Seattle gay pride week
As consciousness around Gay and Lesbian civil rights exploded, groups targeted numerous political objectives, focused on various special interests, and began to uncover for the first time the diversity of communities within the community as a whole.Īlthough activism may have come out of the University District area, services during the 1970s were directed toward queers living and socializing in Pioneer Square, the University District, and later Capitol Hill.
Other organizations to start and flourish in the 1970s include the Gay Women’s Alliance the Feminist Karate Union the Gay Women’s Resource Center (now the Lesbian Resource Center) Seattle Gay Alliance Union of Sexual Minorities Stonewall Recovery Center Lesbian Mother’s National Defense Fund the Metropolitan Community Church the Seattle Counseling Center for Sexual Minorities Parents, Families, Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Seattle Municipal Elections Committee. Working with Seattle Gay Alliance and the Gay Student Organization, Gay Liberation Front opened the first Gay Community Center in Seattle on September 15, 1971, in Pioneer Square ( The Daily, 1971 cited in Mesec). In the early 1970s, UW students also organized the Gay Student Association and the more radical Gay Liberation Front. In 1969, Dorian House began to provide counseling services to gay and lesbian students and non-students on Capitol Hill, and was operated by a University of Washington counselor and staffed by UW students. Within one year, there were at least 300 similar groups across the nation, including the first politically active gay and lesbian groups in Seattle.Īpart from the pioneering Dorian Society (founded in Seattle in 1967), the first Seattleites to organize politically as gays and lesbians were connected to the University of Washington. Within a few months, Gay Liberation Front organizations sprang up in New York, Los Angeles, around the Bay Area. According to Rey Sylvia Lee Rivera, "everything just clicked" that night (Marcus). Even those who were there don't know why. The rebellion was not organized, and there were no particular leaders. The Stonewall Rebellion of late June 1969, in which New York City patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street spontaneously rioted against routine police harassment, is often thought of as the first act of collective queer resistance, and the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement.