Stonewall 25


Stonewall 25, was a 1994 LGBTQ pride event in New York City marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, the spark of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The celebration was the largest LGBTQ event in history to then with at least a million people taking part in the International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People. Two counter-marches were created in response: the one-time Spirit of Stonewall; and the first-annual New York City Drag March. Major events also include: the Dyke March; the 1994 Gay Games; PrideFest ‘94; and The International S/M Leather Fetish Celebration.

Background

Namesake

The Stonewall Uprising of June 1969 was a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community in Greenwich Village, New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall Inn, gay street kids from the surrounding area, and members of the community who came from neighboring gay and lesbian bars, fought back against an early morning police raid, refusing to be arrested for simply patronizing a gay bar and being out in public. The Stonewall riots are widely considered to be the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.

Heritage of Pride

, doing business as NYC Pride, is a 501non-profit organization that produces the official New York City LGBTQIA+Pride Week events each June. HOP began working on the events in 1984, taking on the work previously done by the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, organizers of the first March in 1970. HOP also took over responsibility for the operations of NYC's Pride festival and Pride Rally. Additional New York City events in the outer boroughs are organized by Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island Pride chapters. What began as a March has grown to more than a dozen events which compose NYC PRIDE week including The March, The Rally, PrideFest, and Pride Island- a multi-day cultural experience that is an evolution from HOP's Dance on the Pier. Pride Island is the final event held each year.

''International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People''

The Stonewall 25 signature event was its Pride march, the International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People. It was the largest international LGBTQ pride march for human rights in history to date with at least a million people taking part. The march was led by veterans of the 1969 Stonewall riots.
”The first wave of marchers started lining up at 10 a.m., stretching over a lineup area covering thirty city blocks. Stepping off at 11 a.m., the March started at 42nd Street and 1st Avenue and passed by the United Nations building. It then continued to the Great Lawn of Central Park for a post-March Rally with activists, human-rights leaders, and performers and entertainers from around the globe.” The march was not produced by Heritage of Pride, the annual NYC Pride March organizers, but instead by Stonewall 25. They chose to put the march on First Avenue passing the United Nations building to reflect the international focus.
One of the most visible contingents was a massive rainbow flag. The rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker, aka Sister Chanel 2001 of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was commissioned to create the world's largest rainbow flag. The mile-long flag, dubbed “Raise the Rainbow”, took months of planning and teams of volunteers to coordinate every aspect. The flag utilized the basic six colors and measured wide. After the march, foot-wide sections of the flag were given to individual sponsors as part of a fundraiser for Stonewall 25 distributed once the event had ended. Additional large sections of the flag were sent with activists and used in pride parades and LGBTQ marches worldwide. One large section was later taken to Shanghai Pride in 2014 by a small contingent of San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and documented in the film “Stilettos For Shanghai”. The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed it as the world's largest flag.

Counter-marches

Three counter-marches took place, two in response to issues with the Stonewall 25 organizers: Spirit of Stonewall; and the New York City Drag March.
ILGA, the-then only group representing gays and lesbians at the United Nations, banned pro-pedophilia organizations from membership; and Stonewall 25 organizers banned them and similar groups from its Pride protest march. 150 “activists, scholars, artists, and writers” signed on to support Spirit Of Stonewall, an ad hoc group that felt the banned groups had free speech, and association rights. They had almost 7,000 participants. New York City police let it proceed unobstructed by traffic or police but did have a “phalanx of police officers in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, by then a target of LGBTQ anger over the Catholic Church’s stridently homophobic posture”; thousands from the march staged a sIt-in protest in the streets in front of the cathedral.
The Dyke March is a lesbian visibility and protest march, much like the original Gay Pride parades and gay rights demonstrations. The main purpose being the encouragement of activism within the lesbian community. Larger metropolitan areas usually have several Pride-related happenings both before and after the march to further community building; with outreach to specific segments such as older women, women of color, and lesbian parenting groups.
The New York City Drag March was formed while preparations for Stonewall 25 were taking place, it was made public that event organizers were not going to include leathermen or drag queens in the official ceremonies. Activist Gilbert Baker, creator of the Rainbow Flag, aka Sister Chanel 2001 with the drag activist troop Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, recently moved to the city from San Francisco, and Brian Griffin, aka Harmonie Moore Must Die, created the alternate event. Baker, who was busy creating a mile-long rainbow flag for the parade, the world’s largest until he made an even bigger one in 2003, came up with the idea, while Harmonie, working in Baker’s shop, had grassroots organizational skills from work with ACT UP and Women's Health Action and Mobilization, to organize the drag march. Harmonie was also a member of Church Ladies for Choice, an activist drag troop that countered the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. The Church Ladies were inspired by the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who didn’t yet have a New York house, to collect and parody church pamphlets advertising the march with the slogan “Jesus Loves Drag,” they passed out the materials in gay bars. The march had an estimated 10,000 participants spread over ten blocks.

Other key events

The International Lesbian and Gay Conference “was the largest gathering ever of international lesbian and gay activists”.
Gay Games IV, "overtook the Olympics in size" with 10,864 athletes compared to 9,356 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and 10,318 at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. There were over 15,000 participants that either competed in the sporting events or in the week-long cultural festival and ceremonies. The sporting events expanded to thirty one from previous years, including but not limited to, flag football, figure skating, and the first ever internationally sanctioned women's wrestling.
Heritage of Pride, which annually produces the city’s Pride events, cancelled their parade to allow Stonewall 25 organizers to stage theirs. Instead they produced PrideFest ’94, “held on the piers along the waterfront at the foot of Christopher Street by the old meatpacking district“.
The International S/M Leather Fetish Celebration, co-sponsored by: The Eulenspiegel Society, National Leather Association Metro NY, Lesbian Sex Mafia, Gay Male S/M Activists, Excelsior MC, and Defenders/New York; was over four days with 150 presenters in 65 workshops. It had an associated Leather Pride Night and Leather Dance.