Fifty years ago, at a bar on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village, the world started to change.
The Stonewall Riots, a response to police raids on a gathering space for the city's LGBTQ community, launched the modern movement for LGBTQ rights. In honor of the change those riots precipitated, each June we celebrate Pride, reflecting on the significance of the LGBTQ community and the struggles that community continues to face.
At the Forward, we're invested in telling the stories of LGBTQ Jews. That means celebrating the extraordinary work that LGBTQ Jews do in our community, as in a recent profile of the lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who, after helping lead the legal fight for gay marriage, has turned her attention to battling white supremacy. It means challenging the Jewish community to better address the needs of LGBTQ Jews, as in this powerful cry for yeshivas to expand their curriculum to include LGBTQ education, or this feature highlighting the benefit of organizations serving gender-neutral b'nai mitzvot. It means sharing ideas about which LGBTQ Jews feel passionate, whether the possibilities of a network for LGBTQ Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews or the complex political situation of LGBTQ Jews in Israel. And it means running stories about the deeply painful ways in which LGBTQ people still suffer from lack of acceptance in the Jewish community, as in this anonymous contributor's brave open letter to their gay conversion therapist.
We're proud to bring you this work. Look out for more as Pride Month continues, and after. And be sure to attend the June 25th screening of "To A More Perfect Union: U.S v Windsor", a documentary exploring the history of the Gay Rights and Marriage Equality movement in the country, from the perspective of Edie Windsor and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan.
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