Even before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a legal right, Queens had planned a candlelight vigil this week to mark the 25th anniversary of gay bartender Julio Rivera’s murder.
The pendulum has come full circle as the borough celebrates the landmark ruling and looks back with horror on an era when three young savages hunted down Rivera because of his sexual orientation.
Rivera’s slaying in Jackson Heights set the stage for the emergence of the borough’s gay pride movement and laid the groundwork for the annual Queens Pride Parade.
City Councilman Daniel Dromm, who was on the front lines of the gay rights battle after the murder and founded the Queens Pride Parade, held a candlelight vigil Wednesday on the spot at 78th Street and 37th Avenue where Rivera was killed.
“Julio’s case was the beginning of the change that we saw in Queens,” the former public school teacher said. “We’ve come a long way since then, but we still have far to go.”
The court decision also reverberated across Queens’ immigrant communities, whose LGBT members have sought refuge from discrimination in Jackson Heights for years.
The joy over the high court’s 5-4 ruling on marriage equality was immediate.
Minutes after the vote was announced, Jimmy Van Bramer—Queens’ other openly gay councilman—interrupted a DOT news conference to call his husband with the news.
Hours later Van Bramer and his husband, Dan Hendrick, released a statement saying, “We have been moved to tears this morning, knowing the pain and stigma of being unequal is lifted.”
Queens congressional delegates and other elected officials joined in, issuing statements calling the court ruling a milestone and a defining moment.
There has been great enlightenment in public attitudes toward the gay community over the past few years, but some people still felt invisible despite New York state’s recognition of gay marriage. Queens’ gay activists were among the first in the nation to lead the charge against discrimination and to stand up publicly to challenge the laws that pushed fellow LGBT people to the margins of society.
Now that the highest court in the land has extended the guarantee of equality for all to marriage, we salute those brave early fighters for helping to bring justice to everyone in Queens and the rest of the country—regardless of who they love or choose to marry. We can all now can stand tall in the sunlight.
