1980s gay movement in nyc
The queer history of New York Town
NYC, Modern York, USA
New York City’s gay scene was thrust prominently into the widespread eye in 1969 after riots at a Greenwich Village bar. But its existence underground began way before that.
New York Municipality – and Greenwich Village, in particular – are paired worldwide with lgbtq+ rights and lgbtq+ history because of the Stonewall uprising of June 1969 and the newly visible gay planet that flowered in the Village as a result of it. Sadly, the AIDS epidemic, too, was centred in New York, at least as far as the Eastern US was concerned.
These and other events cast Modern York in a pivotal role in world gay history in the belated 1960s, 70s and 80s, but many people are unknowing that the capital was an essential gay centre drawn-out before.
Same-sex relations of some gentle have taken place in every tradition and time, no matter what the cultural norms were, and there’s evidence of same-sex adore in 1640s Dutch New Amsterdam, for instance, where a young barber-surgeon called Harmen Meyndertz van den Bogaert was accused of sodomy with his slave Tobias and sadly died, falling through the ice as he tried to escape across the frozen Hudson.
By the 1850s, people that
Papagni Pages
I asked and you told me: this blog request comes from a good friend. Patrick asked me to write about being gay in NYC in the 80s and 90s and so here goes.
Some people crawl out of the closet, some burst out, others begin with a toe; I did it out of desperation. I have regrets, who doesn’t. This send will be more about what life was enjoy for a gay bloke in NYC during the time of AIDS and paradoxically a good deal of sexual freedom. I should state up front that what I am writing is my very subjective perspective on what life was like during this time in my personal gay history. I’m going to begin by making a confession:
I ask forgiveness for holding back some of what I experienced and witnessed. Although I have been honest in my blogs, I firmly believe that some aspects of one’s life are meant to be kept to oneself. These realities about my past are not shameful, criminal, or up for debate; these truths are my reality. What I choose to share is my business and should be esteemed.
New York City
NYC has always been a place for decadence and tolerance. I feel fortunate to have been raised in such a place. Having done my undergraduate studies and mast
This article is part of Hyperallergic’s 2025 Pride Month series, spotlighting moments from New York’s Homosexual art history throughout June.
In 1970, one year after the legendary first brick shattered the windows of the Stonewall Inn, thousands took to the streets of Lower Manhattan to participate in the Christopher Avenue Liberation Day Parade — an event that would later be remembered as the inaugural annual New York Urban area Pride March. Held in coordination with sister events planned in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, it was a defining moment in the Combined States queer rights movement that shined a light on the struggles of the LGBTQ+ collective, who had been demanding equality for years through grassroots protest actions and shows of resistance against police brutality and harassment.
Prior to Stonewall, many prior protests for gay rights were organized by the Homophile Movement — a predominantly White-led campaign that emerged after World War II and fought against discriminatory anti-sodomy laws and other measures that criminalized womxn loving womxn, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities in education, employment, and broader society. This movement led to the found
Christopher Street
History
Described by The Gay Insider (1971) as the “near-legendary path of gays for decades,” Christopher Street historically served as the main corridor to the working Greenwich Village waterfront. The piers, ships, bars, and seamen made the waterfront a popular cruising area for gay men since at least World War I. By the mid-1960s, Christopher Street gained a national reputation as a gay cruising ground.
The Same-sex attracted Insider (1971)
Christopher Street between Seventh Avenue South and Greenwich Avenue featured prominently during the June 1969 police raid of the Stonewall Inn, when huge crowds gathered on the street in front of the bar. This included young people hanging out in the adjacent Christopher Park, a longtime hangout for a diverse team of (often homeless) LGBT street youth. During the subsequent uprising, people shouted, “Christopher Street belongs to the queens!” and “Liberate Christopher Street,” according to gay rights activist Dick Leitsch, who witnessed the event. He also noted that the street “had become an almost compact mass of people – most of them same-sex attracted. No traffic could overtake, and even walking the few blo
Written by: Jim Downs, Connecticut College
By the end of this section, you will:
- Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980
After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Jet Power movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American society. Gay people organized to resist oppression and demand just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a New York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, sparked riots in 1969.
Around the alike time, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a massive examine of human sexuality in the United States. Prefer Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published research on trans person psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8,000 men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, saying that it could not be confined to simple categories of lesbian and heterosex