How Best to Remember Stonewall : Pass a bill in Congress to curb workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation

Today marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most extraordinary events in American civil rights history. Early on the morning of June 28, 1969, an unlikely collection of drag queens and street hustlers brought the simmering gay rights movement to a boil by fighting back when the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village.

What a difference 25 years makes. No longer an invisible, cowering minority, tens of thousands of homosexuals paraded proudly in New York Sunday to mark the Stonewall riot. The very police department that once entrapped homosexuals there now actively recruits gay officers. The nation’s media scarcely covered the 1969 events and, later, largely ignored AIDS, even after thousands had died--but one New York newspaper last week ran a 5,680-word guide for visitors on “Things to Do With a Gay Flavor” and editorialized Sunday that “A just society must offer the same protections to men in leather and chains as to those who wear Brooks Brothers suits.”

All across the country, gay men and lesbians today enjoy a measure of freedom and dignity that seemed unthinkable until recently. Yet they still lack many basic rights. Twenty-one states still have sodomy laws. Homosexuals still cannot serve in the military without keeping their personal lives secret. Just recently, a federal judge in Washington state ordered the National Guard to reinstate a highly decorated nurse who was expelled because she is a lesbian. It is ironic, and infuriating, that the Clinton Justice Department has announced it will appeal that order. But this is the same wobbly Administration that campaigned on a promise to end the military ban on gays and then adopted the hollow “don’t-ask, don’t-tell” compromise with homophobes in Congress and the military.

A hateful backlash from the political right has emerged in several states. And it is telling that even now some politicians still find it acceptable to bash gays, as Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) did in a tawdry, ill-informed attack the other day in Congress on the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

And gays themselves are divided. There were actually two marches in New York, the official one focused on gaining human rights for homosexuals worldwide and an unofficial one trying to steer attention to finding an AIDS cure. And many conservative gays are loath to be linked to the more flamboyant ones like those who fought back 25 years ago in New York.

But nearly everyone, save the most extreme bigots, can agree that no one should be denied employment or promotions because of sexual orientation. Most enlightened employers already realize that and value their gay employees. Now a bill introduced in Congress, co-sponsored by 30 senators and nearly 100 representatives, would prohibit most workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Its passage would be a fitting tribute to the Stonewall legacy.