Some were employees, and some were patrons who violated New York state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute - read drag queens.
In the wee hours of June 28, 1969, the police raided Stonewall Inn and arrested 13 people. Gay bars were routinely raided and their owners and patrons harassed. However, the city still deemed public display of affection by the gay community as illegal. Newsletter | Click to get the day’s best explainers in your inboxĭrag Queens, effeminate men, and gay men who pretended to be straight, could all come and have a good time at the ‘bottle bar’ - the Inn didn’t have a liquor license, as the patrons got their own. In these rough times, the Stonewall Inn offered a safe haven to the LGBTQ community. In fact, solicitation of homosexual relations was still a crime in New York City. At the same time, gay and lesbian members of the American society were being constantly marginalised. The sixties was the time in the US when the anti-Vietnam war protest was gathering momentum, and a hippie counterculture was bubbling under.
