You came here for hot guys, and you’ll find plenty of them. But give us two minutes first. Everything on this site, men wanting men out in the open, was a crime not so long ago. This is the story of how that changed, and of the people who paid for it.
A bar with no windows
In the 1960s, being gay in America could cost you your job, your family and your freedom. Sex between men was illegal in almost every state. Bars that served gay customers risked losing their license, so most of them were run by the Mafia, behind blacked-out windows, and the police raided them whenever they liked. Customers were lined up and asked for ID. The ones wearing the “wrong” clothes were arrested, and sometimes their names ended up in the papers.
The night they said no
In the early hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. It was supposed to be routine. This time, the crowd didn’t go home.
Drag queens, street kids, lesbians, trans women and regulars gathered outside, and when the police got rough, they fought back. Coins, bottles, bricks. The officers ended up barricaded inside the bar they had come to empty. People still argue about who threw the first punch. It doesn’t really matter: that night, for the first time, they were all in it together.
Six nights
The protests went on for nights. Word spread, and people who had spent their whole lives hiding came to Christopher Street to see it with their own eyes. Within weeks new groups were born, louder and prouder than anything before them. They didn’t ask to be tolerated anymore. They demanded to be equal.
One year later: the first Pride
On June 28, 1970, to remember the riot, a few thousand people marched from Christopher Street to Central Park. Many were scared of being photographed, of losing their jobs, of being beaten. They marched anyway. It was the first Pride, and that same weekend people marched in Los Angeles and Chicago too. Today it happens every June, in hundreds of cities around the world.
From then to now
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1950
The Mattachine Society
In Los Angeles a handful of men start one of the first gay rights groups in America. They meet in secret.
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1965
Suits and ties in Philadelphia
On the Fourth of July a small group pickets Independence Hall, dressed for the office, to remind America that gay people exist. They come back every year.
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1966
Compton's Cafeteria
In San Francisco, trans women and drag queens fight back against a police raid. Three years before Stonewall.
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1967
England and Wales
Sex between men in private stops being a crime, but only over 21.
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1969
Stonewall
June 28: the raid, the riot, the nights that changed everything.
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1970
The first Pride
One year later, thousands march in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The flyer for the first march: Sunday, June 28, 1970.Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) -
1973
Not a disease anymore
American psychiatrists remove homosexuality from their list of mental disorders.
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1978
Harvey Milk and the rainbow
Gilbert Baker's rainbow flag flies for the first time. In November, Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay men elected to office in America, is shot dead in San Francisco.
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1981
AIDS
The first cases are reported. A generation of gay men is lost, while governments look the other way.
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1987
ACT UP and the Quilt
Angry, loud and impossible to ignore, activists force the world to fight the epidemic. In Washington, a quilt made of names covers the National Mall.
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1989
Denmark
The first country to let gay couples register their partnership.
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1990
The world agrees
On May 17 the World Health Organization takes homosexuality off its list of diseases.
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2001
I do
The Netherlands becomes the first country where two men can marry.
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2015
Love wins in America
The US Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal in every state.
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2016
A monument
The Stonewall Inn becomes a national monument, the first in America dedicated to gay rights. In Italy, same-sex couples finally get civil unions.
The Stonewall Inn on Pride weekend 2016, the week it became a national monument.Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons -
2018
India
The Supreme Court strikes down a colonial law that made gay sex a crime.
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2019
Taiwan
The first same-sex weddings in Asia.
Why it still matters
Every time you open a site like this one and nobody comes knocking at your door, you have them to thank: the drag queens on Christopher Street, the men in suits in Philadelphia, the ones who marched with their faces uncovered, the ones who didn’t live to see any of this.
And it isn’t over. In dozens of countries, loving another man is still a crime, and in some it can still cost you your life. Rights that were won can be taken away.
So, happy Pride. Now go and have fun: you’ve earned it, and so did they.
