Working with Seattle Gay Alliance and the Gay Student Organization, Gay Liberation Front opened the first Gay Community Center in Seattle on September 15, 1971, in Pioneer Square ( The Daily, 1971 cited in Mesec). In the early 1970s, UW students also organized the Gay Student Association and the more radical Gay Liberation Front. In 1969, Dorian House began to provide counseling services to gay and lesbian students and non-students on Capitol Hill, and was operated by a University of Washington counselor and staffed by UW students. Within one year, there were at least 300 similar groups across the nation, including the first politically active gay and lesbian groups in Seattle.Īpart from the pioneering Dorian Society (founded in Seattle in 1967), the first Seattleites to organize politically as gays and lesbians were connected to the University of Washington.
Within a few months, Gay Liberation Front organizations sprang up in New York, Los Angeles, around the Bay Area.
According to Rey Sylvia Lee Rivera, 'everything just clicked' that night (Marcus). Even those who were there don't know why. The rebellion was not organized, and there were no particular leaders. The Stonewall Rebellion of late June 1969, in which New York City patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street spontaneously rioted against routine police harassment, is often thought of as the first act of collective queer resistance, and the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement.
