Before Stonewall
Starring: Rita Mae Brown
Synopsis: Tony Kushner's classic play of gay life and AIDS was adapted into this HBO miniseries.
The Stonewall in the title refers to the Greenwich Village bar raided by the police on June 27, 1969. The homosexual patrons resisted. A riot broke out. The incident is sometimes acclaimed as the birth of the homosexual rights movement. Nonetheless, as the documentary makes abundantly clear, social change began long before that.
Women joined the labor force in large numbers in World War II, which released them from old ways of life. Male homosexuals, meanwhile, found common cause in the military. After the war, homosexual communities were formed as part of the population shift to the cities.
