SALT LAKE CITY — It’s hard to imagine an incident at a bar in New York City would lead to change in how society views LGBTQ individuals 50 years later, including in Utah. Yet, one incident is remembered for just that.

The incident was known as the Stonewall Uprising; but to understand its importance, it's necessary to understand the history of how homosexuality was seen in America at the time.

As Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah, points out, those who identified as LGBTQ at the time could lose their jobs if their employer found out they were gay. Their lives could be forever tarnished, so bars were among the few public safe havens for many years leading up to the uprising.

With the incident’s 50th anniversary Friday, here’s a look back at how it changed everything for the LGBTQ community living in the United States.

Pre-'Stonewall' America

Most LGBTQ timelines begin with the story of Richard Cornish. In 1624, well before the U.S. gained freedom and established a new country, he was executed in Virginia for sodomy after alleged homosexual acts with a servant, according to PBS. As it noted, sodomy was a capital crime in the early days of the British colonies — but France and Spain had similar laws that considered homosexuality or any sexual act outside of marriage as sodomy.

In the years when the U.S. fought for independence, Thomas Jefferson proposed that sodomy should be punished by mutilation. Sodomy remained a part of laws across the U.S. for more than a century after that. Illinois was the first state to ditch its law in 1961, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

That was around the same time LGBTQ rights started to take shape in response to an era now commonly referred to as “The Lavender Scare.” In a 2004 interview with University of Chicago Press, author David Johnson said the federal government mostly turned a blind eye to the lives of federal workers in Washington back in the 1940s. But after World War II ended, the District of Columbia began crackdowns on homosexuality following reports published by scientist Alfred Kinsey.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an executive order banning anyone gay from holding a government job. The order led to several thousand people losing their jobs because they were suspected of being gay, according to Johnson. It was also the same decade as fear about communism spread across the nation.

“In popular discourse, communists and homosexuals were often conflated. Both groups were perceived as hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, literature, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty,” Johnson said. “Both groups were thought to recruit to their ranks the psychologically weak or disturbed. And both groups were considered immoral and godless. Many people believed that the two groups were working together to undermine the government.”

In 1961, four years after losing his federal job for being gay, Frank Kameny created the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., which was a precursor to the current LGBT rights movement people are familiar with today, as noted by the Making Gay History podcast. In 1965, a small group of picketers began what they called “Reminder Day,” which existed through 1969 as a protest for homosexual equal rights, according to WHYY.

June 28, 1969

By the late 1960s, gay clubs became the only way those in the LGBTQ community could truly socialize, but police often raided these clubs and cracked down on clubs that served alcohol to anyone in the LGBTQ community, according to History.com.

In the early morning of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided a gay club in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn and arrested 13 people inside. Hundreds of those in the bar at the time and even neighborhood residents rioted in frustration of yet another police raid on a gay club; it sparked six days of protests, History.com noted. It was really the first time anyone in the LGBTQ community fought back against these raids.

It’s hard to tell what Utahns thought at the time or even if they knew about what was going on because the uprising didn’t really land in any Utah papers — at least the ones digitized online. Preparations for the soon-to-be carried out Apollo 11 mission dominated national headlines in Utah.

That said, the uprising's importance grew with time. The uprising united several groups under the LGBTQ spectrum, which ultimately led to the now-common LGBTQ equal rights groups. The first NYC Pride Parade — the largest current pride parade in the U.S. — was held exactly one year after Stonewall and pride parades replaced Reminder Days.

As the U.S. moved the 1970s, opinions began to change. The ACLU noted about two dozen states reversed their sodomy laws in the 1970s as the LGBTQ community banded together and thus arrests for homosexuality decreased nationwide. The group added there were a few Supreme Court cases in the 1990s which helped shape what any remaining state laws could enforce.

That's why Stonewall is remembered the way that is now. President Barack Obama even designated its location as a national monument in 2016.

Change in Utah

While some LGBTQ issues are still a hot-button issue in Utah and the U.S., it's a completely different subject than 50 years ago. Utah passed a bill in 2015 that barred discrimination in housing or hiring based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all U.S. states.

After a bill to end controversial conversion therapy died during the legislative session, Gov. Herbert announced Thursday he wanted Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing to bring forward rules changes to the practice for public comment by Sept. 16.

Williams said there's still work to be done, but is impressed with how much has changed in just 50 years. As someone who advocates for LGBTQ rights, he said the Stonewall Inn has a memorable place in U.S. — and even Utah — history for uniting the LGBTQ community that helped provide law changes over the past five decades that otherwise may never have happened.

Williams thanked 1970s California politician and activist Harvey Milk for much of the change in LGBTQ rights in Utah. That's because he encourages those in the LGBTQ community to embrace Milk's idea of showing how normal those within the community are, which he also credits for building bridges to close the gap.

It's not just in the laws. Earlier this month, tens of thousands gathered for the Utah Pride Parade, which has been a tradition for 44 years.

"This is our day to celebrate who we are and just celebrate being accepted more and more in Utah," one attendee told KSL.

Equality Utah and other groups are gearing up for the third-annual LOVELOUD festival, a music festival aimed to unite the religious and LGBTQ communities. This year, there will be a remembrance wall inside the USANA Amphitheater that will allow attendees a chance to see all the prominent dates and major LGBTQ events in the 50 years since Stonewall, said LOVELOUD director Lance Lowry.

It's meant to be a reminder of how Stonewall helped pave the way for better equality.

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