Amazon has removed books by a ‘gay cure’ conversion therapy author.
Joseph Nicolosi penned a book that spread the dangerous and harmful practice of attempting to ‘cure’ a person’s sexual or gender identity.
He was the co-founder of the National Association of Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and a prominent leader in the ex-gay movement.
His book, A Parent’s Guide To Preventing Homosexuality, is one of the most well known ‘conversion therapy’ books.
But now, it has been removed from the UK and US versions of Amazon.
Rojo Alan, from Peterborough, wrote to Amazon several times to get the book removed from listings.
He previously went through conversion therapy himself as a young child.
Failing to get the right response, he engaged with others to leave negative reviews on the website. Quickly, the rating fell from four stars to two stars.
‘I looked into the “rules of publishing” on Amazon, to see what sort of things they allow and don’t allow,’ he said.
‘Once I wrapped my head around that I started to look into the laws of conversion therapy. The legal side of things.
‘Once I gathered everything I went back to Amazon and I threw all the information I had at them in several conversations. Yet I was given the same “we will refer this to the relevant team”. Again it felt hopeless and I wasn’t too sure what else I could do.’
But, sure enough, Amazon removed all of the English language books by Nicolosi. It took Alan three months from the first email to removing the books.
‘Huge step’
‘These books were “how to” books,’ Alan told Gay Star News, also describing it as a ‘huge step in the right direction’.
‘These were books that were lying to parents on how they could cure their children from being gay or trans. It’s lying because it’s actually just a form of abuse.
‘The books went into ways in which you can mentally and physically abuse your child.
‘If this helps anyone from being harmed, that would be a good reason to do it.’
He was previously quoted in a documentary: ‘Everyone is heterosexual.’
‘The idea that some people are naturally homosexual, or naturally gay, is just a social construct.’
He also said: ‘So when you have individuals with same-sex attraction, we it as something went wrong developmentally and we try to resolve the issue and put them back on the path toward their natural heterosexuality.’
The World Psychiatric Association has condemned so-called ‘gay cure’ conversion therapy.
The group said they consider sexual orientation to be ‘innate’. They also said it is determined by ‘biological, psychological, developmental and social factors’.
‘WPA believes strongly in evidence-based treatment,’ they also said.
‘There is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed.
‘Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality can create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish, and they can be potentially harmful … The provision of any intervention purporting to “treat” something that is not a disorder is wholly unethical.’
Nepal made history on Saturday (29 June) when hundreds marched through the capital Kathmandu to celebrate LGBTI pride.
More than 300 people donned colorful face paint, carried rainbow umbrellas, and waved flags according to local media.
Although Nepal has held LGBTI pride events in the past, this was the first march through the city in June. Hundreds of LGBTI rights supporters, for example, attend the Gai Jatra festival each year in August.
Queer Youth Group (QYG) and Queer Rights Collective organized the event.
Attendees of the first pride parade in the capital of Nepal Kathmandu. (Photo: Queer Youth Group) 4
‘I feel like these are my people. I know they won’t judge me and I can fully be myself here, attendee Jyoti Shrestha told South Asia Time.
‘People here don’t know the specific terms used and although they know we exist, there is still taboo surrounding this topic,’ Shrestha also said.
One pride attendee shared footage of an apparent confrontation with police on Twitter.
User Shubha Kayastha told pride attendees to take down their rainbow flags outside the designated area.
The mountainous South Asian country legalized gay sex in 2007, and theoretically has laws to protect LGBTI equality. It also recognizes a third or ‘other’ gender marker in citizenship documents.
But, local activists have warned, that is not always the case in practice.
‘There has always been a romanticization of Nepal as being one of the more tolerant countries in Asia; however, the ground reality is very different’ organizer Rukshana Kapali told South Asia Time.
A new criminal code enacted in August last year fails to guarantee equal marriage, for example.
