The History of Pride, Part IV: The Aftermath of Stonewall

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.

Welcome back, gays! This week we’re wrapping up our month long exploration of the months leading up to the Stonewall Uprising. If you haven’t already, make sure you read parts I, II, and III, before continuing with this week's post. Today, we’ll be wrapping up all our loose ends and looking at the weeks following Stonewall and the groups that were formed.

Reporting On Stonewall

In the last three weeks we learned about the creation of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, a militant gay group out of San Francisco that protested the unfair firing of Gale Whittington as well as the murders of several gay men by police officers. We learned that very likely people in New York were hearing about this group’s efforts and also witnessing their own string of police violence. And we saw in the astrology a connection between the ascendant of the chart for Stonewall and the degree of the Venus Cazimi which took place in April at the creation of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom.

While this connection is not often remembered, Leo Laurence, founder of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom did actually report on the Stonewall Uprising in the Berkeley Barb. In the July 4, 1969 issue, Laurence reported on the events that took place and crucially, quoted J Marks, an eyewitness, who said “The gay community in New York City has been inspired by your homosexual liberation stories in the BARB.” Years later, in his memoir, Gale Whittington would report that “several” people in attendance at Stonewall contacted the Committee for Homosexual Freedom to let them know they were inspired. He wrote, “They said if we could do it here, they could stand up for their rights there.” In New York, a number of groups sprung up after Stonewall, including the Gay Liberation Front.In San Francisco, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom became the SF chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, further linking these stories together.

Cazimi Reflections

Before Stonewall there were a number of uprisings, and I don’t mean to place undue importance on the Committee for Homosexual Freedom above other groups/uprisings but the astrological connection between CHF and Stonewall is meaningful. With CHF being born at the moment of the Venus Cazimi, their work was the seed that was planted. CHF wasn’t wholly successful in its goals. They didn’t get Whittington’s job back and they didn’t stop the homophobic police violence. They didn’t have perfect politics. They did, however, model solidarity work with the Black Panthers, with the anti-war movement, and with Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union. They modeled political funerals, which HIV/AIDS activists would make use of in the late 80s and early 90s. And I think this is reflective of the moment of astrology that they were born into.

The moment of the cazimi is not where we see the fruits of our labor. It is where something begins. On either side of the cazimi, a planet is combust, overheated by its proximity to the Sun. With Venus being in Aries, the sign of it’s detriment, a fire sign, which is already too hot for Venus’s liking, the combustion would have significantly harmed Venus. Making it much less likely for Venus to immediately succeed. But what happens when something gets too hot? It can start a fire. So the role of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom in the story of the history of pride was not be the big, game changing moment. Rather, it was to be the spark, to start the fire. Knowing this, we can see their work as a success in terms of inspiring future movements and modeling particular types of action.

By the time of Stonewall, Venus had finished it’s retrograde and was solidly a morning star. It had past its point of maximum brightness (May 11, 1969) and had also reached the point of Greatest Elongation in just the week prior (June 17, 1969). Morning star Venus leans more independent and ready to fight than evening star Venus, running up ahead of the sun as it rises in the east each morning. So even though Venus was in its earthy domicile of Taurus, this was a Venus that had spent the last several months traversing through the too hot, too fast environment of Aries, plumbed the depths of the underworld in its retrograde, and made several harsh conjunctions with Saturn along the way. Now more resourced in the domicile of Taurus, but with the fighting edge of being a morning star, this Venus was ready to fight for what she believed in, having been put through hell to get there.

Mars, as the ruler of the cazimi, and the ascendant of the Stonewall chart was in Sagittarius, the mutable fire sign. Mars fights, and this Mars was ready to take the spark that the CHF lit and spread it far and wide.

After Stonewall, a number of groups formed. The first of these was the Gay Liberation Front who were more militant than their homophile predecessors, the Mattachine Society of New York. Rather than the respectability and assimilationist politics of Mattachine and other homophile groups, GLF was interested in creating a new society. GLF’s attitude was to demand, not politely ask for their rights. From the Gay Liberation Front, a series of groups splintered off because of differences in politics including the Gay Activists Alliance, Radicalesbians, Third World Gay Revolution, and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. This too feels reflective of Mars in Sagittarius, the mutable fire spreading, spawning new radical groups because of the divisions and conflict caused by ideological differences. Next month we’ll return to these groups and do a deep dive into the founding of the Gay Liberation Front and the burgeoning gay liberation movement.