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On October 1, 1971, Connecticut became the second state to decriminalize private sexual relations between consenting adults. They kept up their nightly pickets until the owner capitulated. On September 3, 1971, eleven Kalos members were arrested while protesting at a local gay bar where lesbians were being harassed by the management.
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The group related to politics of the left: the Griffin quoted Black Panther leader Huey Newton and sponsored a bus to a Vietnam war protest in Washington, D.C. It published a regular newsletter, The Griffin, which was available at gay bars and in the stores at Hartford’s Union Place (known for radical and counterculture activity). The group quickly became the local “gay liberation front” inspired by Stonewall’s new take on social justice organizing. One of their early public events was an outing at Goodwin Park in September, 1970 (in spite of neighbors’ protests). Hartford’s Kalos Society at the 1970 Stonewall commemoration march in NYC.īy 1968, the Kalos Society had evolved from Project H as a social organization, with the support of Episcopal Canon Clinton Jones. About nine months after Stonewall, the program went public. As early as 1965 the Greater Hartford Council of Churches was providing gay-friendly counseling through its “Project H” committee. Gay Pride Day was not Hartford’s first public effort for the lesbian and gay community. Stonewall rebellion: confrontation with the cops on Christopher Street, June 28,1969 Stonewall marked a turning point activists who had been working in the civil rights and anti-war movements came home to forge the struggle for gay liberation. The local vice squad actually had to lock themselves in the bar for protection. After decades of anonymity and quiet resistance, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street reacted to the harassment in fury. It had been thirteen years since the Stonewall rebellion, several nights of street fighting sparked by a New York City police raid of a well-known gay bar.
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Norris, Buckwalter, and their band of hard-working comrades had many reasons to be proud that day. Instead, over 300 lesbian, gay and transgender activists spent a hot June day in 1982 making history at Connecticut’s first Gay Pride Festival. Nancy Buckwalter and Tony Norris expected 150 people to show up at the Old State House for their event.