August 16, 2010.
Dear Tracy Baim:
I must once again register my complaint about people and publications giving false information about the history of the movement to gain equal/civil rights for homosexual Americans.
This is regarding the article by Richard Knight, Jr., in his “Knight at the Movies” review of Stonewall Uprising published on August 4, 2010.
No excuse/reason will not allow the words: “The Stonewall riots, the beginning of the gay rights movement in this country…” This is not just poor semantics. This is faking history — the sort of lie Fox News and bigots do.
It is not “similar to other singular moments in history in that many of the details of what exactly happened — when and how it happened, as well as who was involved — have become buried within the momentousness of the incident itself.”
Nonsense.
The history of the total movement is well documented since its start in 1950, and in Windy City Times, for instance. There have been many significant instances in this movement’s history, and it is not a proven fact that this one incident is more important in the struggle than many other incidents.
Who makes such decisions? Are court cases not important / the educational work much earlier, such as Frank Kameny’s efforts and the picketing of historic places, such as in Philadelphia? Is something more important because lazy media people report it more than other incidents?
What type of “overview” of the 1950s and ’60s ignores all the work done by men and women since 1950? And to quote Eric Marcus again, after he has already apologized for being misquoted is lazy journalism.
It is pleasant to hear views of new films and fiction, but it is not acceptable in an LGBT publication to repeat lies and false history in a documentary that claims to be presenting the truth that others have ignored.
