ABOUT MATT
I was born in the seaside town of Santa Monica and raised in the middle-class suburban city of Glendale, just northeast of Los Angeles. A very rare neurological condition resulting from AIDS forced me to change course at the age of 40. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, “there are no second acts in American lives,” and yet, this is mine. I refuse to eat in any restaurant with pictures of food on the menus, detest pickles and candy corn, enjoy working in my garden, and insist on proper use of the Oxford comma.
The ongoing struggle which has consumed and defined my adult life for gay rights, or “gay liberation” as it was originally called after that June resistance at The Stonewall, began in earnest 50 years ago on this day when the drags and the fairies and the dykes and the rent boys and the rough trade and the ones with no place else to go stepped out of the shadows of a dingy bar and claimed their humanity with pride.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY
The Stonewall Riots
June 28th, 1969
