6/25/2011 - now. . .

The first gay movie I ever watched was in this little independent theater, steps away from the BART station in downtown Berkeley.  I was 16 that year, taking a summer course in psychology at UC Berkeley and experiencing what college life could be like.

I first saw the purple-tinged poster in the window one morning as I walked to class, and I slowed down for several mornings after as I approached the window so I could get a good look at the three drag queens staring garishly into the camera and the two muscle boys dancing on a bartop right above the word Stonewall.  Knowing nothing more, and needing no more details, I was interested. 

So I cut class one morning and saw the first showing of it in an otherwise empty theater.  Afterwards, I thought of nothing else for weeks.  I found the poster and put it up in my room.  I bought the soundtrack--a mish-mash of Judy Garland, 60's girl-pop, and a handful of contemporary songs.  I read the book on which the movie was based and officially learned about the Stonewall bar, drag queens, and the "official" start of the modern gay rights movement.

And because of what I read, I thought for a long time that the '60s and '70s were the best time to be gay.  Love was free and in the air.  The movement had just begun, and with its humble inception, I imagined a tighter knit community and more opportunities to actually play a critical role in the fight.  I wished that I lived in those times, sat in that bar on the night police raided its patrons, was one in the crowd who refused to budge when society came to stifle our collective voice.

I really thought I could have made a difference, if only I was in the right place at the right time.

Now, outside of voting and reading about all the rampant inequality that still exists for the gay community, I doubt I would have done anything worthwhile on that night in June some 40 years ago, even if I were sitting in the Stonewall bar and they had come to take me away.  I just don't think I have it in me.

But I'm grateful that others have it in them, to tirelessly campaign and selflessly donate money so that our needs (and they are needs, are they not?) can be met.

I used to think that marriage was an ancillary concern, that civil unions satisfied this need, that I, personally, would never want to get married anyway.  Turns out, I was wrong on all counts, and I think it is cosmically fitting that New York became the sixth, but by far the largest, state to legalize gay marriage on the 42nd  anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, almost to the day.

And it turns out I was wrong about something else as well: there has never been a better time to be gay than now.  Or when I was 16, discovering gay cinema for myself.  Or at 14, finally connecting dots and naming all the feelings I had inside.  Or in 1969, when, in spite of all the adversity and conditions that encouraged criminalization of sexual minorities, a select few found their voices and stamped it all over our history.

There has never been a better time to be gay than "now," all the nows that came before and all the ones to come.