It was Friday June 27, 1969. New York's crime syndicates are extorting large sums of protection money from gay bars. Any who can, or will, not pay are either "persuaded" or closed down after a visit from NYCPD’s Public Morals Section, who enforce the Mafia's stranglehold on the city's gay bars. The detectives from the Public Morals Section have no reason to believe that tonight's raid on the gay Stonewall Inn will be anything but brief and businesslike. They arrest two bartenders, three drag queens, and a lesbian. The customers are allowed to leave one-by-one. A crowd of these customers quickly gathers outside the Stonewall Inn. Cries of defiance and cheers begin to rise from the swelling crowd (Lesbian). Soon, the crowd becomes an angry mob. Out numbered, with no place to go, the police seek cover inside the Stonewall, bolting the heavy wooden door against the crowd. Outside an uprooted parking meter is used as a makeshift battering ram, the door flies open. Someone pours lighter fluid through a broken window-- a match is thrown and the bar is in flames as police reinforcements begin to arrive. By Sunday morning the riot has burnt itself out. Intermittent small incidents take place over the next four nights but the pent-up anger and fury of the gay community has been exhausted and replaced by an emotion they have never experienced before, pride. Within a month the first Gay Liberation Front meeting is held in New York (Lesbian). Every year following the riot, now referred to simply as “Stonewall”, Americans, gay and straight alike, come together in almost every city across the country. They come together in remembrance of Stonewall, prior struggles for equality, and just to make sure that the rest of the world knows that they exist and will never give in to oppression.The purpose of the gay rights movement is to prompt open minded Americans to get involved by finding, joining and supporting state ...
