In the early morning hours, police officers raided the bar and arrested patrons under the pretense of the bar serving alcohol without a liquor license. The shot heard ‘round the world, as it were, took place on Jin New York City’s Greenwich Village at a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. And what better way to celebrate this new reality than with an extravagantly baroque parade replete with rainbow flags? It all signified a kind of revolution - a revolution that would become more powerful and consequential than the sexual revolution of the 1960s. A new day was dawning where I could be proud of not only my behavior, but also - and more importantly - my identity. Gone were the days of homosexuality being some kind of illicit or deviant sexual behavior. In fact, the concept of “homosexual behavior” was all but out of fashion as the more potent idea of “gay identity” emerged. At these events, homosexual behavior was not only accepted, it was celebrated. A world that promised unadulterated freedom.
A world where my secret desires didn’t seem abnormal.
I finally found a world where I felt fully accepted. Needless to say, I kept the closet door locked and threw away the key.īut my first experience at a gay pride parade when I was 16 began to unlock that closet door. The majority of folks, especially those in my sphere, were just plain disgusted by the idea of it. The world around me explicitly opposed that “lifestyle.” My Roman Catholic family, my peers at my Jesuit high school, and society at large were more or less in agreement that homosexual behavior was wrong. Growing up gay in Dallas, Texas in the 1980s was no walk in the park.