Lessons from the Stonewall Riots
Examine instances of social upheaval and violence, and you'll usually find intrusive government policies.
The Stonewall riots occurred in late June, 1969—about a month after I was born—in New York City. Memorializing those riots, in following years, is how Pride Month came to be.
It should come as a surprise to no one living in modern, progressive America that the conflicts in and around the Stonewall Inn—a New York bar that was popular among homosexual men—were ignited by government regulations and licensures.
The story goes all the way back to 1933 and the passage of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment and marked the end of the disastrous social-political experiment of Prohibition.
Prohibition was the futile attempt to use the power of the federal government to stop the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. It did not work. Alcohol still flowed during Prohibition, in some places more than before Prohibition. Prohibition incentivized the rise of gangsterism, the mob, and violent crimes including murder. To boot, rates up alcoholism went up during Prohibition.
The end of Prohibition was a good thing. It also meant an end of speakeasies—illegal, often nondescript or even concealed establishments, where those with the right personal connections could meet and buy and drink illegal booze, together.
The political class hated speakeasies because, by operating outside the law, speakeasies couldn’t be taxed or regulated by the political class.
The end of Prohibition changed all that. If bars could operate in the light of day and sell alcohol within the parameter and protection of the law, there was no need for black market speakeasies.
Can you guess what happened next?
State and local governments immediately created liquor licenses and special bureaucracies to manage and enforce those licenses. Legalized hooch meant new sources of revenue and control for the money-hungry power-mongers in state, county, and municipal governments.
Requiring a liquor license not only meant handing over money—sometimes, lots of money—to those in government, it also gave those in government a powerful tool to control restaurant and bar owners as well as liquor store owners. An owner who failed to comply with government rules and regulations would have his liquor license revoked and his business shut down.
This turned all bar owners into government enforcement agents, of sorts. An owner either helped to enforce government policies, within his own bar, or face losing his liquor license. This is an important part of the background of the riots that started at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.
There are two more important details: First, many state governments, including New York, made it a crime to sell or serve alcohol to known homosexuals or those acting in ways deemed to be sexually deviant and harmful to public morals. To serve a cocktail to a homosexual in New York in 1969, in other words, was to risk losing one’s liquor license and therefore losing one’s business.
Second, the same mafia guys who used to run illegal speakeasies, during Prohibition, later decided to get around modern liquor licenses (and the government control that comes with those licenses) by opening private “bottle clubs” that were reserved for members. Under most state laws, private bottle clubs did not require a liquor license. Mobsters weren't stupid.
Knowing they were unlikely to be served in ordinary bars—bars that had liquor licenses and were controlled by government bureaucrats—growing numbers of homosexual men (and some women, too) started joining and going to the private bottle clubs. One of the most popular in New York City was: The Stonewall Inn.
Remember Stonewall? That's how this essay started.
Private bottle clubs quickly became targets for police raids for multiple reasons: Police could harass businesses run by mobsters while alcohol bureaucrats could look for evidence that non-members were drinking, which would then require those mob bosses to purchase government-issued liquor licenses.
At the same time, when the police came busting through the doors, they’d often find large numbers of homosexual men (and some women) at a time when homosexuality was a crime in most states (including New York). What better way to exercise government power and control than by cracking down on homosexuals whose private lives were criminalized by the laws?
That’s what happened on June 28, 1969: Cops raided the Stonewall Inn and proceeded to harass, beat up, and arrest a number of homosexual men. Only that night, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn and area residents didn’t go home quietly. They fought back, against the police, against the bureaucrats, violently. The riots, protests, and fights went on for days.
One year after the Stonewall riots, a series of parades were scheduled in major cities across the United States. Those were the forerunners of today’s Pride parades.
Originally, those parades featured marching throngs of people who were demanding equal protection of the laws for the equal individual rights of all citizens. Imagine if those parades had stayed focused on those high civic goals?
The problems faced by the people sipping drinks and socializing at the Stonewall Inn, after all, were problems stemming from too much government power, too much government control, too many government laws and regulations.
Imagine if, in 1969, there were no liquor licenses and anyone could freely sell beer, wine, and spirits anywhere he wanted. Imagine if there were no laws criminalizing homosexual behavior. Imagine if any bar or restaurant owner was free to invite whomever he pleased to have a drink inside his place—and to not invite anyone he didn’t want to invite.
Imagine if each citizen was protected, by law, in his individual liberty and private property.
One bar owner might have said: “No gays in here—I don’t like them.” Another bar owner might have said: “Gays are welcome in my bar.” And yet another might have said: “Only gays are welcome in my bar—if you’re not gay, stay out.”
That’s how freedom works. Free people do what they please with what is their own; they invite those they want to associate with; and anyone is free to decline any invitation. Free people respond to each other with “Thank you” or “No thank you.”
What a different world that would be, right? There likely would have been no riots, no fights, no protests in 1969.
If all those laws and licenses and regulations had never been passed, there would be no legal authority for cops raiding bottle clubs. There would be no incentive for mob bosses to skirt the laws and open bottle clubs because there would be no laws to skirt. People of all different kinds of sexual orientations and other personal traits and interests would freely congregate and socialize wherever they wanted, freely, and with those who wanted to congregate and socialize with them.
What did we learn from the Stonewall riots? Not much.
Since then, we’ve allowed our governments at all levels create more laws and more regulations than we had in 1969. There’s more government control and power. There are more weapons, in the form of licenses, government can use to harass people, fine people, shut down some businesses, and prevent other people from starting a business.
Did you pay attention to what bureaucrats did during Covid to any business that refused to comply with arbitrary and (arguably) unconstitutional government mandates, orders, and regulations? They threatened to suspend or revoke the licenses those businesses need to operate lawfully.
Our laws place special burdens on some citizens while granting special perks and privileges to others. In Colorado, today, it is a violation of state regulations issued by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission if a person, within a workplace, refers to a man as he if he demands to be called she.
You can be fined, you can have your professional license revoked, and you can lose your business simply by uttering the word “he” or “she.” That’s no protection of individual liberty. That’s a gross violation of liberty.
After Stonewall, the Pride movement did not go the way of equal protection of the laws and equal individual rights for each and every citizen. It went a different direction. It went in the direction of political tribalism coupled with a celebration of human sexual desires of almost all varieties.
Like other mammals, we human beings are appetitive animals. We have cravings, desires, appetites for food, drink, sleep. We want warmth when we are cold, and we want to be cooled when we are hot. We also have sexual appetites and urges. Experiencing those appetites is not a virtue—it’s not an excellence—it’s not an achievement—precisely because it’s not a choice. How we choose to act on those appetites and urges, can be a virtue—it can be worthy of honor—if we choose to behave honorably. But virtuous choices worthy of honor don’t seem to be thematic in most Pride celebrations these days.
Still, we can recall the Stonewall Inn riots of 1969. We can observe that modern Pride movements and celebrations are among the most popular causes today. Pride is the zeitgeist of our time. Pride has become religious orthodoxy in many parts of our modern United States of America. Pride is today what Catholicism was in medieval Europe: To question it in any way is to risk much.
Meanwhile, the ideas of equal protection of the laws, equal individual rights, the natural freedom of each human being, and private property recede into the shadows of our culture. They are studied, discussed, sometimes celebrated—usually quietly—by a small pool of liberty-minded citizens whose numbers seem to be shrinking by the day. Imagine if many millions of Americans today were as proud of individual liberty and equal protection of the laws for equal individual rights as they are of sex and sexuality?