The campers at Brave Trails are told, above all else, they get a “second family” while participating in this Los Angeles-based LGBTQ+ youth summer camp.
Brave Trails blossomed out of the love that founders Jessica and Kayla Weissbuch’s share for summer camp and queer youth mentorship.
“With the skills learned at camp, our campers will be primed to thrive in their schools, workplace and personal lives,” Jessica said. “In addition, our campers will have the knowledge and confidence to be more impactful leaders and implement innovative social change in their communities.”
The camp’s program focuses on four key elements: Leadership, Community Building, Self-Realization, and Service. They use workshops, adventure and artistic programming, service projects, peer connections and positive role models to “create a safe space where youth can thrive.” Jessica said that with the skills learned at Brave Trails, campers will be primed to thrive in their schools, workplace and personal lives. In addition, Jessica said that campers will have the knowledge and confidence to be more impactful leaders and implement innovative social change in their communities.
“It is important to have a queer-specific space for our youth because the campers are able to connect with one another in a very different way,” Jessica said. “They are able to talk about things they have in common and find a tribe that they fit into. Even though much of Los Angeles is a liberal bubble, not all of it is.”
Most campers come to Brave Trails with a “shield of armor” on, but through the course of the program, they are able to “take that off,” Jessica said.
“We give them the space to not have to look over their shoulder and defend themselves (which they often have to do at their schools and in their communities),” Jessica explained.
This year, Brave Trails has partnered with Los Angeles-based Camp TAZO ambassador JD Knapp for more fun and mentorship. Camp TAZO® ‘Passion’ was TAZO tea’s inaugural camp experience that brought 30 strangers from across the country to Marble Falls, TX to break out of their comfort zones, and send them to a sleep-away camp directed by vivacious drag queen Alyssa Edwards.
“Brave Trails attendees can expect a surprisingly heartfelt yet undeniably entertaining speech from me this June,” JD said in an interview with the Pride LA. “My life story is truly a work of fiction and I cannot wait to start using my past pain to help encourage and inspire the next generation of LGBTQ+ leaders.
As the U.S. — and many other parts of the world — celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, rainbow flags and LGBTQ-inclusive ad campaigns appear to be omnipresent, especially in big cities. The ubiquity of these Pride campaigns make it easy to forget that this was not always the case. While many point to corporate America’s embrace of LGBTQ inclusivity as a major sign of progress, others believe corporations are coopting the movement.
Advertisements geared toward gay and lesbian consumers began to appear in earnest in the 1970s, inspired in part by the energy of the Stonewall uprising, which is widely considered the spark that fueled the modern LGBTQ movement.
So-called “sin” products, like alcohol and tobacco, were the first marketed to gays. These companies had little or nothing to lose from a potential boycott by the religious right, according to Katherine Sender, a communications professor at Cornell University and author of “Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market.”
“Now, getting a gay boycott is a much worse thing than getting a boycott from the religious right.”
PROFESSOR KATHERINE SENDER
Absolut vodka was the first brand to build itself with an eye toward the gay market, featuring full-page ads in gay outlets, such as The Advocate. Other alcohol brands like Boodles Gin ran ads in gay publications, but most ad revenue came from local gay bars and businesses.
However, with the exception of Absolut, much of the advertising aimed explicitly at gays came to a halt in the 1980s because of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the stigma surrounding the disease.
Things changed in the 1990s. Marketing surveys, namely the 1988 Simmons Market and the 1990 Overlooked Opinions survey, presented an image of gays and lesbians as an affluent, untapped market. Marketers estimated the total annual income of the gay community at over $500 billion. The surveys, however, were not representative and helped to start what researchers have since described as the “myth of gay affluence.”
In 1994, Ikea launched the first television ad to feature a gay couple. In the commercial, the two men tease each other about their taste in furniture.
“I remember it extremely well, because it was radical,” said Bob Witeck, president of Witeck Communications, a firm specializing in LGBTQ marketing. The couple “behaved in every sense like a married couple, and it was radical because it was normal and natural,” he said.
