The Legacy of Stonewall (IMHO)

Sketchy video here from the livestream. (9:00)

Typically at this time of year I’m in a church somewhere trying in twenty minutes or less to take the bash out of the bible. I want to talk about Stonewall in a minute, and there isn’t much other than continuing to shift the culture that can be done about the mentality of the church, but if there is even one person here today who agonizes over what the bible says, I would hate to to miss the opportunity to give you the quick 2-minute speed-date version. Generally, bashers focus on verses in Leviticus, Genesis, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. You might be familiar with the passages. If you’re not, frankly, more power to you; some of us have been living under the oppressive weight of these words most of our lives.

In a nutshell, the Leviticus prohibitions are in a part of the book probably meant to list and forbid sex practices used by neighboring religious groups who worshiped rival gods. Probably. It’s been misused not only to falsely accuse the biblical God of homophobia and transphobia (and xenophobia), but also I think gave the bible God a bad rap as sex-negative. I think biblical God is actually a fan of making sweet love down by the fire. Bible God says, “Keep it consensual, kids; discuss your safe words and have fun. Just don’t worship rival gods while you’re at it is all I ask.” (That’s a paraphrase.)

Sodom is about inhospitality and is basically the Game of Thrones Red Wedding of Genesis, where the townspeople broke the sacred salt-and-bread covenant with their guests and so everybody died horrible deaths. If you’re not familiar with the Game of Thrones Red Wedding, more power to you; for some of us that’s 67-odd hours of our lives we’ll never get back. There is actually no sex in the Sodom story of any kind, homo- or otherwise, because the story is about rape and rape is not sex but violent assault. In defense of the second-century church patriarchs who first came up with the anti-gay reading, though, we still confuse those two today.

The Romans thing is almost certainly an unfortunate rhetorical device, where Paul really wanted to tell his audience that they were lousy hypocrites, but he wanted to lull them into false security first by playing on their dislike for Greek metrosexuals. It was like, “Hey, you know those gay and strangely meticulous people that we all agree are unsavory and unnatural? …well, you are worse than them! Gotcha!” (That’s a paraphrase.) But we needn’t worry too much, because Paul also said that short hair and circumcision is natural and that God is unnatural. So, clearly an argument could be made that a) go home, Paul, you’re drunk, or b) Paul is comparing queer sexuality to God. I’m fine either way.

Forget about 1 Corinthians, it’s technical and boring and hard to make jokes about. Suffice to say it’s basically a first-century C.E. game of beer pong. And don’t forget that anyone who pulls out any of these verses and waves it around like a club is ignoring a bunch of other verses, often adjacent, about fornication, menstruation, lobster, and polyester. And also that the biblical model for marriage includes multiple wives, harems, and sexual slaves, so, you know, maybe it’s not the most up-to-date resource.

What is way more fun than defending ourselves is talking about our biblical ancestors, biblical sexual and gender suspects who were kings and princes and military heroes like Jonathan and David and the Roman Centurion; and were foreign dignitaries and divine messengers, like Esther’s eunuch and the Ethiopian eunuch and Matthew’s magi bringing jewelry and perfume to a two-year-old boy (!?); who were tribal leaders and army generals, like Deborah; and ‘adam, the first-ever human created in the divine image; and early Christian house church leaders and deacons, like Prisca and Aquila and Tryphaena and Tryphosa (which are real bible names and, oddly not popular in bible name baby name books); like Ruth and Naomi (which are more popular in bible name baby name books), two women whose words of love and devotion to one another have been used for weddings of all kinds and in all churches: “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. I’ve got the U-Haul and a hitch, and nothing can stop me from moving in with you.” (That’s a paraphrase.) Exemplars of community and faith. Ideal rulers, the embodiments of lovingkindness, legendary heroes. We’re not just not condemned by the bible, we people the bible. And we aren’t just included in the stories, our stories are models of faith and leadership and loyalty. We’re holy in there. We’re awesome. Get used to it.

It seems like part of Pride is knowing our history and doing this kind of research and bible exegesis, confronting resistance and interrupting ignorance to the extent we feel up to it at any given moment. It seems like part of Pride is loving and celebrating ourselves and taking up space in movie theaters and city streets and on borough hall steps.

But the legacy of Stonewall I think is fundamentally about recognizing and honoring the vast differences between us, even within our queer and genderqueer communities. Recognizing that what the bible does or doesn’t say about us doesn’t matter to all of us, because some of us are Muslim, because some of us are atheist, because a hundred other reasons. Part of Pride is making room in our celebrations for all of us and our words: dykes, fairies, neutrois, demi-. Butch, nelly, bear, soft-top, hard-femme. Poly, non-monogamous, kink, fetish, consensual safe-word-friendly bondage. Making room for all the things that my mom is afraid of and that my dad wants to be cool with but struggles to understand. Making room for all the people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, and who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of.

