Understand Stonewall to heal the SHAME

Judy Garland, pictured above, was uniquely beloved by gays in the 1960's. Her death was certainly a factor in the events that sparked the Stonewall Riots. As gays, if SHAME is part of your consciousness, it could help to understand what happened in New York City at that time.

This is my "history lesson" and it is valid from my point of view. I present it because I believe it helps us all to know about it.

In gay bars in the 1960’s, it was the typical custom of the local police to raid gay bars — to enter and ask all patrons for identification. This was done ostensibly to make sure there were no under-age drinkers, but the effect was to make life miserable for the patrons of gay bars. The police have been accused of systematically shaking down and extorting these patrons as much as they could.

When these raids occurred, usually, there would be a considerable number of vulnerable patrons in gay bars who were in conventional marriages or who held jobs where the revelation that they were gay might mean instant dismissal or disgrace. To avoid this divorce, dismissal or disgrace, these patrons would quickly pay outrageous fines that were assessed for such crimes as “disorderly conduct”. If the patron were not in jeopardy of losing his career or family, he might be able to hire an attorney and have the charges dismissed (since there was really no basis for the charge of “disorderly conduct” simply because a person happened to be a patron of a bar… even a GAY bar! But the most vulnerable patrons usually had the money to pay the fines and that became a source of revenue for many police departments around the country.

The bar personnel knew that these raids were capricious and unfair but there was nothing they could do about the practice until the historic event that took place on the last Sunday of June, 1969. On that fateful and historic day, Judy Garland died and large numbers of gay men who adored her headed for their favorite gay bar to find some solace with their fellows.


Judy Garland In Wizard of Oz


Judy Garland with Liza

That night, it wasn’t unusual when police officers conducted one of their routine raids at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street near Sheridan Square in New York City.

But what was unusual was that gay people were feeling a common bond at the bar and the raid was the spark that galvanized the Gay Community to come together. There were so many patrons in the bar that evening that the squadron of police officers was heavily outnumbered. As the police called for reinforcements, the gay patrons “called” for reinforcements, too. Since the Stonewall Inn was right in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, there was a tremendous population center of gay people within a few blocks. Thus, the patrons who realized that there was a riot beginning began to summon their friends and neighbors to descend on the bar in droves. Drag queens were comfortable in the company of the leather men and the students and lesbians along with stereotypes and non-stereotypes which simply didn’t matter on that occasion.


A rare photo of Stonewall Riots


We were all recognizing that we were a new-found family! Well, not ALL of us!*

By the time the police reinforcements arrived, they too, were overwhelmed by the growing crowd of angry gays and lesbians who had come to witness the activities and quickly became involved. The police had become trapped, barricaded inside the trashed Stonewall Inn and the victorious crowd of gays outside the bar began chanting the first choruses of Gay Power which were to become the battle-cries for future generations of gay people. The incident on that night continued with massive rallies for three days and the consciousness of Gay Power and Gay Pride became a part of the collective consciousness of gay people everywhere.

*Two paragraphs back, I have an asterisk hanging out there. And this is the time when I must confess that my own personal reaction to Stonewall in June, 1979, was NOT to embrace my fellow gays and lesbians! No, I saw the televised news accounts at my parents’ home in the conservative suburbs of St. Louis. Frankly, I was HORRIFIED to see the drag queens and other stereotypes being brought into our peaceful homes in the Midwest portrayed as rioters and unruly demonstrators.

In those days, I saw gay life as consisting of two types of people: flamboyant queens and schizophrenics! The latter was comprised of gay people who could “pass” for being conventional and who could hold down responsible jobs and blend into society without any discomfort (to others). Forget about the discomfort that I might feel to struggle to PRETEND that I am heterosexual, but my focus was on the discomfort that might be felt by OTHERS who might work with me or involve themselves in my life in one way or another.

