Brick by Brick: A Brief History of Queer Liberation and a Call to Action for Unity and Modern Liberation
- POLITICAL ESSAY
- Mar 21
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 24
“All I know is that to me
You look like you’re lots of fun
Open up your lovin’ arms
Watch out, here I come”
You spin me right round, baby, right round... It was the late ’80s, and the blue wrenching smoke of a burnt-out joint hung in the air, dancing with the deafening bass and psychedelic club lights to create the neon and nostalgic Flashers atmosphere. Connie, the statuesque queen and house mother of the Gold Coast Surfers Paradise glitter strip, stood centre stage at the local club and queer church. A fierce protector of both the club and the community, Connie stood firmly planted in her heels in the spotlight, miming Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round.
Each weekend, the young queer community gathered like a holy communion, celebrating their brief escape from the world outside – a moment to breathe, let their hair down, and to exist. Watch out, here I come... The music played as Connie stepped off the stage toward a group of rowdy men who had entered the club with a mal intent. At this time in history, ‘poofter bashing’ was a side hobby for some, like duck hunting. Without hesitation, Connie picked them up one by one, as if executing sequin-clad choreography, hurling them down the stairs. She was no sitting duck, but a fierce guardian mother goose. The men tumbled ass over tit out of the club and into the streets of Surfers Paradise. Connie didn’t miss a beat, and their disgraceful retreat was met with cheers from the crowd. Decades later, those who witnessed it still proudly recall her tenacity. Watch out, here she comes...
The First Brick
Pay it no mind. That was Marsha P. Johnson’s response when asked what the 'P' in her name stood for – words recanted by a firmly planted street queen in a New York courtroom, staring down a judge from the austere wooden benches of the tribunal hall. She spoke with disarming frankness, rhetorical and unwavering. Amused by her dry wit, the judge granted her release with a slam of his gavel.
Twenty years before Connie’s infamous night at Flashers, Marsha ’Pay It No Mind’ Johnson hurled the first brick at Stonewall. The inciting spark. The catalyst that blew open the closet doors of the world, revealing that queer folk were everywhere. Marsha was a street queen with a built-in spotlight, shining from the fire that burned within her. A founding member of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), she fought valiantly for her trans brothers and sisters.
For decades, the fumes had been building. Queer activism existed long before that night, but Marsha’s brick symbolised a turning point – the moment when the demand for tolerance and equality transformed into an unrelenting fight for justice. That brick became a symbol of rebellion and solidarity, an object that carried the weight of generations who had simply refused to disappear.
Before Stonewall: A Fight That Spanned Centuries
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (b. 1825) was a German lawyer, journalist, and pioneer in sexology – considered by many to be the father of the modern gay liberation movement. He was not an isolated figure but part of a lineage of defiant individuals whose tenacity was an act of survival.
Before the Nazis sought to erase anything outside their vision of Aryan society, Germany was at the forefront of queer rights. The first LGBTQ+ advocacy group, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, was founded in Berlin in 1897 under the principle: Through Science to Justice. German sexologists resisted harsh legal persecution that was, at the time, more strict than in neighbouring Bavaria and Austria.
We know queerness has existed as long as humanity itself. But Karl was the first to define and coin words to describe same-sex attraction, bisexuality, and intersexuality. The terms homosexual and heterosexual were first introduced in a letter to Karl from Hungarian linguist and advocate, Károly Mária Kertbeny. The power of language, of naming, cannot be understated. There is power in our words, for they do not possess authority over us, but we possess that authority over them. It is important to understand where the words we use come from. Knowledge acts as a guiding light on top of the hill that we must always look to; to let guide us to move the conversation forward.
It’s worth noting that Karl’s work emerged centuries after the Bible was established as the fundamental text of Christianity. Yet the word homosexual did not appear in biblical scripture until February 11, 1946, in the Revised Standard Version. In German text, it didn’t appear until 1983 – more than a hundred years after Karl urged the German parliament to repeal anti-sodomy laws, warning of a 'damning flood of suicides' among queer men. His was one of the earliest documented links between queerness and mental health.
Biblical studies into the various translations of texts over the centuries reveal that the sins referenced in Corinthians, Leviticus, and Timothy were not homosexuality or 'sodomy' but were mistranslated from condemnations of pedophilia and then weaponised against queer liberation.
