From the streets of Philadelphia to its own domain space on the Internet - the global LGBT community has journeyed a long, long way.

April/May 1965 LGBT protests at Dewey's restaurant, Philadelphia, USA.

April 30, 2015

Progress often happens when you are not anticipating it. The LGBT community has long struggled with issues of acceptance - and visibility.

Knowing who - or where - was accepting has long been an important issue.

When you see domain names such as Welcome.LGBT and Village.LGBT you can intuitively grasp precisely which audience these sites are designed for.

Fifty years on: new .LGBT domain names launched in 2015

But rewind the clock and you quickly see that - half a century ago this week, when the modern struggle for LGBT human rights really began - these latest online LGBT initiatives would have been completely unimaginable to the pioneers that set us on the path to acceptance all those years ago.


Fifty years ago, the world was changing.

The sixties counter-culture was growing in visibility - and in voice. LGBT people were right in the middle of these changes all across society.

But LGBT people were routinely hassled, fired, bashed and treated with disrespect.

1965 protests in Washington, DC, USA.

In many places and at various times, things can still feel that way - but progress is definitely vast since then. One recent development would likely be unimaginable to those brave LGBT pioneers of fifty years ago - that the LGBT community would become so visible as to be allocated its own online domain space - a domain name .LGBT - which launched just a few weeks ago.

In the US in 1965, a nascent 'homosexual rights' movement was most definitely underway.

Groups such as Philadelphia's Janus Society and New York's Daughters of Bilitis as well as Mattachine Societies in Washington and New York formed a collective known as ECHO: the East Coast Homophile Organizations.


The streets of Philadelphia

There were a number of protests in 1964 by activists against the oppression of gay people.

Fifty years ago this week, three arrests of 'non-conforming' teenagers - and one of their supporters -  at a restaurant in Philadelphia, kicked off a chain reaction of events which still resonate today. In the restaurant, called Dewey's, back in April 1965, the manager refused to serve three people he thought "looked" gay.
There followed a further protest involving a restaurant sit-in and more than 150 protestors, many of them African-Americans.

That initial Dewey's protest led to four arrests and a follow-up picket line in the first week of May 1965, but it also led to something else: Washington.


DC, Stonewall - and then the world

Stonewall Inn, New York June 1969

Starting May 29, 1965 and all through the US summer, activists staged a series of pickets at the White House.

Small protests against anti-gay discrimination and harassment started breaking out right across America in places like Chicago, San Francisco, New York and in Philadelphia again.

Actions during the rest of the 1960s protested refusal of service for LGBT people in shops and restaurants, the firing of gay people as well as anti-LGBT actions taken by the Church and government.

By the end of that decade, on the night gay icon Judy Garland was buried, many of the patrons at The Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village - a frequently harassed bar popular with gay men, as well as some trans people, drag queens and lesbians - were in no mood to be shut-down, when a group of police raided the bar in the early hours of June 28, 1969.

After an initial series of scuffles a violent riot broke out, followed by another the following evening.

Stonewall Riots begin in New York City. June 1969.

One person attending that night in full drag - Sylvia Rivera - remembered her feelings about what took place:

" 'You've been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now it's our turn!' - It was one of the greatest moments in my life."

That event reverberated across the world like a global echo - the resonance of which can still be heard today - as LGBT human rights continue to be fought for and often achieved.


LGBT rights accelerate

1978 Sydney's first Mardi Gras saw many arrested

Since 1969, there has been an explosion of LGBT awareness and rights in places far and wide.

From the 1978 Sydney Mardi Gras Riots to annual Pride celebrations in places from São Paulo to places where being openly LGBT is still fraught with danger - like St Petersburg - the ongoing expansion of equal human rights for LGBT people is one that continues.

In society and at work, there is a growing recognition that members of the LGBT community are first and foremost people - equally worthy of respect, like all members of society.


Even online - Now, there's a place for us: .LGBT is here

A few weeks ago, a new online space for the LGBT community arrived. The domain namespace .LGBT ("dot LGBT") was launched.

The first allocated .LGBT domain - OutNow.LGBT - was devoted to championing the cause of workplace equality with the release of a free online report all about the need for business to create more accepting workplaces for all.

The .LGBT domain names are the first and only top-level domain (TLD) Internet addresses created specifically for the purpose of connecting the Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Until very recently this would have been unheard of - a website domain specifically designated for LGBT people? It is in fact a momentous landmark in the history of the Internet, a technology that the LGBT community have been voracious early adopters of.

It is perhaps a fitting moment given that the rise of LGBT equal rights parallels the development of the Internet. The first 'Internet' type communication happened in October 1969, when the dust from New York's Stonewall Riots had barely settled.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s however that the Internet as we would recognise it today was invented, by the man who is widely credited as being the ‘father of the Internet’ Tim Berners-Lee. While the Internet was going from strength to strength, LGBT rights in the US were still encountering stern opposition, and in the same year, 1993 the now infamous “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy was instituted for the U.S. military. This oppressive anti-LGBT legislation was not finally removed until 2011, and ultimately lead to thousands of men and women being discharged from the US armed forces as a result.

Marriage equality in France. 2013. IMAGE: (C) Ian Johnson

It is in this new millennium however that both the power and potential of the Internet, as well as the dreams and hopes of those early LGBT activists have truly been realized.

The year 2000 saw Vermont become the first state in the USA to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples on the same basis as heterosexual couples. This was one of the most significant moments for LGBT rights in the history of the USA. There are now 36 US states where same-sex marriage is legal and the US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments on whether other states can limit the availability of marriage to all.

In countries from the Netherlands (home to the world's first equal marriage laws since April 2001), France, Spain, South Africa and more countries, the right to marry the person you fall in love with is being recognized as a universal human right.

The launch of .LGBT is a moment in the development of online life where LGBT people get to enjoy new levels of acceptance and visibility reflected in that .LGBT signifier.

If equality fails, we stumble, and should we decline to embrace our collective diversity it will not be for a lack of inspiration, leadership and bravery from the past. It will be because we cannot celebrate our differences, recognize that these are what gives us strength, and agree a mutual course for a better future - for all - together.

.LGBT represents a great opportunity not just for LGBT communities around the world, but for every one of us, to find each other and connect.

Being able to be out - and proud - online is now a reality. Imagine how the nascent 1960s LGBT rights movement could have benefited from connecting all like-minded supporters together, with the speed of an online click?

Global, genuine inclusion and acceptance of all the diversity out there in this world has got to be a good thing.

More information on .LGBT is available at get.LGBT.


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