Stonewall Turns 40 and All We Got Was This Lousy Hangover

President Obama gathered with 250 LGBT leaders in the White House today to commemorate Stonewall, and to listen to their kvetching about his political reluctance on various gay matters.

And several news outlets marked the anniversary with interviews and tributes. The NY Daily News talked to a few Stonewall vets, one of whom mused that he didn’t think the riots themselves were too big a deal, and that it was the march that happened exactly a year later, in June 1970, from the Village up to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park which represented the biggest step forward for gay rights.

The New York Times, for its part, put up this great piece by journalist Lucian K. Truscott who originally covered the riots, and this piece today about the lag between political and cultural change when it comes to the gays.

But the wah-wah news of the weekend happened in Fort Worth, TX where a new gay bar called The Rainbow Lounge (terrific name guys!) got raided on Saturday night, under the auspices of a routine beverage control inspection, in which seven bar patrons were forcibly arrested and one ended up hospitalised with a head injury. Below, CNN’s coverage of the event, and the Texas activist uprising it has caused.

image from the NY Daily News archives.

RELATED:

NYC Cop: Stonewall Raided For “Dirty Drink Glasses”
After Stonewall, Documentary Trailer
In Honor of National Drag History Month, A Brief History of Drag
Varla Jean Merman Does Stonewall, Schoolhouse Rock -Style
Historical Homos: A Roundup of Footage from Prides Past

Obama reaffirms support for gay-rights activism (AP)
Forty years after famous riots at Stonewall Inn, gays are still ‘fighting to be seen as full humans’ (NY Daily News)
The Real Mob at Stonewall (NYT)

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