Fifty years ago this month, the struggle for gay rights in the U.S. changed course forever, thanks to a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patrons who fought back when police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City, setting off two days of protests and galvanizing LGBTQ+ activism across the country.
Fifty years ago this month, the struggle for gay rights in the U.S. changed course forever, thanks to a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patrons at a bar in New York City. In the early morning of June 28, 1969, – before the legalization of same-sex marriage, before legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender identity, and before the first gay pride parade – police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a popular gathering place for the neighborhood’s most marginalized members of LGBTQ+ community. Tired of the then-routine raids on gay gathering places, Stonewall patrons fought back against police, setting off two days of protests and the galvanizing of LGBTQ+ activism across the country.
FURTHER READING: Pride endures 50 years after Stonewall
To celebrate the seminal moment, organizations nationwide are paying tribute to the Stonewall uprising. This includes Portland’s very own Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, the United States’ fourth-oldest such musical organization, which will present the show “Stonewall Riot! Soundtrack to a Revolution” on Saturday, June 22, at Keller Auditorium. Richard Jung, executive director of Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, spoke to Street Roots about the special show, what audiences can expect and the chorus’s place in the fight for gay liberation.
Ann-Derrick Gaillot: Could you speak a little bit to the place gay choruses have had in the struggle for gay liberation and gay rights?
Richard Jung: People are going to fuss over who was the real first gay chorus, but we use the Harvey Milk performance by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus the night Harvey Milk was assassinated (in 1978) as the touchstone for the first gay men’s chorus to emerge. Portland is the fourth-oldest gay men’s chorus in the country. Next year will be our 40th season.
In the ’80s, we were touched significantly by AIDS. Our chorus, like many other gay men’s choruses, lost significant numbers of its singers during that era. We had to rebuild. In the ’90s, our chorus would travel, singing and performing in rural communities all over Oregon and parts of Washington during the height of the initiatives to take away gay rights. We went into communities and met with resistance, with protesters. They were spit on. They were screamed at. But through that all, the power of music changed hearts and minds. And that has always been at the core of what we do. One of the (experiences) that I am most touched by was the first time we went to Pendleton, there were two or three businesses that would put our signs up. No one hardly came at all. And three years later when we came back, signs were in every business. Our concert was sold out, and it’s been that way ever since. I think the trajectory of choral music in the gay community has had a significant impact in building understanding.
There’s a power that music brings because music, by and large, is non-threatening. Music is fun, and people enjoy it. Coming to a Gay Men’s concert or coming to a Portland Lesbian Choir concert, it’s just an opportunity to engage with people who do something they love, which is perform and sing. I think there’s nothing threatening in that. The educational component is that it reminds people – and I think this is at the heart of the gay choral movement – that we’re just people. That, as you’re sitting in the audience looking at these people singing, most of us have successful, wonderful lives. We have partners. We have homes. We have dogs and cats. We’re just like everyone else. And that’s been the normative of the gay choral movement is that it’s reminded people that we’re just people and that we have the same aspirations as everyone else. And that’s really important.
Last year, we went to China and we became the first Western gay chorus to perform in China. And one of the things that was really important about that is the gay movement in China is just emerging. It’s only 10 years old. And the impact of our singing there was that it reminded these young gay activists in China what their community can look like in 30 and 40 years. One person put it really quite nicely: They said, I watched your chorus and I realized that it’s filled with sages, elders who have been through it all, and realized that in 20 or 30 years, that’s going to be me. That made me extremely happy. So there is a significant upside to the gay choral movement because it has changed communities across the country. Wherever there’s a gay chorus, you have a more accepting and a more tolerant community. I mean, I come from Boise, Idaho, and we have a gay chorus. And it helps. It just makes a difference.
Gaillot: You talked about increasing acceptance of the chorus over the years. Still, I read recently that the chorus was met with protesters at one performance in Grants Pass.
Jung: Grants Pass was much like Pendleton. We performed there two years ago, and it was interesting because it’s the first time we have ever been invited to that community. The local Methodist church invited us to be guest artists, and they had invited a local youth organization to be the beneficiary of concert proceeds. That group decided after a month of being listed as the beneficiary that they didn’t want to take money from a gay organization and backed out. And so (the church) chose another organization, a fabulous youth program. We performed to a sold-out audience and raised over $3,000 for this youth organization in Josephine County.
About a week later, the organization who refused our money went to the city and asked for $20,000 because they were having a financial emergency, and if they didn’t get money, they would have to close. Someone in the audience noted to the City Council that this group had turned down our money, and they wondered why they would have done something like that. It resulted in a huge community backlash against the organization, and it created an international press event. There were stories about that money and that organization that went across the U.S. and Europe. The organization was forced to do a press conference and apologize both to the church, to their community and to us.
When we decided that we wanted to go back to Grants Pass this year, one of the things that I asked the church is if they would be willing to invite that group to be the beneficiary this time. And so they reached out to them, and they accepted, and they were the beneficiary of the funds from our concert. Again, a sold-out concert. So yes, there were three guys that stood outside with signs reading, “You repent,” “You gays are going to hell,” but I think the real change of heart was that organization who acknowledged their past mistakes and showed up with about 12 of their youth from their program to watch us perform and be a part of our evening.
