I think it’s a remarkable moment in history that is attached to my family, and I carry that with pride. I know that my mother would’ve said that everybody at Stonewall did the right thing: they stood up for themselves. The gay community had lost their legend and their icon, but I had just lost a parent, so I didn’t know about that for many years.”
— Entertainer Lorna Luft discussing her mother Judy Garland‘s mythic connection to her legion of gay fans and the Stonewall riots which took place just after her death in 1969, in an interview with Huffington Post
Jayson
Judy! Judy! Judy!
Elloreigh
Nice as it is to believe this is probably true, I always find it bizarre when people claim to know what their dead relatives would have approved or disapproved. The family of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives us the perfect example, where different factions have made opposing claims as to what his alleged opinion would be on gay issues. It’s very easy to project one’s own opinion onto someone who is dead and can’t contradict it.
ParkerSparx
She had a huge gay following and the fact that two of her husbands were gay/bi.
Her father is said to have been gay.
In Nigel Finch’s Stonewall, the bar’s drag mother, Bostonia is mourning her death and Garland is playing on the jukebox as the bar is raided. Garland died less than a week before Stonewall. She frequented gay bars with her gay friends. You had to sign in to get into the bar. One of the most used names was Judy Garland.
jwrappaport
Baby Gumm, you’re a peach.
CaptainFabulous
There will never be another one like her. Back then “pop stars” had real talent, and that talent was valued.
davegun2
And here is my story around all this. I met Judy in 1968:
http://www.davelara.com/davegun2/I_Killed_Judy_Garland.html
hyhybt
@Elloreigh: Surely that depends on how much evidence there is, especially if the person addressed the issue themselves?
hyhybt
(Or, at least, near enough.)
Sisko24
@Elloreigh:You are quite correct in that Dr. King was killed in 1968 before the Stonewall Riot and so couldn’t have commented on nor neither approved nor disapproved of ‘gay liberation’ as it came to be called. But he knew Bayard Rustin, a top aide, was gay and he kept him on his staff despite that fact. Dr. King’s religiously based ideology was welcoming, not exclusionary so it seems more likely to many of us that he would have supported the inclusion of gays/lesbians into all facets of our sign