This is where I can pinpoint a life of hiding and shame which I was living in the summer of 1969. Because I knew that I was gay, I realized that I had to keep my gayness a deep, dark secret to avoid losing society’s benefits (job security, promotions, marriage, children, social acceptance, etc.) which I felt were only bestowed upon the people who lived, dressed and behaved in conventional ways. This is the behavior pattern of a person who lives with shame and low self-esteem. My hand would be raised… I confess to knowing this pattern in my own life! The pattern was expressed in my life (particularly in the 1960’s and 1970’s) as treating every gay or lesbian person as if he or she were a second-class citizen — including myself! I often lied and mistreated my gay friends (who reflected back to me the most “shameful” part of my own character). There was no need for integrity as long as I catered to the non-gays as if they meant more to me than I meant to myself.

What was the consciousness before Stonewall? Considering the way those vulnerable bar patrons had previously paid extortion-fines to avoid being exposed in their lives, it is easy to see how the consciousness of Pride and self-esteem for gay people would gradually turn things around for urban gay and lesbian people in this country and throughout the western world. The lesson we have learned (and must continue to learn) is that as long as we have a critical mass of proud gay and lesbian people in our world, we cannot be denied our place in this world and our guarantees of equal protection under the laws. And further, with self-esteem, we can be worthy and honorable citizens of the world.

There are countless young people, today, who have no idea what the Stonewall Rebellion was and they can’t appreciate its significance. That is why we need to tell the younger generation about it and tell our parents and our extended families about it and stand up and say, “I’m GAY AND PROUD” (and say it LOUD)!

In addition, there are vulnerable gay people from other cultures, particularly in the Third World, where gayness has been regarded as an unacceptable state of being. These people are pressured to get married to opposite-sex partners or to face severe repercussions in their cultures. It is easy for me to recognize the shame they feel about their gayness and it is compelling to see them looking to us in the Western World and they are drawn to the Light of our pride and self-acceptance. They, too, can benefit from knowing about the history and development of pride in our Community. Maybe they can’t embrace it yet in their own countries and this can also be true in the USA in the Midwest and the South and in small towns and even in some big cities depending on the cultural background of the family.

The point is that this history must be explained to everyone in all cultures so that we can continue to grow and to function fully in society. The first step is to accept ourselves as worthy. We must never let a narrow-minded person judge us or shame us. Knowing what we know now, we can never again be shamed out of our PRIDE!

Alan (left) looks on as Bill Rosendahl thanks his supporters. 

Gay Immigration to the US

A friend recently wrote to me that he has a job as a supervisor. I responded by telling him I'm glad that he has a good career position as a supervisor. Having a stable career is always helpful when someone applies for a visa to come visit the USA. The US Embassy needs to be convinced that he will return to his country after his "visit". I've been working with others who wanted to come and visit and they had a much harder time because their work was not as high as a supervisor. They had jobs which required supervision from others. That is why the US doesn't want to welcome such people as visitors. It's unfortunate but true.

I've had many frustrations with friends who have tried to come here. A few of my friends have actually gotten here but of the 6 of my friends who made it here,

1) A friend from Uruguay went to New York but never came to Los Angeles, so I don't know how he did.
2) A friend from Poland came to Los Angeles and eventually got his citizenship (as pictured here).
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3) A friend from Indonesia got married (we helped to find him an appropriate wife) and is in the process of applying for his green card ... he lives with a boyfriend in San Diego.
4) A friend from Ukraine came here for a visit, went back, came again and had to restore his status by crossing out and back into the US but he got caught and his visa was cancelled and he ended up being deported. I don't think he will ever come back.
5) A friend from Latvia came here and attended school but had to drop out because he couldn't work and he couldn't support himself and he had to go back to his country. He was not prepared to live on his own in a big US city like Los Angeles.
6) And a friend from Australia came here but had problems with marriage (we tried to find him a lesbian wife but she tried to extort money from him) and trouble keeping jobs until he got taken in by a loner-type man who seems to have his situation under control but this benefactor keeps him on a short leash and none his friends is permitted to have any communication with him, so we really don't know. The results are 2 successes, 2 failures and 2 unknown results. But I've also had many foreign visitors who have come here just for a visit and they have enjoyed their stay and have returned home to their respective countries without problems.