We’re always going to get protesters on some level. We haven’t had that kind of visual protests at a Portland Gay Men’s Chorus event in years, so I think it took us a little bit by surprise. But the audience and our chorus members handled it very well and didn’t let those three men in Grants Pass with nothing to do on a Saturday night impact the joy and the goodwill that event made in that community.
Gaillot: How did “Stonewall Riot! Soundtrack to a Revolution” come to be?
Jung: It’s not very often you get the opportunity to celebrate an iconic event like the 50th anniversary of anything. So knowing that our Pride concert was going to fall within five days of Stonewall from 1969, it just seemed like the logical step to take. It’s interesting because the GALA Choruses (Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) – they’re all over the country, there’s about 180 of them – almost all of them are doing something at Pride that highlights Stonewall. It’s such a huge iconic moment in the community. It makes a lot of sense for us to do something honoring and recognizing one of the most important moments in LGBTQ organizing.
Gaillot: What can audiences expect from the show?
Jung: The show is going to feature the music of 1969, everything from Aquarius “Let the Sunshine In” to “Good Morning Starshine” and “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” All those iconic songs that I remember growing up with. I remember them being important parts of my summer and sitting, listening to them on the transistor radio underneath my pillowcase so my parents wouldn’t hear me late at night. We’re using the music of the time and the era to anchor the show.
The show is going to be a mixture of music and video and visual messaging. It will include things like videos representing the first Pride. There’ll be iconic moments in the gay movement as we go through the music. And it will also feature, in some ways, Portland Gay Men’s Chorus and where it fits into that broad perspective of the LGBT movement. It’s kind of a visualization of the emergence of the gay community, the gay choral community and, in particular, the journey that the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus has made over its 40-year trajectory as a historical organization.
We are also bringing in partner organizations. We will be featuring Bridging Voices, the LGBTQ youth chorus. We’ll be having the Portland Lesbian Choir, which has been an ally of ours for over 32 years. And then Confluence, the LGBT chorus from the Willamette Valley. They’re all guest artists, along with Darcelle – as Guinness loves to call Darcelle, “the world’s oldest performing drag queen” – and Susanna Morris, who’s been one of our staunchest performers and allies for many years. It’s going to be a rather wild, exciting show that covers just about every gamut of emotion and puts everything out there on the floor.
Gaillot: What has it been like for members to be rehearsing the show and putting it together?
Jung: Our artistic director, Bob Mensel, has been really strategic in using every opportunity to ground the chorus in the messaging of music. Right after intermission, we will be doing kind of a tableau that re-creates part of the 1969 riot at Stonewall. It’s a visual re-creation using the song “We Shall Overcome” as a part of that re-creation. Bob talked a lot about the importance of the message of “We Shall Overcome” and how it resonated. It grounds that concert for our singers because Bob is really good at getting to the heart of how the music is at the core of the messaging of the show. He’s just done a masterful job of articulating that vision to the chorus, so I think they’re getting wrapped up and excited about the potential for this show.
The core of it is always going to be our music and the ability of music to resonate with people, to create opportunities for them to engage and learn the message from the music.
Gaillot: Why is it so important to mark the 50th anniversary of Stonewall with a bang?
Jung: There are a couple of reasons. In every social justice movement in any community, there is a seminal moment when people say they’ve had enough and they stand up and say no more. For the gay community, Stonewall was that event. It was a seminal moment in time when a group of outcasts in society, drag queens, people of color, the fringe by the estimation of the society that ran New York City, said we’ve had enough of being bullied and targeted and ostracized. We are not going to put up with this anymore. And they took to the streets, made a difference and changed the trajectory of a conversation about where LGBT people fit within the social fabric of America.
That is why this concert is important. I think in some ways, people have started to forget that lesson, especially in light of what we are experiencing now with the fundamental attempt to dismantle a broad perspective of civil rights, well-earned rights, by our community.
What is happening with the attempt to kick trans people out of the (military) service. Today I was reading that in Tennessee, a district attorney said he does not feel that spousal abuse by same-sex marriages should be treated the same as spousal abuse by heterosexual marriages because gay marriages are not valid in God’s eyes. That is the conversation that’s happening. And so this show is a reminder that what happened in 1969 was important, but it reinforces that we’re going to have to continue to do that work now because it’s more important than ever that we do not unravel the kind of the network of safety that we’ve been able to build across the country for our community.
Gaillot: Is this gonna be a tearjerker? Or at least partially a tearjerker?
Jung: It’s going to be an exhilarating concert on a lot of levels. I think the music is going to be uplifting and rewarding. I think the visuals are going to be mesmerizing. It’s meant to be evocative, but it’s also lighthearted and fun. There will be some really profoundly sad moments. This is the final concert of Bob Mensel. After 26 years, he will be putting his baton down for the last time on the 22nd of June. So that’s going to be sad for many people in the chorus and in the audience. So there will be some moments of sadness, but I want people to come because it’s going to be a fun celebration of who this community is, that honors the legacy of 50 years of LGBT progress and a reminder that there’s still a lot of work to do.
Portland Gay Men’s Chorus
What: “Stonewall Riot! Soundtrack to a Revolution," featuring pop hits of 1969
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, June 22
Where: Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., Portland
Tickets: pdxgmc.secure.force.com/ticket