Jim Fouratt

Jim Fouratt, former actor, gay rights activist, and one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front which was formed on the third night of the Stonewall Riots (also called the Stonewall Uprising), discusses what happened on 28 June 1969, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street. Speakng to the many fictions that have circulated in recent years, perpetuated largely by the transgender lobby, Fouratt historicises the era as well as the class and race issues prevalent in the late 1960s within New York City’s gay and lesbian community. Fouratt details how what he calls the Stonewall Rebellion was most definitely not a political protest that involved the sic “transgender community,” noting that Marsha P. Johnson was not even present and that drag queens barely figured into the venue of the Stoewall Inn much less the rebellion. Describing the political, policing, and social milieu at the time, Fouratt delves into how and why Stonewall took place, elaborating the social dynamics of various generations within gay culture as he vituperates the rewriting of gay and lesbian history by the transgender lobby that attempts to whitewash and erase gay men and lesbians from their own movement.