American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with William Eskridge, 3 of 3

I'm trying to make a choice. How does Stonewall compare to the other great civil rights stories that are part of the American history? Stonewall for gay people is in some ways like Rosa Parks' refusal to sit at the back of the bus. It was an act of civil disobedience by a persecuted minority, an assertion of equality and a rejection of the shame that society had placed upon a minor difference. It's ironic that in American history, gay liberation is not treated as the distinguished civil rights movement that African-American liberation has been treated in history books for decades.

That want to ponder why this is. I think one reason why gay civil rights is not viewed on the same part as the African-American civil rights revolution is that sexuality has always been exceptional in American culture. Americans are both Puritan and Purient. Americans are both sex-obsessed and sex-negative. And the history of lesbian and gay rights centrally involved as it is in minority sexuality is something that Americans are still often squeamish about, and this squeamishness knows no ideology. One reason. A second reason is, is that Americans are still not quite so sure how far they want to go on the path of gender equality and the dissolution of arbitrary gender differentiation. That's been a theme of feminism, but it's also been a theme of gay and lesbian civil rights.

And then a final point is probably the deepest. And that is that gay civil rights for many Americans is deeply contrary to fundamental religious commitments. The African-American civil rights movement had an enormous advantage in its deep and genuine foundation in African-American churches and indeed in Caucasian churches, such as the Presbyterian Church that I'm a member of. Whereas gay and lesbian rights has been typically considered contrary to traditional religious teachings unlike African-American civil rights. And so there's been an ongoing battle between gay civil rights and many religious fundamentalists within churches as well as within our society. So those are the reasons. I don't believe they're good reasons. And I think the next generation will conclude that the gay civil rights movement that begins in earnest with Stonewall is a different movement, but in many ways just as great a movement is the African-American civil rights movement that began in earnest with Rosa Parks. I think the last question I had is sort of ending up with something positive.

Yeah, that's sort of similar. Okay. You mentioned the next generation. They're going to look back at this, they're after the fact. What do you hope the next generation takes away from the less of Stonewall? What the next generation should take away from Stonewall is the lesson that the United States has often been a discriminatory society, a lesson that the respectable middle class, decent people are capable of great in humanity when laws are based upon ignorance and prejudice. On the other hand, the next generation should also take away from Stonewall, the notion that human beings are resilient and do have a learning curve that gays and lesbians, the most despised Americans in the 1960s, formed their own conclusions based upon their own lives and upon the evidence and their conclusions were that they were dignified, good, decent human beings who deserved equal treatment.

And that's been a great success story, even though many Americans do not accept full gay equality, almost all Americans accept a substantial part of it. And I think what the younger generation has probably already internalized is that this is a civil rights battle that for them is already over, and they might want to think about what is the next battle. Thank you. Ah, we're over. The best behavior was the dog.