In a now locked thread, critical of DUers, critical President Obama ...

[OmahaBlueDog]

15. The initial response was spontaneous, but it was what happened afterward that made the event importa

One could make the comparison to Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts. Parks refused to give up her seat, and was subsequently arrested. This was not a first, and the story could have simply ended there. However, it was the NAACP, the boycott, and court action subsequent to her arrest that brought about change.

Stonewall was, as you correctly point out, the response to a police action. But that police action finally leads gay Americans to organize in cities throughout America. To make a long story short, without Stonewall, one never gets to San Francisco and Harvey Milk; one never gets to marriage equality. The organizing that began in Greenwich Village after Stonewall gets LGBT Americans to where they are now, much as Rosa Parks led to the NAACP organizing to destroy the last vestiges of "Separate but Equal."

That's as well as I can do without coffee.

-- Otherwise, I like the post.