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    drag queens

    Drag performer applying makeup.

    Who Will Speak Up for My Child, the Drag Queen?

    I’m so proud of my child, and the many thousands like them, claiming and proclaiming their right to pursue happiness by tearing down the old gender walls.

    Ira Chernus
    Jan 24, 2023

    What makes a good society? Is it a guaranteed right to pursue happiness, as our Declaration of Independence proclaimed? Perhaps, as Gandhi said, it’s providing the poorest and most vulnerable among us with the means to control their own lives. But what happens when it’s the pursuit of happiness that makes someone most vulnerable?

    Let me introduce you to my child, my one and only. They — and, no, it wasn’t as hard as I expected to get used to the gender-neutral plural pronoun that they prefer — are brown-skinned, Mexican-American, secular-Jewish, and gay-married. In a country where Donald Trump is still admired by some 40% of the public, don’t imagine for a second that my child, with all those identities, isn’t horrifyingly vulnerable.

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    Opinion
    drag queens
    The Stonewall Inn

    Cops Raid Gay Bar. What Happened Next Changed History.

    Dorothee Benz
    Jun 24, 2015

    On the night of June 27, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a seedy mob-controlled gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City. It was one of thousands of such raids that routinely took place in American cities and towns. But the response was anything but routine. For the first time ever, patrons fought back, setting off three days of rioting and proving the spark that ignited the modern gay rights movement. Inspired by the movements of the 60s, the moment of revolt turned into a wave of organizing.

    From the days of the early Gay Liberation Front formed right after the Stonewall Riots and the offshoot Gay Activist Alliance, the "movement" has never been one movement but always a multiplicity of organizations, groups, strategies and actions. The spotlight has usually been on more privileged LGBTQI people, those with more resources, and their agendas have set most of the political priorities for queer people in the decades since. Thus it's especially important and appropriate to stop and remember that the people who helped start it all that night in Greenwich Village were among the most marginalized members of our community: drag queens, prostitutes, homeless youth.

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    Opinion
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