From Stonewall to Now: LGBTQ+ Elders on Navigating Fear in Dark Times

[Jessica_Rose]

From Stonewall to Now: LGBTQ+ Elders on Navigating Fear in Dark Times

Story by Orion Rummler (17 March 2025)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/from-stonewall-to-now-lgbtq-elders-on-navigating-fear-in-dark-times/ar-AA1B6hek?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=9c9b9c25e3c74197c83a3cfd80491d5c&ei=137

Karla Jay remembers joining the second night of street protests during the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. For her, and for so many other LGBTQ+ people, something had shifted: People were angry. They didn't want things to go back to normal — because normal meant police raids. Normal meant living underground. It meant hiding who they were at their jobs and from their families. They wanted a radical change.

Radical change meant organizing. Jay joined a meeting with the Gay Liberation Front, which would become the incubator for the modern LGBTQ+ political movement and proliferate in chapters across the country. At those meetings, she remembers discussing what freedom could look like. Holding hands with a lover while walking down the street, without fear of getting beaten up, one person said. Another said they'd like to get married. At the time, those dreams seemed impossible.

Jay, now 78, is worried that history will repeat itself. She's worried that LGBTQ+ people will be put in the dark again by the draconian policies of a second Trump administration.

"Are things worse than they were before Stonewall? Not yet," she said. "It's certainly possible that people will have to go back to underground lives, that trans people will have to flee to Canada, but it's not worse yet."

The 19th spoke with several LGBTQ+ elders, including Jay, about what survival looks like under a hostile political regime and what advice they would give to young LGBTQ+ people right now...