Stonewall Inn To Get Historic Landmarks Preservation Plaque, Stonewall Participants Not Invited
by Will Kohler
The
Historic Landmarks Preservation Center's (HLPC) "cultural medallion
program” will today hold a ceremony and place a plaque at the site of
the Stonewall In to commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion” of 1969 on
Tuesday, July 16 at 3 p.m. outside the bar, but the plaque created for
the occasion was not reviewed by anyone who participated in the June
1969 uprising nor were any of its veterans invited to speak.
The
HLPC’s “cultural medallion program” – by a wealthy Democratic
fundraiser, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, a former member of the
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Diamonstein-Spielvogel
refused to discuss the event in advance of it or explain why Stonewall
veterans were not invited to speak or involved in preparing the plaque’s
text.
“It’s outrageous and unacceptable,” said Jerry Hoose, the veteran gay activist who fought every night in the riots –– all four from beginning to end.”
Hoose added, “I’m so tired of that bar being glorified. It was this horrendous place where something great happened.
The idea for a plaque at the Stonewall came from out gay State
Senator Brad Hoylman, who represents the Village area where the uprising
took place.
“It was obvious to me and others that you could walk right by the
site of the rebellion and not know it happened there,” he said. (Despite the huge red neon Stonewall Inn sign in the window and rainbow flag?)
Jim Fouratt, one of the original members of GLF, wrote in an email,
“I do not consider the Stonewall Inn a symbol of liberation but one of
oppression. It remains in the same ‘family’ that it did in 1969… What
needs to be memorialized is the sidewalk and part of Christopher St.
that contained the human spark that made a rebellion that has
fundamentally changed the lives of lesbian and gay people of all gender
expression everywhere.”
Speakers listed in the release today include Jordan Roth, an out
gay Broadway producer and NYC Landmarks50 Advisory Committee member;
Roberta Kaplan , who successfully argued the challenge to the Defense of
Marriage Act’s denial of federal rights to married same-sex couples;
Richard Socarides, a White House aide to President Bill Clinton, who
signed DOMA into law in 1996 and whose father Charles Socarides in
1969 was a leader in the field of anti-gay therapy; and historian
Martin Duberman, who wrote a 1993 book on the rebellion called
“Stonewall.”
None were at Stonewall for the uprising.
Source: Andy Humm - Gay City News
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