Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company
                               The New York Times
                 April  27, 1993, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 1; Editorial Desk

HEADLINE: Washington -- by Way of Stonewall

The modern gay rights movement started a quarter of a century ago, when
police raided the Stonewall Inn, a cross-dressers' bar in Greenwich
Village.  The incident led to three days of civil disobedience, much of
it by men in drag.

Stonewall convinced gay men and lesbians that they were under attack and
that they needed to organize for political action and demonstrations,
like the one last weekend in Washington.

This march was Ozzie and Harriet compared with the Stonewall days or
even with the annual gay pride parade in New York.  As The Los Angeles
Times's Bettina Boxall wrote:

"They wanted to show to America that they were 'regular' people, the
kind that live next door, go to work every day and pay their taxes.
While the march included the exotic -- some bare-breasted women,
transvestites and people clad in leather gear -- for the most part, the
demonstrators were conventional, orderly and well behaved."

"Ordinary" and "The People Next Door" were mantras of the weekend, as
though the right of full citizenship depends on how one chooses to
dress.  It doesn't.  And it's a dangerous idea.

The fixation on "normalcy" is understandable given how gay Americans
have been demonized in recent years.  But the measure of a just society
is not how it treats people who look like Ozzie and Harriet.  That's the
easy part.  A just society must offer the same full citizenship to the
flamboyant dressers in last weekend's parade as it does to those who
looked "just like the people next door."

TYPE:  Editorial

SUBJECT:  HOMOSEXUALITY; EDITORIALS; DISCRIMINATION; CIVIL RIGHTS;
DEMONSTRATIONS AND RIOTS

                      Copyright 1993 The Washington Post
                              The Washington Post
                     April  27, 1993, Tuesday, Final Edition

SECTION: OPINION EDITORIAL; PAGE A16

HEADLINE: Message of the March

ALTHOUGH THE argument continues over the exact number of participants at
Sunday's gay rights march, the figure is really irrelevant.  The march
-- indeed the whole weekend of events -- provided a forum for Americans
who are homosexual to be heard with reference to their political causes
and to be seen as human beings who are only now overcoming the effects
of abiding prejudices and disadvantages built into the society and its
institutions.  The events were exuberant, emotional and almost perfectly
peaceful.

It's difficult to say whether the marchers will have an immediate and
concrete impact on the government.  The question of gays in the military
is now being reassessed, and President Clinton's support for change has
already brought welcome progress.  A thousand gay veterans, some of them
in uniform, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to further the cause.
Federal funding for AIDS research, education and treatment is another
worthy goal, and considerable progress is being made in that area.  But
observing the fervor of the gay community where the disease has caused
so much pain, and the care given to AIDS victims and to the memory of
those who have died should strengthen public determination to meet this
challenge.  Marchers also were determined to convince others of the
justice of according homosexuals the rights accorded to all others in
this country and of fighting efforts to discriminate against them, not
to mention fighting efforts to make them the object of attacks.

As at most political or group-movement demonstrations, there were the
handful of bizarre and ostentatiously gross characters who attempted to
take attention from the main event and distort the message the large
majority was trying to send.  The most indecent offenders among them
were on the stage and on national television via C-SPAN, assaulting the
good faith of public officials (many of whom are active supporters of
gay rights) and seeing how shocking they could be in their sexual
exhibitionism before the crowd.  The sorry show of these few should not
define the event for television viewers across the country.  The
peaceful power of the demonstration and the truly unexceptional demands
of the participants for fair and equal treatment should be the enduring
message of the weekend.