Not everyone loved the ad. In fact, the backlash was swift and strong. The American Family Association staged a boycott, and an Ikea store in New York received a bomb threat.
That same year, AT&T launched a direct-marketing mail campaign, making them the first US phone company to openly target lesbian and gay customers (MCI ran an earlier campaign, but used suggestive statements and imagery rather than a direct appeal).
“They got a big pushback from the religious right,” Sender said.
Companies remained more focused on gay men, though a notable exception was Subaru. In the late ‘90s, Subaru undertook a very successful lesbian-focused marketing campaign after research revealed its sturdy, practical cars appealed to this demographic. “It’s not a choice, it’s the way we’re built,” a 2000 print ad boasted.
This new interest in the “pink dollar” coincided with a massive increase in gay and lesbian visibility in the media. Ellen came out on TV in 1997, which Sender called “a massive deal.” Shows like “The L Word,” “Queer as Folk” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” ushered images and information about gays and lesbians into homes across the country.
Despite the increased visibility and a number of successful ad campaigns, even into the early 2000s mainstream companies still risked a backlash for gay and lesbian inclusivity, according to Sender. Many companies were still afraid to be labeled as selling a “gay product.” Representation of transgender people was almost always negative, relying on transphobic tropes of deceit or mistaken identity, according to Sender’s research.
FROM THE GAY MARKET TO THE LGBTQ MARKET
Rich Ferraro, chief communications officer at GLAAD, a national LGBTQ media advocacy organization, has been consulting on LGBTQ images in advertising since 2008. He sees a very different media landscape today.
“The backlash that once occurred if a brand had LGBTQ marketing campaigns is no longer,” Ferraro wrote in an email. “For instance, fringe organizations like Family Research Council, National Organization for Marriage and One Million Moms would start petitions (which never really reached large numbers), but now they do not.”
Chloe Pultar, right, slides down the Tinder Pride Slide in support of Equality Act kicking off WorldPride at Flatiron Plaza on June 24, 2019 in New York City.Michael Loccisano / Getty Images
Sender agreed, saying, “Now, getting a gay boycott is a much worse thing than getting a boycott from the religious right.”
More and more companies are engaging in LGBTQ-inclusive advertising, Ferraro said. “Categories have exploded — spirits and travel were typically leaders in LGBTQ-inclusive campaigns, but now it’s retail, cars, banking and financial services, food and beverages, youth-oriented brands,” he explained.
Witeck said “there is probably no more efficient way to say we are a contemporary brand” than to make your ad campaigns LGBTQ-inclusive.
For legacy brands, like Coca Cola, they must always be refreshed and made relevant, Witeck added. “LGBTQ marketing is an effective way to say, ‘We get it. We look and talk and act like we are in the 21st century.’”
However, Sender said that LGBTQ consumers are not only looking for inclusion in campaigns, but are holding companies accountable in their employment and production practices.
“Now, people are asking more questions, particularly around transgender polices and health care,” she said.
“What constitutes the responsibility of the advertising companies is expanding in ways that are really quite powerful,” Sender added, noting that consumers are asking questions like, “Are they buying products or services or in countries that have extremely bad policies and legal enforcement around LGBTQ people?”
Because of their resources, companies are also in a position to exert powerful political influence if they want to. Witeck mentioned the corporate boycotts of North Carolina after the passage of HB2 (the so-called “bathroom bill) that helped to precipitate its repeal and major companies’ outspoken support for transgender equality.
While historically there has been much less representation of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, this year examples of such campaigns abound: Raquel Willis for Express on a Times Square billboard, Gillette’s commercial featuring a young trans man and his dad, and Uber running a campaign featuring trans, genderqueer and bisexual pride flags.
“Traditionally, one or two campaigns are inclusive of transgender people, now it is a norm,” Ferraro said.
GAY INC.
