“Everything in my life as a gay man I owe to Craig,” McMaster said. They met for coffee the next week, and Henderson became a father figure to McMaster, teaching him about gay life and introducing him to other gay people. The phone line rotated between the houses of different members, and the man who picked up, Craig Henderson, listened to McMaster’s desperation. Not knowing what to do, he one day looked up “gay” in the phone book and found the Gay Coalition of Denver. Things got so bad that he began contemplating suicide. He tried everything from psychoanalysis to religion to change himself, with no success. McMaster was struggling with the idea of being a gay man because of the negative connotations associated with it at the time. “I remember reading about it and in an odd way wishing I had been there, and at the same time trying to think, that’s not about me,” said McMaster, 71. When Don McMaster read about Stonewall in the The Denver Post, he was in the closet. “I always say that I didn’t leave the church,” said McMaster. He was raised Catholic and had studied to be in the priesthood.
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Before accepting his sexuality and coming out, McMaster struggled with this part of himself. McMaster came out as a gay man in the early ’70s. McMaster is a member of the Denver Gay Man’s Chorus, which is housed in the church.
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Kelsey Brunner, The Denver PostDon McMaster poses for a portrait at Christ Church United Methodist in Denver on Tuesday, June 11, 2019. “We need to come together and keep going,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I’d see it in my life,” she said.īut Blair cautioned the work is far from done. Witnessing the rise of the LGBTQ rights movement has been thrilling, she said. “None of us knew anything about anybody else,” Blair said. But news about Stonewall didn’t reach her on the West Coast, and she didn’t learn about it until she marched in her first pride parade in 1975. She moved to Los Angeles from Dayton, Ohio, in her 20s and lived a more open life, getting involved with gay activism.
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The consensus at the time was that gay people were mentally ill and sexually predatory, and she believed that she would never be able to live a normal life. She came out at age 13 in 1955, a profoundly difficult time to be gay. Judith Blair, 77, who lives in Boulder, didn’t know about Stonewall until years after it happened. She was one of the plaintiffs who successfully sued in 2014 to end Colorado’s same-sex marriage ban. Stonewall influenced McDaniel-Miccio to dedicate her life to activism. “I just ate it up, because I knew what they were doing was going to help me,” she said.
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She lived in the Bronx at the time, and she read through every newspaper in the city to learn about the event. Kris McDaniel-Miccio, a University of Denver Sturm College of Law professor, was a teenager when Stonewall happened, but she remembers it “like it was yesterday.” “Generations are still being affected by the period of gay liberation,” Duffield said.įor older generations of LGBTQ people, Stonewall was a pivotal moment in their lives, even if they did not immediately realize it at the time. It was a watershed moment for the gay rights movement, said David Duffield, history director for The Center on Colfax, an LGBTQ advocacy organization in Denver. The uprising happened June 28, 1969, when the police arrived and the bar patrons, who were fed up with the discrimination, fought back as police hauled people out of the bar. “Were you around for Stonewall?” Folmar asked.Ĭolorado moves to fund “culturally responsive” health care training. In the early 2000s, Michelle Folmar, a lesbian Denver police officer, traveled to New York with a friend, and while staying at the Chelsea Hotel an older woman invited them into her apartment-style room, where she regaled them with stories about her life as an entertainer and drag artist.įolmar noticed a picture of a young black woman punching a police officer. Martinez expressed that the hatred his Chicano family received when they moved to Colorado from New Mexico in the 1950s, resembles the hatred that he sees in the world today. However, not all of his family accept his sexuality and those that he’s still close with don’t talk about it with him. Martinez came out to his mother at 15 years old and she told him that she had known since he was a child. Martinez has marched in the Denver Pride Parade with his sign every year since 1976. Kelsey Brunner, The Denver PostDonaciano Martinez, 72, stands in his front yard with his homemade sign at his home in Denver, Colorado on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu