BAY AREA REPORTER -- Marc Stein is the Jaime and Phyllis Pasker Chair in History at San Francisco State University and the author of “City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves” (2000), “Sexual Injustice” (2010) and “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement” (2012). He writes a guest opinion piece on the 50th anniversary of the first gay sit-in.
“Fifty years ago this week, three teenagers initiated a sit-in at Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia to protest multiple denials of service ‘homosexuals,’ ‘masculine women,’ ‘feminine men’ and ‘persons wearing non-conformist clothing,’” Stein writes. “Drum magazine, which by 1965 had become the most popular gay and lesbian movement publication in the United States, called it ‘the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States.’”