Stonewall Quotes

“The spirit that emerged outside a Mafia-run bar in 1969 became the pulse of the gay community and inspired not just an annual parade but ways to express gay pride in individual lives.
Stonewall happens every day.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“People are beginning to realise,” the doorman of the Stonewall Inn observed a few days after the riot, “that no matter how ‘nelly’ or how ‘fem’ a homosexual is, you can only push them so far.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“Masquerading in the attire of the opposite sex was a criminal offense, except on Halloween.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“Change does come.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“Few bars in New York, even gay bars, permitted same-sex dancing.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“Men danced with men, often for the first time in their lives.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“When Clinton took office, members of that community still faced a host of legal and cultural barriers. Sodomy laws banned same-sex acts, even in the privacy of one’s bedroom, in more than half of the country’s states plus the nation’s capital.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“We are following the blacks ... And we will follow, entering, perhaps, the same time as women.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“...doctors advised intensive talk therapy, even electroshock treatment. Some gay men were castrated against their will, a procedure that removed their testicles and deadened the sex drive. Others were lobotomized, a medical practice that destroyed the connections between the frontal lobes and the thalamus of the brain, deadening just about all aspects of behavior.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“And then there were the lesbians.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

“Even the police and other straights were having epiphanies. “People are beginning to realize,” the doorman of the Stonewall Inn observed a few days after the riot, “that no matter how ‘nelly’ or how ‘fem’ a homosexual is, you can only push them so far.”
― Ann Bausum, Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights