Seymour Pine, Officer Who Led Raid on Stonewall Inn, Dies at 91

Seymour Pine, the NYPD officer who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn, has died at 91 at an assisted living center in New Jersey, the NYT reports:

"Inspector Pine, who later apologized for his role in the raid, was commander of the New York Police Department’s vice squad for Lower Manhattan when he led eight officers into the Stonewall Inn, an illegal club frequented by cross-dressers, just after midnight on June 28, 1969....In 2004, Inspector Pine spoke during a discussion of the Stonewall uprising at the New-York Historical Society. At the time of the raid, he said, the police 'certainly were prejudiced' against gays, 'but had no idea about what gay people were about.' The department regularly raided gay clubs for two reasons, he said. First, he insisted, many clubs were controlled by organized crime; second, arresting gay people was a way for officers to improve their arrest numbers. 'They were easy arrests,' he said. 'They never gave you any trouble' — at least until that night. When someone in the audience said Inspector Pine should apologize for the raid, he did."

Said David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution: "There’s been a stereotype that Seymour Pine was a homophobe. He had some of the typical hang-ups and preconceived ideas of the time, but I think he was strictly following orders, not personal prejudice against gay people."

Pine was interviewed for this year's film Stonewall Uprising. Watch the trailer (I believe that's Pine in the NYPD cap), AFTER THE JUMP...

After screening the excellent film earlier this year, I'd have to agree with Carter's quote above.

Watch: Dallas Marchers Mark Stonewall Anniversary

Activists demanding equality marked the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion with a march through downtown Dallas last night.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Watch: 'Stonewall Uprising' Trailer

I had the chance to see 'Stonewall Uprising' and would recommend it to all. It opened on Wednesday in Manhattan, and opens in several more markets including L.A., Boston, and Portland this weekend.

The film features interviews with several Stonewall participants, including an officer who was there the night the bar was raided. It combines real footage with reenactments, though often it's hard to tell what's archival and what's not. The effect, for me at least, was to get a much stronger visual and tangible sense of what it must have been like to have experienced that night.

The NYT writes: "It is a sad indication of the marginalization of homosexuality in the late 1960s that media coverage of the Stonewall riots was mostly after the fact. And even then it was cursory and often condescending. Because so little photographic documentation exists of the unrest, the film relies mostly on eyewitnesses, including Seymour Pine, the now-retired police officer who led the initial raid of six officers and who describes it as 'a real war.' The details of the raid are reconstructed by several who were present, including Howard Smith and Lucian Truscott IV, journalists for The Village Voice whose offices were nearby. The film focuses on the first night of the unrest."

Watch the trailer, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Fran Drescher, Jupiter, Haley Barbour, Portland, Stonewall

NY Attorney General candidates: Would you file suit against DOMA?

The Bilerico Project examines the money behind GetEQUAL.

A mystery space object (likely asteroid) struck Jupiter.

Bad Romance.

The Illegal Wedding Fair is happening this weekend in NYC.

David Mixner loved Stonewall Uprising: "As I watched the film, my stomach churned recalling my own experiences as a closeted gay man in the 1950's and 1960's." Trailer here.

Fran Drescher's ex-husband is gay.

Gary Coleman's wife comes off as a selfish, negligent bitch.

St. Petersburg, Russia Gay Pride organizers arrested at demonstration: "his public protest, organised on the last day of each month by the political opposition and several human rights groups, was not authorised by the authorities. The French news agency Agence France Presse reported that 300 participants in the St. Petersburg rally. Organisers said that 100 people were arrested during the march. St. Petersburg Gay Pride organisers Maria Efremenkova and Alexader Sheremetyev were among the people detained in St Petersburg. 'They were violent and threw us on the ground,' said Ms Efremenkova."

Enrique Iglesias teams up with Jersey Shore.

Johnny Weir is getting involved in the AIDS/Lifecycle benefit through one of his fans, named Rider X.

Fantastic Man features plus-size men in sponsored content.

