Being able to dance with someone of the same sex changed everything in the way you felt about yourself. 'It was the only bar where we could slow dance,' recalls artist Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, who participated in the riots.
The violent protests in reaction to the police raid were motivated-at least partly-by these marginalized groups feeling that their freedom to dance was being threatened.
Even before the riots, the Stonewall had already achieved underground fame as a rare space where gay men, lesbians and drag queens could lock limbs with each other with impunity. While its centrality to the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States is widely acknowledged, the point that gets lost in the historicity of the place is that the Stonewall was, above all, a dance bar. Coverage of the Stonewall riots was tinged with homophobia
