The History of Pride, Part III: Stonewall and Venus/Mars Retrogrades

For Pride month this year I’m breaking down the history and the astrology of Stonewall. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know that I’ve covered Stonewall before and recently in an episode with Chris Brennan on The Astrology Podcast, I made an argument for Stonewall’s connection to the cycle of Venus Retrograde in Aries. However, since that episode is six hours long and full of tons of information, I wanted to make sure that this important history doesn't get lost. Each week, I’ll release a new blog post on the months leading up to the Stonewall Uprising and the story that unfolded - so be sure to follow along! As the government continues to make life more dangerous for queer and trans people, including by trying to erase our histories from the internet, I hope this series will add to the chorus of voices who are demanding safety and autonomy for all queer and trans people and ensure that this critical history is not lost.

Everybody knows the story of Stonewall, right?

On June 28, 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street in the East Village of New York City. Stonewall was a mafia-run bar with no liquor license and no fire exits but it was also one of the only bars for queer people in New York City that allowed dancing. To stay in business, the mafia regularly had to pay off the police, who would come by to collect their cash payment as “gayola” or a bribe in exchange for illegally serving gay customers. During a raid, the lights would be turned on signaling to patrons the police presence. ID cards would be checked, those wearing clothing that “did not match” their ID would be arrested and others would be allowed to leave. Police raids happened approximately once a month and usually the bar employees would receive a tip off about when a raid was going to happen. But on June 28, employees were not informed and the Stonewall had already been raided earlier that week. At 1:15 AM^[1], four plainclothes police officers, two more in uniform, along with Detective Charles Smythe and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine announced that Stonewall was being raided. Four undercover officers were already inside and had placed the call for back up using Stonewall’s pay telephone.

But on this night things did not go as planned. Patrons refused to produce identification and refused to follow officers into the bathroom to have their genitals inspected.Given this, police decided to take everyone to the police station but they had to wait for enough patrol wagons to arrive. Those who weren’t being arrested were released from the front door but rather than dispersing, they gathered outside the Stonewall to watch. Passersby stopped to see what the commotion was. Someone shouted “Gay power,” people sang “We Shall Overcome,” and the energy was feisty. Author Edmund White, who passed away just this month, remembered that moment, “Everyone's restless, angry, and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something's brewing.”

This restless, high-spirited energy did not take long to erupt. One scuffle broke out when a police officer shoved someone dressed in woman’s clothing and she responded by hitting him with her purse. The officer then hit her with a club. Another scuffle broke out when Stormé DeLarverie^[2] was hit with a baton for complaining that their handcuffs were too tight. Stormé looked at the crowd of bystanders and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?”

This question was the ignition needed to get the fight going. The crowd attempted to overturn police cars and slashed tired. Coins (representing the payout that the cops wanted), beer cans, garbage cans, rocks, and bricks were thrown at police and into the windows of the Stonewall. A parking meter was uprooted and used as a battering ram on the doors of the Stonewall, where several police officers had barricaded themselves inside.Garbage was lit on fire and thrown into the Stonewall, starting a fire inside. When the Tactical Police Force arrived as back up to free the police trapped inside the now burning Stonewall, they were mocked by the crowd who started impromptu kick lines and sang “We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We don't wear underwear/ We show our pubic hair.”

It took until 4 in the morning for the streets to be cleared by violent police sweeps but the energy and sense that something was different remained. Throughout the next day, people came to look at the scene of the Stonewall Uprising. Messages like “Drag power”, "They invaded our rights", "Support gay power" and "Legalize gay bars" appeared in graffiti on the walls of the burned bar. That night, the uprising continued but the energy was much more intense. People from the previous night returned but they were joined by others who had heard the news.The crowd grew much bigger than the previous evening and again fires were started and scuffles with the police occurred. Marsha P Johnson, a Black trans activist, who was on the frontlines of pushback against the police, climbed a lamppost and dropped a heavy bag onto the hood of a police car, breaking the windshield. Again clashes with the police went until about 4am. The next two days were rainy so there were fewer clashes but people were galvanized and rejoined forced on Wednesday night following a homophobic report in the Village Voice describing the participants as the "limp wrist"ed “forces of faggotry”. Although that night didn’t last as long as previous nights, a group of between 500 and 1,000 people fought with the police. One witness said, “The word is out. Christopher Street shall be liberated. The fags have had it with oppression.”

The Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) were formed in the ensuing months, marking a shift in the New York scene and the modern queer liberation movement. It’s worth noting that many of the people present at Stonewall were young, many were not white, many were sex workers, many were homeless, and many were either dressed in drag or were trans. Many of the older, white, definitely-cis gay men were initially embarrassed about Stonewall, worried that the kick lines made homosexuals look “tacky and cheap.” Although Randy Wicker eventually revoked this previous comment, this attitude was representative of the divide between the earlier homophile movement which was aimed at assimilation, and the burgeoning queer liberation movement. I’m drawing out this point here because the debate about who started Stonewall and whether or not trans people were present have long plagued the discussion of Stonewall. Suffice it to say that many of the people at Stonewall were among the most marginalized, existing at multiple intersections of oppression, based on sexuality, gender, race, and class. People like Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Stormé DeLarverie, who because of their race and because of their gender presentation were at the highest risk of police violence, were also the ones who were fighting back against this violence.

