But there were protests before the riot elsewhere in the United States. Historical narratives articulate that the Stonewall Inn Riot was a spontaneous event without thinking historically about why the event happened at a specific place in a specific city. By viewing the Stonewall Inn Riot as the transitional event after which homosexual people spontaneously walked out of the “closet” and collectively protested for their human rights, people today celebrate the riot every year, and it is marked as an important annual event for queer communities (Humphreys, 1972, p.6).įor years the public have passively accepted that this riot brought the LGBTQ community into public view. This eruption also signaled how activism at gay bars would be at the forefront of the movement from the perspective of both the homosexual population and police community.
This riot revealed intense tensions between the police and the homosexual community, which represented a traditional conflict between the homosexual minority and the heterosexual public. The renowned riot at the gay bar Stonewall Innin 1969 has been recognized as the start of the modern homosexual political movement (Duberman, 1993, p.
