White Night; The Elephant Walk
May 21-22, 1979 I missed Stonewall, but on White Night, I got slugged by a fat Irish cop in front of the Elephant Walk. A decade earlier, my response to Stonewall was to organize a stuffy seminar on the Church and Gay Rights at Woodstock College. My response to White Night was to become a radical. The San Francisco community’s response to White Night was far more ferocious than Stonewall. Our sense of outrage ran deep. In just a decade, we really had thrown off centuries of old stereotypes. Momentous change had happened in the community. For us, being gay was simply a fact of life. Stubborn segments of the general society were lagging behind, and they were about to feel the fury of the men and women they intended to keep in their place. We had won a place at the table, fair and square. It had been taken away violently, and the consequences of assassinating our leader was going to be a blink and a nod. Never again and certainly not in San Francisco. The verdict was announced ...