Today in history: Stonewall revolution

Police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village in the early morning of June 28, 1969, sparking both a riot and the gay rights movement.

The legal fight for queer access to bars had begun years earlier.

States had often punished bars for selling alcohol to gay people, arguing that they were disorderly. In 1948, San Francisco prosecuted Sol Stoumen, owner of the Black Cat Restaurant, on the charge that he "permitted his premises to be used as a disorderly house for purposes injurious to public morals." The state also suspended the restaurant's alcohol license, after finding that "persons of known homosexual tendencies patronized said premises and used said premises as a meeting place." Stoumen appealed the loss of the liquor license.

California Chief Justice Phil Gibson wrote that the state can't penalize a meeting spot just because it was frequented by queer people.

"Members of the public of lawful age have a right to patronize a public restaurant and bar so long as they are acting properly and are not committing illegal or immoral acts; the proprietor has no right to exclude or eject a patron 'except for good cause,' and if he does so without good cause he is liable in damages," Gibson wrote.

In November 1967, the New Jersey Supreme Court knocked that state's prohibition against gay bars, referencing the arguments made by Gibson.

"Though in our culture homosexuals are indeed unfortunates, their status does not make them criminals or outlaws. So long as their public behavior violates no legal proscriptions they have the undoubted right to congregate in public," Justice J. Jacobs wrote.

The New York Court of Appeals followed December 7, 1967, in the case of another restaurant whose liquor license was revoked.

"There is no proof in the record of any breach of the peace (due to the presence of queer people)," Justice Francis Bergan wrote.

The same month, the New York Court of Appeals published a second ruling that said intimate, sexually charged dancing was improper. The ruling approved the revocation of a liquor license for an establishment in which a police officer noticed men dancing closely together.

With all these legal complications, the mafia, which owned the Stonewall Inn, avoided a liquor license by operating instead as a private bottle club and paying off police officers to cut down on raids or entrapment attempts, or give advance notice of those actions, according to PBS. In this shaky legal standing, the bar became a gathering place for queer people, with substandard quality, overpriced liquor, partially unwashed glasses, and monthly police raids.

Today's book recommendation ties into that history: "Stonewall, The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America," by Martin Duberman.

_On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life.

In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history. With riveting narrative skill, he re-creates those revolutionary, sweltering nights in vivid detail through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Their stories combine to form an unforgettable portrait of the repression that led up to the riots, which culminates when they triumphantly participate in the first gay rights march of 1970, the roots of today's pride marches.

Fifty years after the riots, Stonewall remains a rare work that evokes with a human touch an event in history that still profoundly affects life today._

$18 from Bookshop.org