My interest is to work with gay men who are experiencing some sort of persecution at home because they cannot be all they want to be in their own country or culture if they are gay. Some of these friends came here to find better lives (economically) but not necessarily to escape anti-gay persecution in their own countries. I have no intention to devote my energy to improving a gay man's economic outlook because I need to devote that energy to MY OWN economic outlook! I really prefer to invest my time and interest in guys who are really suffering simply because they are gay. Right now, I am working and brain-storming to help guys in Iran, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Singapore and a few other countries. I don't think it is fair that people have to suffer from persecution just because they are gay and they have the misfortune to have been born and raised within the borders of a country which has limiting laws and narrow-minded people.

If you have any suggestions to that might assist these guys in getting to the USA, please tell me. Thanks.

The girl I didn't marry and the girl I did marry

I recently spoke to the girl (E) who loved me when I was in the process of coming out and accepting my gayness. Once I realized that I was absolutely and certainly gay, I told her and I ultimately felt that it was right to end our relationship even though we were having good sex with each other and she was willing to accept me as I was. I really loved her but I was also fairly certain that I would never be able to be 100% sexually exclusive with her.


Jump-cut to seven years later after intensive psychotherapy (4 times per week for 7 years without a break) and I found myself dating another girl (M) and having fairly enjoyable sex with her. This was to become my wife and I never actually revealed to her that I had been very sexually active with other men. I was deeply in love with M and she was deeply in love with me, so we decided to get married. At our engagement party, my father ALMOST outed me when he began to blurt out, "Have you discussed about Dr. ..." I stopped the conversation as quickly as possible and excused us from my fiancee and took my father aside and said, "Dad, what I say to her, and when I say it and the words I choose to use will be between me and her and I don't want you to discuss it until I let you know that it's ok!" And he agreed and nothing further was said about it and I breathed a sigh of relief for the moment. I truly felt that I would get around to it when it became appropriate (and once I felt that the information would not be counterproductive to my intention to remain married to her.)

So the ex-fiancee went on to marry another guy who has become a successful lawyer and they had 3 kids and one of them, I suspect, was named after me. There's still some sweetness and affection between us and I'm very happy that she has had a good life. My ex-wife, on the other hand, has spent decades in a state of anger and bitterness toward me. I never really understood how any person could repeat the mantra: "You ruined my life" for over twenty years, but she did it! I believe that there are many more enlightened approaches to life than that, but she is fully in charge of her own life and I wish her well, too.

What is the moral of the story? Guys, don't do this to women. If you're gay or "bisexual", I recommend that you level with them early in the relationship and build a friendship. This way, you can see if she really has the willingness to be the 'Grace' to your 'Will'

What's your assignment?

My assignment is my GAYNESS! Gay is a major aspect of my life and I am blessed to have it and to share it and to offer encouragement to others who wonder whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.

TESTIFY! Gratitude for Gayness


I was talking to a friend of mine today. We were talking about my project which is to earn my Doctorate in Spiritual Science. What is Spiritual Science? It's a good idea for me to explain what that's about. At first blush, it seems like an oxymoron, but here goes. We take a spirutal concept and to apply it to our lives and to measure, using SCIENTIFIC methods, the positive shift. Once we observe it working for us, the next step is to devise a repeatability study and to enlist the cooperation of some friends (some can be those who already accept the premise that spirituality has validity in their lives but some of our test subjects must be relatively new to the concepts -- a neophyte -- a sincere skeptic -- someone who might have some doubts about this whole thing! And then, I write my Treatise about that and ultimately I will have earned my Doctorate in Spiritual Science (D.S.S.) I've been studying this for a number of years so far.

As I described this to my friend, I used the example of applying the spirutal concepts of GRATITUDE (counting one's blessings) and ACCEPTANCE to the awareness of one's gayness. That certainly continues to be a source of great upliftment in my life. And I elaborated by suggesting that it could apply to ANY aspect of one's life just as well. So my friend asked me, "What about my FAT?" Well, I didn't have a good answer for her right away because I don't necessarily agree that the acceptance of one's fat is a universal goal. So I went inside (spiritual exercises - an active form of meditation) and asked for some wisdom for a valid response that virtually ANYONE might use.

I found a difference! Gayness is a condition of life. It is a factor that can plague or menace one's life and it is also a factor that is unchangeable. (Feel free to engage me over THAT assertion... I'm ready for that!) On the other hand, the notion of "fat" gave me an image of slop on a plate.

