When the cops arrived to raid the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 27, 1969, David Velasco Bermudez headed for the exits, but he couldn’t make his way through the crowded bar before getting hit in the neck by a policewoman swinging a billy club.
But then Bermudez, who at 29 had learned to submit to routine beatings by New York City police, did something different: He fought back, and so did his friends.
“We never, ever hit back,” said Bermudez, now 73, a retired interior designer now living in Cape Cod, Mass. “But we had just had enough of it. . . . It’s like Rosa Parks sitting inside a bus. We just did it.”
Gays and lesbians have been fighting ever since.
On Wednesday, just one day shy of the 44th anniversary of the raid that launched the gay rights movement, the battle hit a crescendo when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage is no longer the sole domain of straight couples.
The Israeli government announced on Tuesday that it had approved a budget of approximately 1.3bn shekels...
The Church of England has voted to hear Palestinian Christians, defying efforts by pro-Israel organisations to...
A global campaign in support of captive Palestinians has urged the International Committee of the Red...
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Khalil's lawyers from Beldock Levine & Hoffman announced the...
