While the Stonewall uprising and subsequent riots on the early morning of June 28, 1969, are generally considered the birth of the modern gay liberation movement in the US, there had been a number of demonstrations and acts of civil resistance by LGBT+ people across America since the beginning of the 1950’s. To understand the origins of the Stonewall Inn uprising, we need to set it against a wider backdrop of changing social and political movements in post-war America.
I first met Bruce and his husband, John Sheridan, in Cork last June at a meeting called by Cork activists to respond to Ireland’s HIV crisis. Bruce and John were members of an ACT UP chapter in New York in the late ‘80s and some of the founders of ACT UP Cork in July of 2018.