When the cops arrived to raid the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 27, 1969, David Velasco Bermudez headed for the exits, but he couldn’t make his way through the crowded bar before getting hit in the neck by a policewoman swinging a billy club.
But then Bermudez, who at 29 had learned to submit to routine beatings by New York City police, did something different: He fought back, and so did his friends.
“We never, ever hit back,” said Bermudez, now 73, a retired interior designer now living in Cape Cod, Mass. “But we had just had enough of it. . . . It’s like Rosa Parks sitting inside a bus. We just did it.”
Gays and lesbians have been fighting ever since.
On Wednesday, just one day shy of the 44th anniversary of the raid that launched the gay rights movement, the battle hit a crescendo when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage is no longer the sole domain of straight couples.
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Federal prosecutors routinely threaten extraordinarily severe prison sentences to coerce drug defendants into waiving their right...
