On the evening of Friday, June 24, I danced to Lady Gaga wearing a hot pink glitter beard in a crowd in front of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.
Marriage rights were minutes away for same-sex New York couples, but this was not the reason for the gathering. Friday was a day of celebrating non-conformity in the queer community.
Starting with the Trans Day of Action, I marched with trans and gender non-conforming people demanding rights. Then came "Queerball," a marching-band-accompanied dance party for anyone whose personal manifestation of "queer" didn't fit with mainstream pride festivals. Queerball melted into the Drag March, which ended in front of the Stonewall Inn.
Word about the marriage vote trickled through the crowd, but tracking the vote was not my first prioritynor was it my second. My main concern on Friday was celebrating my fabulous outside-the-box-ness. My second worry was the New York Police Department, and I wasn't the only one worrying.
A few cop cars trailed us by the time we reached Stonewall. A group of officers waved their sticks at some of the crowd, and when a drag queen posed on the hood of a traffic buggy, one cop grabbed and hurled her into the crowd, then shoved her.
Although a few scattered after the incident, most of us stood our ground, chanting, "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, don't fuck with us!"
Eventually, the cops left to re-direct traffic around us. We were in the midst of celebrating winning the battle against the cops at Stonewall when someone shouted "IT PASSED!" and the whole block exploded into a community-wide street festival. Those who had gathered because they felt excluded from the gay community were suddenly surrounded by it. Some embraced the explosion, while others faded into the night.
I found out over the next days that the Chelsea gay bar The Eagle had been raided by a group of cops, and at the NYC Dyke March, police officers demanded permits and manhandled marshals. According to The New York Times, the raid on the Eagle had been scheduled blind to the Eagle being a gay bar the Friday before Pride. The imminent marriage vote did not stop the police from making patrons wait outside while they wrote tickets in the Eagle. New York resident Judy Yu was at the Dyke March. "I was at the very first Dyke March," she recalls, "and while I haven't gone to all 19, I've been to many and was surprised…that there was an issue that we had no permit because we've never marched with a permit. I found it absurd that they suddenly made an issue of it, especially given the fact that marriage equality had just passed."
One might think that a state with legalized marriage for gays and lesbians would be a safe and tolerant place to live if one is queer. I think this image rides on the assumption that marriage is the ultimate signifier of equality, and that equality is the end-goal of the gay-rights movement. This assumption ignores many people, including those who do not conform to binary gender standards, expectations of monogamy, traditional family structures or strict boxes that allow for no fluidity of identity.
It may also explain why it seemed to me like so few who showed up after the New York Senate vote were aware that there had been a Drag March, and why so little press was given to aggressive police at Stonewall on Friday.
How is it that we remain targets of the police, yet actions around the criminal system don't get a fraction of the community's attention of actions around marriage rights? At the New York Pride Parade on Sunday, June 26, signs reading "Thank You Governor Cuomo!" abounded, and I couldn't help but think how state budget cuts will negatively affect queer and trans youth as well as low-income queer people.
How is it that economic justice is so rarely a priority for gay-rights groups? And how is it that the LGBTQ community still leaves out its trans and gender non-conforming members? I feel compelled to ask New York: Now that we have marriage, what's next?
Jax ( Jacqui ) Jackson is an actor and former Chicagoan living in New York. She starred in Hannah Free and Jamie and Jesse Are NOT Together, both lesbian feature films shot in Chicago.