The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 82. Louis Stimac "We would never let it happen again"

On the birth of the

Gay Liberation Movement

We moved in a short span of time from a sense that something was wrong with us – to the realization something was radically wrong with society. In one quick and bright flash, we experienced a revelation: we had been mistreated; we were among the oppressed. We had been a silenced majority of invisible men and invisible women. We were ‘unspeakable’ and unknown for so long, that generations of us had found comfort in our own abuse.

No more.

As we changed our minds, we changed our world. We moved from various forms of self-negation and self-destruction to newfound outrage and outward action. We moved from hiding our affectionate natures – to affirming publicly the best parts of our being.

We experienced an epic shift in our sense of self. We experienced ourselves as instigators of a Movement for social change. We experienced ourselves as history makers. We experienced ourselves as revolutionaries. Some said, 'I'm comfortable in my closet; I embrace my fear, my shame; leave me alone.' And still we marched forward.

From same-sex love being a personal and devastating fate, a private secret shame, a prison sentence from which there was no parole, a curse of endless sorrow and despair, we moved with often dizzying speed towards sweeping, intoxicating feelings of self-acceptance, love, and liberation.

The heterosexual dictatorship tried to keep us out of sight and out of mind. But now, the people of the shadows were in the light, and there was no going back to what once was. That time was over. And we would never let it happen again.

—Louis Stimac,

1978

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