Sociology 3701: Worksheet--"After Stonewall"

There is probably no more dramatic example in the last 35 years of stigmatized minority asserting its rights than the gay and lesbian movement. Homosexuality had long been defined as deviant and indeed criminal; places like gay bars and bathhouses had periodically faced police raids. Homosexuality had also been defined as a mental illness, and some gays and lesbians had been hospitalized against their will in order to be "cured." The emergence of the gay and lesbian rights movement dates symbolically from a single event: a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village (New York City). For the first time, instead of submitting to police harassment and arrest, the police were met with a riot (the Stonewall riots), that lasted for five days. We pick up the story a few years "after Stonewall," , with the 1974 meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.

1. One of the tactics of this movement was to take terms that had been thrown at its members as insults and use them in defiance and pride. Give several examples from the video:

2. What were the circumstances and significance of the 1st and 2nd Gay and Lesbian Rights Marches on Washington?

3. What are some of the ways in which the feminist movement intersected with the movement for lesbian rights?

4. How did the religious right get involved? What was the role of the AIDs epidemic?

5. What was ACT UP and what part did they play in the movement?

Sociology 3701: Groups--"After Stonewall"

1. Analyze the emergence of this movement from a symbolic interactionist perspective. What were its main features and how would you account for its setbacks and victories? How can we account for the enormous energies released and mobilized by a movement like this?

2. Do gays and lesbians live in a different world in 2007 than they did in the 1950s or the 1920s? How and why has that world changed? What are the consequences for the self-construction of gays and lesbians?

3. What is the significance of the AIDs epidemic in this context? What dangers, other than the obvious dangers to physical health and even life, were posed to the gay and lesbian movement by that epidemic?

4. One speaker in the film called the AIDs quilt project "one of the most inspired ideas of the twentieth century." Can you make a case for such a large claim, using the social construction of reality perspective? If your group disagrees, summarize the arguments from both sides.