Glop on a Plate
You would be holding a nice plate and, as you go through the lunch line, a huge mass of heavy stuff is glopped onto your plate. It sits there, perhaps quivering but it just seems like a heavy load on your plate (huge and daunting pile of mashed potatoes, above, represents excess weight).

But that's NOT how I experience gayness. Gayness, as I've suggested, is the INNER GYROSCOPE which is perpetually guiding each individual in a direction. We can oppose the direction of that inner gyroscope at our peril but that seems like a very different image from the big wad of corpulence. The similarity is that both are issues... but whether the issues are sitting there (glop) or a part of our daily lives and our activities and our inspirations is really what this is about.

Here's the way I can suggest applying GRATITUDE to both matters.
1) Recognize that we are each on a path and that our Creator has given us lessons in life. How can we approach these lessons?
2) My suggestion is to find ACCEPTANCE and GRATITUDE for the LESSONS that come with each step in life.

One might say, "WOW! God cares so much about ME that HE gave me this lesson. THANK YOU! I'll do my best with it!" This way, gayness can be embraced with gratitude and fat can be embraced with gratitude. The important thing to remember is that WHO WE ARE is not our gayness nor our fat nor our occupation nor our religion nor our gender nor our clothing nor our health. Each one of these things is a condition and each condition is a blessing from above. It's like our ASSIGNMENT! We may have been waiting for an assignment and this is it. When I was a child, I remember being BORED. Well, now that I have an assignment, I am no longer bored. Instead, I'm engaged and GRATEFUL to be on purpose with this lesson which is my path toward my own divinity. Whatever I do with my assignment, whether I take the right treatment plan or the wrong treatment plan, at least I'm doing something about it and I will eventually find the right direction to go. But doing something and taking the steps toward embracing my assignment with gratitude will lead me where I want to go.

Thanks anyway, but I don't look good in hats

Now that John Paul II is dead, it's time to consider who shall replace him.

If I'm going to be the new Pope, things will be done quite differently in the Vatican and around the world. First of all, the secrecy afforded to rampant pedophilia in the seminaries and rectories will be ended and all pedophiles will be ousted from the priesthood. And the loss of priests will be replenished because my new papal decree will encourage normal, God-given, sexuality among consenting adults including marriage for any two people who elect to enshrine their love as a marriage. This includes conventional marriage and same-sex marriage. Since the sex is happening anyway, the time is right to start the Church on a path of honesty and integrity, so mandatory celibacy will be removed as a requirement. It can be elected but it will not be compulsory.

My next encyclical will be to all believers to accept your gay and lesbian children and to embrace them as part of the Church family and their own personal families without rancor or recrimination. The Church will henceforth embrace people with AIDS the same way it embraces others who are dealing with any other diseases and Catholic hospitals will be a friendly and loving place for all people with all maladies without judgment. Just as Jesus taught us to accept and to judge not and to love each other as He loved us, we will mold the Church to behave with that philosophy.

Well, so much for my first day as Pope. Let's see if the College of Cardinals gives me the majority of the votes. Most of those guys (except for the pedophiles among them) are gay, anyway.

Hmm, I suppose I had to be a Cardinal first. Well, consider this -- I grew up in St. Louis and I was a huge Cardinal FAN for most of my childhood. I have all of the caps and other Cardinal paraphernalia,

so I'm practically a Cardinal anyway! I'm ready to ascend to the Throne of St. Peter!

Good bye Terri, we hardly knew ye...

The GOP actually does NOT know ye, Terri! But this grandstanding is pretty obnoxious! Her husband is in a very unenviable position. He will now have the stigma of being an unpopular "killer" or even a "murderer" once she dies.

If this case hadn't gotten famous, it could have been his private grief and he would be able to get on with his life in peace. Even though the Supreme Court announced that they won't intervene, the husband is still going to be the target of jeers wherever he goes for the next few years. The nicer thing would be to give him condolences but the Christian extremists won't. They'll give him judgmental cat-calls.

How ironic it is that the Republicans are desperately searching for an "ACTIVIST JUDGE"!