Kristin Comeforo, associate professor of communications at Hartford College, worries that advertisers often take a “check-the-box approach” to the inclusion of gender and racial diversity, rather than a genuine engagement with intersectional experiences.
She also worries that corporate sponsorship can silence the voices of LGBTQ people who face intersectional marginalization.
Sender agreed, noting that “the 50th anniversary of Stonewall is such a big deal everyone wants a piece of that.” As a result, she added, Pride marches have become “a party for everybody.”
“What gets left behind are the very real struggles of LGBTQ people in this country — trans people in particular and people of color facing multiple layers of discrimination,” she added. “This ‘party’ suggests that being gay is just an excuse to have a lovely time, but there is still a long way to go.”
Nearly 2 million LGBTQ youths ages 13 to 24 in the United States consider suicide each year, according to research released Thursday by the Trevor Project.
Using data from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its own National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, Trevor Project researchers determined that LGBTQ teens were particularly at risk. Those 13 to 18 were approximately twice as likely to contemplate suicide as those 19 to 24.
Amy E. Green, the nonprofit’s director of research, told NBC News that although these numbers are harrowing, they are “conservative estimates.”
“These numbers are the bare minimum they could be because we used a conservative method to conclude our estimates,” Green said. “The fact that we still arrived at these huge astonishing numbers shows that this is a serious health problem.”
According to the mental health survey, released this month, there are multiple factors that can negatively affect the well-being of queer adolescents — the foremost being lack of acceptance.
More than 70 percent of respondents reported experiencing discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and two-thirds of respondents stated that someone has tried to convince them to change those identities.
Though previous research has revealed that LGBTQ youth are more likely to experience thoughts of suicide, Green said these latest figures “provide additional context to just how widespread this problem is.”
A separate research released by the Trevor Project on Thursday offered some positive news, however. LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult in their lives were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.
“I hope this research will inspire the country to come together to change policies on the state and federal levels that affect LGBTQ youth’s lives, like ending the harmful practice of conversion therapy, as well as inspire other researchers who are looking into this area to study the factors and find solutions,” Green said. “We also need to support organizations that are doing the work to launch anti-bullying and suicide prevention efforts.”
A group of about 12 protestors brought the San Francisco 2019 Pride Parade to a halt on Sunday (30 June). They were drawing attention to the police’s participation in the parade, which they found objectionable because of the treatment by police to members of the LGBTQ Community both in the city and around the world. They also object to the many corporations that participate, that negatively impact the community.
About an hour after the parade began, protestors blocked Market Street by chaining themselves together under rainbow tubes, according to SF Gate.
Other pride attendees also pushed and shoved police officers, CBS reports.
Police arrested at least two people. But, authorities cleared the protest by noon and the march continued. Event organizers worked with the protesters and police to pacify both groups and promised to take the protesters demands under consideration.
Millions of LGBTI supporters took to the streets of New York on Sunday (30 June) to celebrate pride and renew calls for equality.
Some 150,000 participants from 600 contingents hosting more than 100 floats marched down the four-kilometer route, according to BBC News.
An estimated four million people, meanwhile, took to the streets to watch and celebrate New York City Pride Parade.
This year, New York hosted global LGBT-event WorldPride.
The mass march also marked 50 years since Stonewall Riots. On 28 June, 1969, LGBTI community members launched spontaneous protests against discrimination following raids of the Stonewall Inn.
People regard it as the birth of the modern LGBTI rights movement in the US.
The Reclaim Pride Coalition organized the Queer Liberation March. The wanted to protest a pride parade they say has become too money-centric and will be devoid of police or corporate sponsors.View image on Twitter
The estimated 45,000 attendees performed acts of resistance. For instance, on 23rd Street, in collaboration with ACT UP, they held a die-in to represent the 17 HIV+ asylum seekers who died in ICE custody.
