I lived in New York in June 1969 but I am not one of the millions who claim they were at the Stonewall Bar the night it was raided. In those days I was a bit of a ‘bar snob, going only to the ‘better bars’! My partner and I were at the theater that night and didn’t know about it until we got home and heard it on the news. The next day we walked down to the Village and spoke to the many people hanging around. We would fly back to New York—we were now living in Memphis—for the first Gay Pride Parade. And 50 years later I celebrate the event and where it leads to and will continue to celebrate it every year.


Was I born Gay? Maybe and if I was I would love to thank the relative who passed down the gene. Did I choose to be Gay? I don’t know but if I did it was the smartest choice I ever made.


To celebrate I offer the following with the first C&P from Susan on facebook and the second, also copied from facebook, that offers solace to the many still in the closet, to that young person in the Midwest who thinks they are the only Gay person in the world, to those who have been thrown out of their church and/or those thrown out on the street by their parents or those who have to read on the Internet anti-Gay comments made by people who have Gay children, Gay spouses, Gay relatives, Gay friends, etc., and claim they love them yet hurt them with telling them they are ‘less than’. We will never know the percentage of Gay people in your town, city, State, country, family, friends but know that there are millions of us here for you!