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour praises BP, mocks news coverage of oil spill: "But we haven’t had, really, any impact. I mean, we haven’t had enough oil hit Mississippi’s beaches to fill up a milk jug."

Gay man, lesbian chosen for Pentagon panels.

Robyn and Kelis announce summer tour dates.

Portland center for gay youths reaches out to African-Americans in location move: "At our old location we saw primarily fairly affluent, white young people; our number for youth of color was really low, and we knew we were not meeting a community need. We discovered that when we serve youth in their neighborhood, they feel more safe and welcomed. It was the perfect choice to move to MLK."

Russell Brand flashes his headlights.

Concept art for Chris Evans as Captain America.

West Valley, Utah passes LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance.

Photos - Gerard Butler gets in uniform for the Iraq war version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus: "Ralph Fiennes is starring in and directing the movie, which is about a banished hero of Rome who allies with a sworn enemy to take his revenge on the city."

The Good Men Project: a new online magazine for all men.

Austinites split over Gay Pride: "This week, two Austin groups — Austin Gay and Lesbian Pride Foundation and Queer Bomb — will salute the historic riots in distinct ways."

The NYT adopts Nate Silver and his site Five Thirty Eight.com.

Fightback NY PAC plays with the anti-gay rhetoric of NY state senator Ruben Diaz, Sr.

Iowa homophobe Chuck Hurley gathers up more than 800 anti-gay pastors in his latest attempt to kill the state's marriage equality law: "During this morning’’s news conference Hurley referred to the 800-plus ministers who signed his group’s petition as 'real' pastors. 'We are at a crisis moment in this state and we will either stand up for good, Godly, family and marriage or we will go the way of other civilizations that have said, ‘Oh well,’' Hurley said. 'We are here on behalf of 834 pastors who are not willing to say, ‘Oh well,’ and we applaud them for that.'"

Watch: 'Stonewall Uprising' Trailer

Stonewall Uprising is a new documentary by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner that chronicles three days of riots in New York's Greenwich Village  in June 1969 widely recognized as the birth of the modern gay rights movement. "This was the Rosa Parks moment," as one participant puts it. The film is narrated by Stonewall patrons and features what looks like some fascinating archival footage.

Watch the trailer, AFTER THE JUMP...

Info on playdates is here, along with more background.

Edmund White writes of the Crisco-Slathered Gay 70's in City Boy

City Boy, Edmund White's new memoir of life in New York around the time of Stonewall gets a review in the NYT.

Writes White: "I was a living contradiction. I was still a self-hating gay man going to a straight psychotherapist with the intention of getting cured and getting married. There was no ‘gay pride’ back then — there was only gay fear and gay isolation and gay distrust and gay self-hatred."

From Dwight Garner's review:

Orgies; leather bars; tabs of LSD; sex on the balconies of gay dance halls, in the abandoned piers along the Hudson River and in the dunes on Fire Island; group sex with American Indians and Norwegian flight attendants from Minnesota — it’s all here in exacting and eye-popping detail. He captures the “odor of brew, harness, sweat and Crisco” that began to fill gay men’s nostrils in the mid-’70s.

Mr. White was a kind of sexual werewolf. As midnight approached, he says, “my hands began to sprout hair, and my teeth to sharpen.” He sleeps with so many well-known writers and artists that this crackling if lightweight memoir can read less like a prelude to “And the Band Played On,” Randy Shilts’s stately book about the early days of AIDS, than an all-boy update of “I’m With the Band,” Pamela Des Barres‘s trippy and picaresque rock groupie memoir.

He describes a quickie with the travel writer Bruce Chatwin here; a three-way with the poet John Ashbery there. The notches Mr. White claims on his bedpost are vast and crisscrossing, and he likes to run his fingers along them in wistful horndog memory.

Sounds like a page-turner.

Also of note: Marriage equality supporter and devoted fan John Irving supplies the book's cover blurb: "A wise and humane treatise on the delicate differences between love and friendship."

City Boy [amazon]