The main march, titled New York City Heritage of Pride parade, meanwhile, passed important LGBTI landmarks. These included the Stonewall National Monument and the New York City Aids memorial.
Among the Grand Marshals at this year’s Pride is the cast of hit FX show Pose, The Trevor Project, and the Gay Liberation Front (the original group who organized following the Stonewall riots).
New York Mayor and Democrat presidential hopeful Bill De Blasio walked in the parade with his wife.View image on Twitter
Representatives from around the world marched in New York. These included a team from London Pride and Taiwan, which became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage this year.
World-renowned artists, including Madonna and Lady Gaga, performed at the WorldPride closing ceremony on one of the city’s piers.
Police pushed back crowds celebrating Istanbul’s 17th gay pride march on Sunday, an event Turkish authorities had banned for the fifth year in a row.
The rally, on a side street off Istanbul’s main pedestrian avenue, drew several hundred people who cheered and waved rainbow flags. Chants of “shoulder to shoulder against fascism” and “we will not be quiet” were heard among the crowd.
“There is a massive police presence all around the city to prevent the celebration of Pride, but despite that, activities are still going on,” DW’s Turkey correspondent Dorian Jones reported, noting also that riot police officers were backed up with water cannon.
Police with dogs allowed rally leaders to make a short statement to the media before officers dispersed the crowd with tear gas, blocking the street. Istanbul Pride organisers said they would continue to fight to get sexual orientation and gender identity recognised in Turkish laws.
Amnesty International said the authorities had rejected all suggested locations for the rally by deeming the LGBT+ community “societally objectionable”. In 2014, up to 100,000 people attended a Pride march in Istanbul, but police have tried to block the events since.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter to a mother from her son, beginning from the riddles of distance: “Dear Ma, I am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.” The son goes by Little Dog, a moniker his grandmother gave him as an act of protection. Evil spirits—the thinking went in her Vietnamese village—would skip over the weakest, easiest prey if they were named something hideous. “To love something,” Little Dog ruminates in his letter, “is to name it something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive.”
Such is the devastating terrain of Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, which charts the violence and beauty that follows from human connection with startling empathy—startling, in part, for Vuong’s proximity to Little Dog. On Earth is not a memoir, yet it certainly does not shy away from the biographical. The first chapter of the novel received publication two years ago in The New Yorker, categorized then as “personal history.” Little Dog also shares obvious similarities with his author—Vietnamese American, late twenties, a writer who reached New York City by way of Saigon, Vietnam and Hartford, Connecticut—and these parallels make On Earth all the more affecting. In its finest moments, Vuong’s prose features the sort of tender, aphoristic flourishes and sense of lived experience contained in the work of James Baldwin, who Vuong gives a “deep bow” to in the novel’s acknowledgments.
Little Dog writes to his mother about their family, the war they emerged from, and the generational trauma they share. He bares so much of himself, he acknowledges, because his mother, who is illiterate, will never be able to read his letter: “[T]he very impossibility of your reading this is all that makes my telling it possible.” Thematically, On EarthWe’re Briefly Gorgeous covers ground Vuong first approached in his outstanding 2016 poetry collectionNight Sky With Exit Wounds. (The novel even shares its title with a poem from that collection.) In a piece from Night Sky, Vuong lays bare the harrowing equation of his existence: “An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me. / Yikes.” Vuong’s debut novel offers an extended exploration of that “yikes,” which, while painfully specific to Vuong and many other Vietnamese Americans, also embodies the ubiquitous violence enshrined in American life more generally. Scenes from the US occupation of Vietnam stand alongside thoughts on Tiger Woods, lyrics from 50 Cent, and descriptions of urban nail salons—the composite, enthralling in its congruence.
