The Stonewall Reader

needed, and applicable, today. 1 From The Queer Sixties. Patricia Juliana Smith, ed. New York: Routledge, 1999. 2 Bronski, Michael. Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003.

A thousand gays—many of them more willing to come out for a party than they’d been to come out for campaign work—dressed formally in suits and ties despite the South Florida weather, now stood stunned and tearful, looking up at the screens that told them that most of their neighbors loathed them.

know they’re all right. Find ways to counter the attitudes toward homosexuality that your profession has inculcated in both heterosexuals and homosexuals.”37 He was given a standing ovation.

The times were “full of deaths, but one of the most beautiful moments the gay community ever experienced,”68 Peter Staley later said of those years. “To be that threatened with extinction and not lay down. To stand up and fight back. The way we did it. The way we took care of ourselves and each other. The goodness we shared. The humanity we shared.