Day Fifteen

Stonewall Declaration

On the occasion of the third anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, this declaration went forth (adapted):

For as many years as gay and lesbian people in this country or any part of the world
Remain the captives and victims of hate-filled societies
Let a day of each year hold an hour or a day of commemoration for the thousands who, in the missing pages of our history,
Died alone in fire,
Lived alone in terror,
Wept alone in horror,
Waited alone for each other,
Cried alone for validation:
Whether gay men and lesbians died in the inquisition, in Nazi concentration camps, in prisons and mental hospitals across this country, in a fire-swept gay bar, tortured and abandoned, or as victims of our own isolation,
No one of us alone or together has enough tears to bring back to life the thousands of our sisters and brothers whose deaths have been denied by history and even by their own families.
All of our lives have already been numbered or distorted by a society that is too narrow for our love.
We must widen this world, by whatever means we know,
In the name of those dead, and for the sake of those living.
Let this day and one day each year
Remind us in anger
Remind us in love
That we have years to go
Before we sleep ...
In freedom.