By Aidan Feskorn and Sofia Braz
LGBTQ+ rights have a long history that deserves to be acknowledged in today’s society, especially as some of those rights are in question in some parts of America. The struggle for gay rights overtime started in 1924 with The Society for Human Rights, the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. This society only existed for a few months, as its founder was left bankrupt after a false legal scandal, but it paved the way for multiple other groups to advocate for gay rights, such as the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society, advocating and providing support for lesbians and gay men respectively.
In June of 1969, however, one of the most, if not the most important movement for LGBTQ+ rights in American history happened. Police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village, NYC, and roughed up patrons in the inn. The people in the club that went outside, however, were fed up with the constant police action against people trying to live their lives and refused to disperse. This would later turn into riots against the police in defense of the LGBTQ+ activities and lives the police were acting against.
The actions at Stonewall sparked a large wave of LGBTQ+ rights movements across the country, and on the one-year anniversary of the riot, the first gay pride parade was held, marching from Stonewall Inn to Manhattan and shouting “say it loud, gay is proud”. Gay rights would continue to improve over the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with same-sex marriage being legalized in multiple states throughout the 2000s and recognized by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2015.
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