The author is right, the LGBT put a lot of effort into overturning "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" and legalizing same-sex marriage, but only a small number of LGBT are in the military or are married. ENDA and other civil rights laws protect the whole community and right now those are state-by-state protections not a federal law. Best estimates are that LGBT are 4% of of the population, so kudos to you and others straight-allies who support the LGBT community.
Pride is in June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in NYC in June 1969. Stonewall was an unlicensed bar owned and run by the mafia that catered to LGBT, the mob used it to gather blackmail material on LGBT patrons.
The Stonewall Inn, it must be said, did have its fair share of Mafia connections and questionable drinks policies. However, on the night of 27th, those breaches were eclipsed by the dramatic turn in events. Instead of complying with the police, drinkers in the bar started to resist.
Shouts of “Gay Power” began to erupt in the street outside. Customers started throwing coins, bottles and other missiles at the police. The lesbians and drag queens defied the intimidation, choosing to instead linger in the doorway, whipping up the crowd. Fires were started. According to Craig Rodwell, quoted in an article by Lionel Wright, “A number of incidents were happening simultaneously. There was no one thing that happened or one person, there was just… a flash of group, of mass anger.” As news of the fracas spread across the city, the group of angry demonstrators swelled, until the police were forced to take refuge in the empty bar.
“I had been in combat situations,” Detective Inspector Pine is quoted by Wright as saying. “But there was never any time that I felt more scared than then.” The crowd, which was made up of all shades of the LGBT community, flocked to Christopher Street to take part in this revolutionary act of defiance. Although the police, backed up the Tactical Patrol Force, tried several times to break up the crowd, they were outwitted by rioters who would simply disperse, regroup and attack from a different direction.
The violence in Greenwich continued for more than three nights, with members of the LGBT using the riots as an opportunity to distribute leaflets and information. And so, it is argued, the Gay Liberation Movement was born. The Gay Liberation Front in America was formed in the wake of the riots to protest against the social oppression of the LGBT community.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/06/28/f ... -movement/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan