To celebrate 2024 National Coming Out Day, Stonewall veteran Dr. Karla Jay will be coming to the Chicago area to speak at an Oct. 6 event.
Naperville Pride is hosting “Out in History” with Jay and a screening of a Stonewall documentary at Community United Methodist Church from 12-3 p.m. Jay is scheduled to share her own story around this historic event in LGBTQ+ history.
Jay is not only a Stonewall veteran, but a lifelong activist and award-winning author of 10 books. She was an early member of the Gay Liberation Front and Lavender Menace—a group of lesbian feminists protesting the exclusion of their issues from the feminist movement. She is still fully engaged in the fight for civil, women’s and LGBTQ+ rights today.
After organizers reached out to her about joining the event, Jay decided to take part due to the number of connections she has in the Chicago area. She hopes by attending and speaking to people, she’ll be able to shed light on what life was like before the Stonewall uprising and how much it truly changed history.
“It really was a turning point in history,” she said. “There was a way in which the Gay Liberation front and then Radical Lesbians…put a torch in the embers of Stonewall, and we lit that torch, and we ran with it. What I often like people to remember is that we weren’t a large group of people—we were probably a handful of people.”
Jay’s journey with activism began when she got swept up in the Vietnam War protests at Columbia University in the late ‘60s and witnessed police violence against peaceful protesters.
“I realized that my ideas of justice in this country were fictional and that we were going to have to make radical changes to change the patriarchy,” Jay said. “But the radical left men were rather sexist, so I got involved in feminism, and the feminists were homophobic. When Gay Liberation Front came along, I said, ‘Oh, here are my people.’”
One of the most important things Jay hopes young people take away from the upcoming event and her personal story is that it doesn’t take a massive group of people to create social change. Following Stonewall, the ability to more openly discuss and participate in the community began to spread.
“We were able to change the policy of media around the country [in] Time Magazine, places like that,” she said. “We were able to create our own social community free of mafia-owned bars.”
For Jay, it’s an “astonishing” accomplishment in 50 years to see how much the LGBTQ+ community and its support has grown—more than she ever thought would happen in her lifetime.
“Before Stonewall, you would be hard-pressed to ever have found more than 200 people at any event,” she said. “We had probably 10,000 people in places all over the country, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, San Francisco and L.A., marching for gay liberation [the next year].”
“I think that people sometimes forget … a radical LGBTQ+ group came out of [Stonewall] with a different perspective and really grew the movement and started the Pride march,” Jay said. “Without the Pride March to commemorate the Stonewall uprising, we really wouldn’t remember [it].”
However, with the backlash against LGBTQ+ rights today, Jay said it’s important people fight even harder for the election of Democrats at every level of government, from federal officials to local school boards. She said she believes the country is in “great danger” right now, and the community must band together, put aside its differences and push forward as one.
In her eyes, one of the best ways to do this work now is to create inviting environments in blue states where people can feel safe to flee their home states.
“I think we need to set up a way for people who are going to be disadvantaged, who will not be able to receive medical care, fair schooling or whatever else they need to thrive in their true identities,” she said. “We need to find funding and ways to welcome these people in our states. I think there is plenty of room for them.”
Jay said the upcoming Naperville event will be a great opportunity for folks to meet others outside of their niche, whether that be another suburb or neighborhood in the city. She encourages people across Chicagoland to attend and to create connections and learn more about others in the area.
“We need to reach out around our own communities in a broader way and find out how other people live,” she said. “I think that often we’re surprised by how many people there are who aren’t in our little hood. It’s a very positive thing.”