Got not one but two inquiries this week from writers looking for a story on early 70s gay history. The first was from a local amateur researcher looking for info on the first Gay Pride in Minneapolis, she seemed to think I was heavily involved. I honestly told her I couldn’t help much, I attended some early prides but that was the limit of my involvement. The second was from an MSNBC reporter asking what I knew about how Minneapolis added the “first in the nation” trans-inclusive anti-discrimination language to it’s Civil Rights Ordinance in 1975. I knew the answer to her question, but I didn’t divulge it. She probably would have been displeased when I told her Madison beat Minneapolis for that honor, anyways.
Why?
I use the term “Stonewall Era Veterans” for a reason- Gay folks who could hide their secret served, were sometimes wounded, and even died in our military. Some gay folks served, were wounded, and even died in the cause of gay liberation during the Stonewall era. And some served in both struggles, after being drummed out of the military for being gay or getting radicalized by a military and nation that was OK with killing another man, but not OK with loving another man.
Our then bigoted military may very well have created the gay ghettos from which the Stonewall era activism sprang by it’s dishonorable discharges of gay service members. Too embarrassed to return to their small town homes and effectively confirm the town’s suspicions of their gayness by their discharge, they settled and formed gay communities at the cities they were often discharged in- Castro in San Francisco, the Village in New York City, and to a smaller degree Loring Park in Minneapolis. At Compton’s Cafeteria, the Stonewall Bar, and in the basement of Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota the movement reached critical mass as the revolution began.
Not by our choice, it was not entirely a peaceful revolution. I remember hiding under cars to escape gay bashers near Loring Park, and a couple years later my friend Terry Knutson was beaten to death there. A couple months later another gay man was beaten to death in the same park, and the queer bashing murders of gay men in Minneapolis continued into the 90s.
Near a half century after the Stonewall era, we survivors are entering the life stage of senior housing, serial medical appointments, and nursing homes. And thanks to the sad legacy of decades of anti-gay discrimination, many of us have no safety nets in the form of veteran’s benefits or veterans preference to get a government job with a pension to fall back on. We’re headed for a fragile last days where being outed can get us kicked out of a fundamentalist church’s nursing home or the criminal charge we were framed with for protesting anti-gay bigotry can still deny us public housing and make us homeless. My late trans aunt Ricky Raymonde is listed under that name in 1960’s Minneapolis city directories, but would be outed by the male ID she never legally changed if she had survived cancer long enough to enter a nursing home. My late friend, teacher, and pioneer gay activist Tim Campbell set fire to his own discrimination complaint to protest the Minneapolis Civil Rights department’s refusal to process his complaint… The city over reacted and charged him with first degree arson. Unable to make bail and assigned a useless public defender, he sat in jail for nearly a year before he plea bargained to the lowest degree of felony arson and was sentenced to time served. Tim never taught again, spent the rest of his working days as a journalist, and other than that unjust felony conviction, there’s not as much as a parking ticket on his record… But a careless outing by an overly zealous researcher or journalist could have denied Tim access to housing and more when he was most vulnerable.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion the inquiries into this sometimes painful history will only increase. For some of us, the PTSD is still there and the opportunities lost to discrimination have left us poor and vulnerable in our old age. So writers and researchers, back off and let us tell our story, without your millennial spin and filtering. Respect the Stonewall era veterans and their stories, and remember the damage your outing can do to a vulnerable gay senior!