you could read about it in the newspaper in Germany: that this was the first time that gays have been massively opposed to the police, which is in this way It was then used as a symbolic story, so to speak. "
"Everything was junk afterwards"
Kraushaar and Perincioli have witnessed all the major advances of the German movement since Stonewall: the first gay demo in Germany in 1972 – in the pious, conservative Münster, of all places. The deletion of paragraph 175 in 1994. The introduction of marriage for all 2017.
Nevertheless, for Perincioli, the beginning of emancipation has the most weight until today – the time "when the women and men came out of hiding and dared to come out in their village or town." It is "unbelievably central whether one can stand by his identity or pretend to be someone else, and that really affects millions," says the feminist. "Everything after that was junk."
Exuberant mood at this year's Pride Parade in Naples
And today? "The issues and struggles within the queer movement have diversified," says Carina Klugbauer. "There are now more initiatives that, for example, address racism in the movement or are supported by People of Color, and there is much more trans-activism than 20 years ago." In addition to civic engagement, there are queer feminist groups, for example, trying to "question wider gender attributions and roles".
Discrimination continues – even in Europe
Elsewhere, the struggle remains more existent – despite recent success stories such as the decriminalization of homosexuality in Botswana and the introduction of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. Currently, homosexuality is punishable in 70 countries, most of them in Africa.
But there is also cause for concern in Europe. The non-governmental organization ILGA-Europe speaks of an "increasingly unsafe and unsustainable environment for LGBTIQ organizations and human rights activists in a growing number of countries". There is a noticeable relapse in terms of laws and guidelines protecting LGBTIQ equality, such as in Serbia, Hungary and Turkey.
The Stonewall Inn, the first LGBTIQ National Monument in the US since 2016, is still in operation
Recently, however, homophobic attacks in the UK and Austria made headlines. In Germany, the number of crimes against LGBTIQ has been increasing for years. "If we listen in more detail to what politicians and church representatives say, we realize that beneath the surface there is still seething," warns Kraushaar. Especially with regard to the LGBTIQ-hostile rhetoric of right-wing populists, one can "not pretend that we can rest now."
That many do not do that is demonstrated by the CSDs and Pride parades in Cologne, Berlin and countless other cities around the world. More than three million visitors were expected to attend the WorldPride celebrations, which take place in New York 50 years after Stonewall, throughout June.
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