The legacy of Stonewall isn’t a parade, all due respect to parades. Nor necessarily a rally, all due respect. Stonewall was a riot. We threw bricks that night. We threw pennies, beer bottles, high heeled shoes, and dog shit. There was a chorus girl kick line, too, because we’re fabulous and we’re not made of wood, but we set garbage cans on fire. We set the bar on fire. I’m not advocating violence; I promote non-violence and I practice non-violence, but I want to make clear that the folks who rioted were desperate. They had nothing to lose and there was nothing to gain by behaving, by making nice, playing by the rules. They were mostly poor and homeless, drag queens, flame queens, effeminate men, street fairies, stone butch lesbians, largely brown and black. They were people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, and who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of. They were lined up, frisked, sexually molested, beaten, stripped for gender verification, handcuffed, locked into paddy wagons. It was as routine as the airport TSA. It was as routine as racial profiling.

We revere them today, if we know their names. Sylvia Rivera is getting a statue along with Marsha P. (for Pay It No Mind) Johnson in front of Stonewall, and Stonewall was recently added as a national landmark. Sylvia’s name rings out in June and peppers the floats and banners in parades. But Stonewall isn’t ours to romanticize and sanitize, to coopt and whitewash. During her lifetime Sylvia was never able to stop fighting. The groups that organized in the wake of Stonewall, whether they were called the Gay Liberation Front or the Human Rights Campaign didn’t want her and were ashamed of her, didn’t use her picture to promote their work, looked away from or through the poor and homeless, drag, flame, effeminate, fairy, stone butch, brown and black, desperate with nothing to lose. Sylvia was banned from meetings, banned from strategy, banned from podiums. We do it to her again and again today. We do it again when we leave out gender protections in order to pass protective laws for lesbians and gays and the occasional well-behaved bisexual. We do it again in Pennsylvania cities every year when we write Pride dress codes that forbid chaps and go-go shorts and body paint. We do it again when we discourage political speech at our rallies, when we insist on focusing on the positive, behaving, making nice, playing by the rules. The rules haven’t been written for Sylvia and Marsha P., for Leslie Feinberg and Ivan Valentin, for Tiffany, Tammy Novak, Spanola Jerry, and the Puerto Rican scare queens of Stonewall. And until the rules are re-written, Pride and Stonewall require that we prioritize the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all our people, loud and full-throated, all the way to our edges, all the way to our margins, to the people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of.

The legacy of Stonewall casts its light over Ferguson and Flint and Charleston, as well, over black churches burning in the south and brown children locked in cages on our border and calls us to return to its desperate roots on Christopher Street on a sweltering night in 1969. It casts its light over the relentless attacks on trans and genderqueer people. Over trans women assaulted on public transit, trans soldiers willing to serve their country forced to closet and stealth and suffer misgendering and dead-naming. Over withdrawal of healthcare that takes gender-affirming surgery and medicine (if needed and wanted) out of the reach of all but the very wealthy, over dozens of trans people killed last year and 10 trans people murdered already this year in the States, mostly trans women, mostly trans women of color. The legacy of Stonewall demands that we return to our first marches and our first protests and our first calls for action.

The legacy of Stonewall is urgency. Because they had nothing to lose, they acted with boldness and desperation. And boldness and desperation are what is called for in the wake of Ferguson, Flint, and Charleston, of black churches burning in the south and brown children locked in cages on our border, of trans folk denied life and dignity, denied safe transport and protected employment and bodily integrity.

The legacy of Stonewall is realizing that it’s not us versus them. It’s not fighting over slices of the pie. Because They are Us, They are here. We are trans folk, soldiers, people who need body integrity. We attend black churches. We have brown children. And the pie is infinite and bottomless. Don’t let anyone tell you different. There is enough and more than enough love, dignity, respect, wholeness, healthcare, marriage, affordable housing, restorative justice, immigration reform, prison reform, asylum, living wage to go around. More than enough room at the meetings, more than enough input for the strategies, more than more than enough time at the podiums. We need to listen to each other, stop name-calling, stop talking over each other, stop telling each other how to be hurt and how to be healed. We need to listen to one another’s pain, to make each other’s wellness part of our own wellness. We need to be willing to risk whatever comfort we have, whatever respectability we have, all of us queer, genderqueer, or ally. We need to get our hands dirty, all of us. We need Stonewall’s urgency. We need Stonewall’s deep and wide affinity. We need Stonewall’s action. That is its legacy. That is how we name it. That is, I think, how we honor it.