Historical atrocities are never purely past-tense events, Vuong’s protagonist comes to realize. He imagines history not as a line but a spiral that boomerangs back upon itself: “As time carries us, we come face-to-face with the tragedies we created.” The mother-son relationship in On Earth provides a complex portrait of this historical reckoning. The novel opens with Little Dog reflecting on his mother’s violent outbursts: “The first time you hit me, I must have been four. A hand, a flash, a reckoning. My mouth a blaze of touch.” The narrator proceeds to chronicle his violent upbringing (“I fell playing tag,” Little Dog offers as an early lie to teachers) alongside moments of remarkable tenderness. Blows to his head are juxtaposed, for example, with maternal consolation during a turbulent plane ride: “You wrapped one arm around my shoulder, leaned in, your weight absorbing the plane’s throttle… With the universe back in order, I sat back and watched as we broke through one mountain after another.” A survivor both of war and domestic abuse, Little Dog’s mother lives in the clutches of PTSD, and Little Dog’s reflections on this trauma are trenchant: “I read that parents suffering from PTSD are more likely to hit their children… Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war.”
As Vuong draws on the personal, so too does he pull from his poetic prowess, animating On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous with his gift for vivid precision. Raindrops slide down a soldier’s “dirt-baked cheeks… collecting like ellipses along his jaw.” After being bullied on a school bus, a young Little Dog repeatedly kicks his light-up shoes, which “erupt with silent flares: the world’s smallest ambulance, going nowhere.” Of the bully, Little Dog reflects, “He was only nine but had already mastered the dialect of damaged American fathers.” Such sensitivity to environmental forces colors Little Dog’s descriptions of Trevor, the wild and rough farm boy Little Dog falls for when working on a tobacco farm one drug-fueled, teenage summer. Trevor struggles to reconcile his rugged masculinity with his sexuality and tender instincts. Vuong captures Little Dog’s passion and anguish for Trevor with exquisite care, allowing the prose in these sections to eventually break into stirring verse where Trevor’s discordances rapidly layer atop one another. He moves quickly from all hard edges (“Trevor the carnivore, the redneck, not a pansy, shotgunner, sharpshooter, not fruit or fairy… [T]he pine-stick thumb on the Big Lighter…”) to soft day-dreamer (on why he likes sunflowers: “Imagine going so high and still opening that big”), the accumulation feeling, ultimately, doomed for collapse.
Taken in isolation, some of Vuong’s sentences could feel affected or ornamental; one remarkable achievement of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, however, is how hard-earned these flourishes feel. This is a novel filled with myriad heartaches and Vuong, in not shying away from such depths, gives voice to the beauty that remains nonetheless. As Little Dog recognizes, “All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but rather, that violence, having passed through fruit, failed to spoil it.” In a recent profile by Kevin Nguyen for The New York Times, Vuong revealed that his own mother was just diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer; her prognosis is grim. Vuong has had to translate for her during doctor visits, much like how Little Dog translates doctors’ words for his mother in the novel. If this news highlights how ceaseless cruelty can be, perhaps it may also underscore the immense vulnerability Vuong pours into his art—and what a gift that is. In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong offers so much of himself and, in doing so, makes suffering feel, if not less senseless, then at least less lonesome. There’s nothing little about that.
The Stonewall riots were a six-night series of protests that began in the early morning of June 28, 1969, and centered around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.
Four days earlier, on June 24, 1969, the police, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, raided the Stonewall Inn and began arresting bar employees and confiscating liquor. But when Pine led a second raid on the 28th, patrons fought back. Approximately 150 people fled, regrouped on the street and stormed the bar, trapping the police inside. The protesters began throwing bricks, bottles and garbage, and attempted to set the bar on fire.
For six nights, protesters clashed off and on with police, while chanting and marching in and around Christopher Street.
Today, many credit the protests with sparking the LGBTQ rights movement. But at the time, if you were a New Yorker reading the local, mainstream papers, you wouldn’t know that a new civil rights movement was unfolding in the city.
In the days after the Stonewall riots, depending on which paper you read, you would have been exposed to a vastly different version of events. The major dailies gave a megaphone to the police, while alternative outlets embedded themselves among the protesters.