The Astrological Story

But why did Stonewall occur when it did, and why did it become known as the birth of the modern queer liberation movement? This is a question I’ve been asking for a long time and have turned to astrology to try to answer.

Looking at the chart for Stonewall, we see the Ascendant is at 18°39’ of Aries, ruled by Mars, retrograde in Sagittarius. When I first looked at this chart I didn’t understand what exactly I was seeing but in my research I found something kind of incredible.

Remember back to Part I of this series? Venus went retrograde in Aries and a photo of Leo Laurence and Gale Whittington hugging lost them both their jobs. The day after the Venus cazimi, Venus entering the heart of the sun, planting a seed for something new, something relational but using Mars’ combative tools, Laurence and Whittington began picketing as the Committee For Homosexual Freedom. Those pickets which brought attention to the unfair work conditions faced by homosexuals, which made connections with the Black Panthers and farm workers, which protested the violent police killings of people perceived to be queer - this was this seed being planted. The Committee for Homosexual Freedom was different because while it was Venusian in its focus on sexuality, there was a strong focus on militancy within the group - Venus using Mars’ tools.

Now where exactly was this cazimi?
At 18°36’ of Aries. Three arc minutes away from the degree of the ascendant of Stonewall.

So as the degree of the cazimi was rising on the eastern horizon on June 28, 1969, the people took the seed which had been planted and ran with it. At the time of the cazimi, we also see Mars, as the ruler of the Sun and Venus at 14° Sagittarius. The night of Stonewall, Mars had retrograded back to 2° Sagittarius but the Moon was co-present with Mars at 13° Sagittarius. Mercury, which also happened to be part of the cazimi in April, had reached 14° Gemini and was opposing the Moon. Check out also the Ascendant for the Cazimi being Cancer, indicating the importance of the Moon in the Cazimi chart.

Over the last two weeks we talked about Venus and Mars Retrograde and here in the Stonewall chart we can see how their stories are playing out. By the time of Stonewall, Venus was no longer retrograde and had even left the sign of Aries but the story of the retrograde had longer lasting repercussions. Venus was solidly in Taurus and was finally past the series of conjunctions to Saturn. While still co-present with Saturn in a night chart, Venus as the benefic of sect, in domicile, separating by 14° degrees was a Venus that was much stronger and more well resourced than the previous months had seen. Saturn being in Venus’s sign there would be an indication of the troubles/blocks caused to Venus but Venus hosting Saturn meant that ultimately Venus won out.

Mars for its part was showing the police violence that occurred during the Spring of 1969. Mars as the ruler of the Venus retrograde, preparing itself to retrograde was a challenging indication for the Venus Retrograde. By the time Mars stationed retrograde on April 27, many queer people were aware of the fatal police violence that had taken the lives of Frank Bartley, Howard Efland, and others in the first few months of 1969. So by the time of Stonewall, people were pissed off and alarmed. With Mars retrograde as the ascendant ruler for the chart of Stonewall, the people were ready to fight back around a shared mission or shared worldview (9th house). Although this mission wasn’t clearly defined just yet (Jupiter, Mars’ ruler, had also stationed retrograde in Virgo, the sign of its detriment), the shared sense of outrage, an attitude of "we won’t take this anymore" was enough to propel the Stonewall Uprisings into existence. And as my brilliant friend and astrologer, Michelle Craft pointed out, Jupiter in it's retrograde had returned back to the degree it was at at the moment of the cazimi.

This is only a small part of the astrology but this connection to the Venus cazimi moment, to the Committee For Homosexual Freedom protests, is not one that I’ve seen before in the astrological community and feels like an important piece of the story linking Stonewall in in particular with the Venus Retrograde in Aries, which has special importance it seems to the queer community.

I’ve talked about the rest of the chart for Stonewall on my previous podcast episode so be sure to check that out if you want more of the story of Stonewall but I hope this series has helped draw out the connections between Stonewall, the Venus Retrograde in Aries, the Mars Retrograde in Sagittarius, and a story that was playing out between the coasts of community organizing and protest.

Next week we’ll wrap up this History of Pride mini-series so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out.

Footnotes:

1. While the time is often listed as 1:20 AM, according to the police log, the Rat, an underground newspaper gives the time as "about 1:15 AM". According to David Carter's Stonewall, "By all evidence the Rat account of the riots is possibly the most precise reporting of the events of Friday night."
2. "Stormé didn't "identify as anything but chose to live her life as a Black man". Stormé also referred to herself as a woman in various interviews. Her long-time friend Lisa Cannistraci has noted in at least one interview that she believes Stormé was non-binary." From https://www.storme-delarverie.com/