40 Years After The Stonewall Riots

Forty years after the Stonewall riots, world headlines are filled with news about the progression of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues; gay activists have taken their protests from the streets and into the virtual atmosphere, sending messages further and wider; and laws are slowly changing to ensure equal protections for all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Birthed from the Mattachine Society, the Daughter of Bilitis, the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activist Alliance, a number of national, regional and local LGBT organizations have emerged, providing services that range from political activism to legal and economic assistance.

These organizations have been successful in assisting many openly LGBT political candidates, LGBT teens in school and college, LGBT-headed families, same-sex marriages and relationships, and the media is becoming increasingly more LGBT-friendly. However, despite the many victories since Stonewall, we continue to face challenges of inclusion, acceptance and diversity within both general society and the LGBT community.

There are still only five states with legal same-sex marriage and many states where same-sex adoption is still prohibited. Gays and lesbian can't serve openly in the military and in 31 states LBGT people can be fired just for being LGBT. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens make up a third of all teen suicides, the fable of the "pink dollar" has been deflated with reports of many LGBT-headed families living in poverty, and binational same-sex couples continue to face immigration challenges.

Yet, despite the many difficulties we face as LGBT people, the past has been one of much progress and the picture of the future of LGBT equality has changed from the improbably to the inevitable.

Progress is indeed evolutionary and with a force of LGBT activism is at its greatest heights, equality can, and will, be achieved.

Our challenges in the next forty years will not mirror the forty of the past, but progress will move forward. Our voices, though unified, come from many of different backgrounds and of varying character. The diversity within the LGBT community is perhaps more known today than it was when the first transgender street youth threw her stiletto at oppressive police. The diversity which I refer to, not within the context of general society, but among the ranks of LGBT people all must be celebrated if we are to become a true community. We must be representative of the entire rainbow, of different likes and ideals and hues, linked of a common colorful thread.