To understand the differences in media coverage, it’s important to recall the relationship between gay people, the press and the police prior to Stonewall.
If arrested, a person’s name, age, address and crime would be published as part of the police blotter in most local newspapers across the U.S. For example, if a man was arrested for committing a “homosexual” act in Dayton, Ohio, his information would be published in the Dayton Daily News. Such publication often had disastrous consequences for the person “outed” in print.
Gay men, therefore, were forced underground. Christopher Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village became a fairly safe locale with bars and coffee shops that surreptitiously catered to a LGBTQ clientele. These bars often were run by the Mafia, which owned the cigarette machines and jukeboxes, and sold watered-down liquor.
Unlike many clubs, the Stonewall Inn, which opened in March 1967, was on a main thoroughfare instead of a side street. The clientele was mostly men, though even marginalized segments of the LGBTQ community frequented the bar because of its two dance floors.
On average, police raided bars once a month, though they typically would warn the bar that a raid was coming and time the raid to minimize disrupting the bar’s business. Police raids usually were accepted by bar employees and clientele.
However, this time was different. Stonewall’s patrons already were upset about the June 24 raid, so when one person resisted arrest, others joined in. The situation quickly escalated.
Inside Stonewall, Pine gave his officers the order not to shoot, fearing that any additional escalation could lead to a full-scale massacre. Outside, hundreds of protesters were throwing almost anything they could get their hands on, while others were trying to find a way to set Stonewall on fire with the cops inside.
Yet the mainstream media largely failed to adequately cover the protests.
The first article on Stonewall to appear in The New York Times relied solely on interviews with the police. New York Times
The three city dailies – The New York Times, The New York Daily News and New York Post – wrote a smattering of stories in which they quoted exclusively police sources and offered little context. The story was framed as an instance of lawless youth run amok – an almost unprovoked riot.
For example, the Times’ first Stonewall article, “4 policemen hurt in ‘Village’ raid” began “Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that the police said was wellknown for its homosexual clientele.”
The mainstream papers at least covered Stonewall. Local TV stations failed to even report on the riots happening in the heart of Manhattan.
In contrast, the most popular local alternative paper, The Village Voice, gave the riots front-page coverage. It included interviews and quotes from the protesters, as well as two first-person accounts by Voice reporters Howard Smith, who was trapped inside the bar with police officers, and Lucian Truscott IV, who was outside with protesters.
Both reporters initially witnessed the riot from the Voice offices, which were a few doors down Christopher Street from Stonewall.
The Voice’s coverage featured many hallmarks of alternative publications.
By incorporating the views of both protesters and police, they created a more complex, nuanced story. And the paper framed the Stonewall riots as an expression of liberation instead of rebellion, with Smith writing that the protesters were simply “objecting to how they were being treated.”
‘Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square’ – The Village Voice gave the riots front-page treatment. Google News
However, the Voice coverage was far from perfect. The anti-gay tone in Truscott’s piece angered protesters, as did some of the paper’s long-held editorial policies against same-sex personal ads.
While the Voice often was left-of-center politically, it wasn’t as radical as some of its more underground counterparts – the Rat, the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, all of which also covered the Stonewall riots.
Still, the Voice served as an important platform for the otherwise voiceless left out of the mainstream discussion during both Stonewall and the paper’s 60-year run. The Voice closed in 2018, following the shuttering of similar publications in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
An alternative press has existed alongside the mainstream since the earliest days of the nation. These papers play an important role in the U.S. media landscape by covering stories and topics that go unreported by their mainstream counterparts. They often forego the pretense of objectivity for activism; rather than quote government officials and business leaders, they’ll quote people on the ground.
Fifty years after Stonewall, it’s important to reflect on the gains of the LGBTQ movement. But it’s equally important to think about what’s lost when alternative newspapers stop publishing – and thus stop covering unreported, underreported or misreported stories.
