PRIDE month has ended in Seattle. PRIDE in Seattle is HUGE! Events all month, a giant parade through downtown, booths at the Seattle Center. When I moved from a conservative town in north Florida to Seattle in 2012, the size of the PRIDE parade and the welcome from the city blew my mind and brought tears to my eyes. The rainbows everywhere, all the support- amazing. PRIDE hear looks a lot different than PRIDE in NYC in 1969.
What is PRIDE really about?
“We celebrate Pride in the month of June because it marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
In 1969, queer life was decidedly not something that could be celebrated by mainstream culture. Police regularly raided gay nightclubs, arresting people who were wearing clothing that didn’t conform to their assigned gender or were suspected of “soliciting” same-sex relations. Up until 1966, the New York State Liquor Authority would shut down or otherwise punish bars that sold alcohol to members of the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that a group of queer people was somehow inherently more disorderly than a group of straight people.
In 1969, homosexual acts–kissing, holding hands, dancing together–were still illegal in New York. So on the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar that is still open in Greenwich Village.
IN 1969, QUEER LIFE WAS DECIDEDLY NOT SOMETHING CELEBRATED BY MAINSTREAM CULTURE.
By Laura Muth for The Tempest
Stonewall was one of the few bars that welcomed drag queens, who were often shunned from other LGBT spaces.
The police started arresting bar patrons and employees who were violating the law about gender-appropriate clothing. When an officer clubbed a Black lesbian named Stormé DeLarverie over the head for complaining that her handcuffs were too tight, the crowd that had gathered outside the club had enough.
Marsha P. Johnson, a Black drag queen, and Sylvia Rivera, a Latinx queen, were two of the first to actively resist the police that night, throwing bricks, bottles, and shot glasses at officers. Their actions sparked six days of riots in the neighborhood surrounding the Stonewall Inn and galvanized the nascent gay rights movement in the United States.”
In honor of our queer forerunners, I wanted this PRIDE to be different.
I wanted this PRIDE to be about queer community for me both personally and professionally. No big parades, no huge parties. I spent my PRIDE with my queer family and establishing social service to my queer community. QueerDoc strives to by culturally humble and socially just. Monthly recurring donations to our queer ancestors, the owner’s of this land, and a QTPOC organization, volunteering time at community events, and offering gender identity change letters are all part of my commitment through QueerDoc to show up for my community- to honor the gifts of the past generations and continue to create safety and family for the future generations.
