History loves to paint the mid 20th century as a time of vintage and amazing family values . The irony? If you happened to be queer,that so-called "amazing " society would treat you like a problem and a security threat to the nation and society.

The violence against them was bad. But what happened after is where the societal rot is vividly shown. If you were caught,doctors wouldn't try to protect you. They tried to "fix" you with psychiatric torture due to the consensus that homosexuality is a literal mental illness. The very people who were meant to protect and heal were the ones leading the actual witch hunt.

The breaking point? Patrons at a Greenwich Village bar fought back against a routine police raid. The queens,lesbians and trans women lead a six days of violent protest. Activists replaced polite,secretive groups with aggressive Gay Liberation Front.They launched the first ever pride marches to grab public attention.

When a deadly virus killed a large number of gay and bisexual men,the government under Ronald Reagan ignored it for years,reflecting discriminative nature towards homosexual people;even joking about the situation as the "gay plague".

In response ,activists formed ACT UP using civil disobedience : throwing ashes on the white House lawn and blocking Wall street to force medical reform.As men died in numbers, lesbian activists stepped up to manage blood drives and act as primary caretakers.

Under intense activist pressure, the American Psychiatric Association officially removed homosexuality from the DSM mental illness registry.

In the 2010s the wave of marriage equality marked the massive global legal shift culminating in landmark rulings that legalized same-sex marriage, forcing the state to grant full, equal recognition to queer families.

"The state spent decades trying to classify, criminalize, and ignore a community out of existence. They failed-; because at the end of the day, true independence isn't granted by the people in power:it is taken by the ones who survived them.”