The story of Sodom itself, where the term sodomite originates, was not about men lying with men. Another misinterpretation, another tool of oppression. The true sin of Sodom was a rejection of hospitality, a failure to love one’s neighbour. When two angels, disguised as immigrants, sought refuge, the men of Sodom rejected the foreigners – breaking the fundamental commandment of loving thy neighbour. The cities men vowed to pillage and rape the visitors – angels in disguise. The angels revealed themself, and God destroyed the cities, raining brimstone and fire over the establishments.
Crazy, right? It’s not strange how these agendas and texts were mistranslated at a time when people around the world were pushing the conversation forward – only to be met with resistance fuelled by shame and complacency, cloaked in bigotry designed to discredit the very science they lacked the progressive capacity to understand.
Today, we are still at war – not with each other, but with complacency itself. It’s easy to move through life in comfort, resisting change from behind a keyboard while watching politicians spew hateful rhetoric, rooted in evangelistic views that have repeatedly been proven to stem from the misinterpretation of an all-powerful deity.
At the end of the day, if your faith fuels hate, you’ve missed the message entirely. Loving thy neighbour wasn’t a suggestion, it was the whole point.
A Legacy of Resistance and Call to Action
It’s also true that transness has existed since the beginning of time. One of the oldest cultures in the world exists here, in my home country of Australia. The Tiwi Island Sistagirls and Brothaboys thrived long before colonialism imposed the concept of a binary gender on Indigenous Australian people. In my mother country, the United States, we see the Two-Spirit identity represented in Native American cultures, encompassing gender-variant individuals and the roles they play in society. The term 'Two-Spirit' was coined nearly a hundred years after the first gender conference in Berlin.
In 1862, Albert Cashier – born female but living as a man for at least 53 years – was one of 250 known women who fought in the American Civil War while presenting as men. At 19, Cashier enlisted, passing the only required medical examination at the time – showing both hands and feet.
Tracking global statistics on trans people is difficult, as many countries do not officially recognise their existence. In many places, trans individuals 'hide in plain sight,' making data – especially regarding violence – over-represented, vastly under-reported. Cross-referencing various scientific journals and news sources, it appears that trans people account for less than 3% of the global population. Yet today, they dominate discussions in political forums such as the Senate, Congress, and the media. Acts of violence against trans individuals have only been officially documented in the United States since 2013, where hundreds of trans people – predominantly Black trans women – have lost their lives. The statistics remain staggering yet imprecise, as victims are often misgendered or reported under their dead names, further exposing the vulnerabilities of an already marginalised community.
Trans rebellion emerged in the mid-20th century, often expressed simply through the act of being visible. Trailblazing entertainment icons like Christine Jorgensen and Carlotta, the 'boy from Balmain,' challenged societal norms. Carlotta fiercely defended her community at a time when police brutalised queer spaces, conducting invasive and dehumanising 'panty checks' to enforce discriminatory laws.
From the first brick thrown at Stonewall in 1969, less than a decade later, we saw the rise of the '78ers' – the first to march and riot in Sydney despite violent backlash – leading to what we now know as Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. They marched to the ode of 'out of the bar and into the streets!'
Symbolically, the parade is led by the Dykes on Bikes, a tribute to the strong women who have consistently safeguarded our community. In the late '70s and '80s, these women revved their engines at known gay beats to deter men who sought to entrap and harm queer men. Cruising – clandestinely seeking sexual partners – was a necessity for gay men, who faced some of the harshest legal oppression, forcing them into underground spaces. Queer women, though fearless leaders in the fight for liberation, were still subjected to the misogynistic and patriarchal systems that deemed them unworthy of laws governing their sexuality..
Women have always been the protectors and trailblazers of our community. During the HIV crisis in the UK and Australia, lesbian women stood beside the dying, providing care and dignity while society sought to erase them. Trans Starlets paraded through the HIV wards to boost morale and bring dignity back to those who society worked to erase. Queer women were the caretakers, activists, lawyers, and artists of their time – omnipresent despite history’s attempts to minimise their impact. Their indomitable spirit is something we can draw strength from today.
If the men in our community took care of the boys, and we all embraced the fighter spirit of the women who have always cared for us, we would be far better off.
Yet today, it seems we have metaphorically lost the brick. Instead of wielding it against those who oppress us, we’ve turned it on each other. Productive accountability has morphed into cancel culture, a tactic borrowed from the American right wing – first seen when conservative Americans sought to erase the Dixie Chicks for simply using their voices when they publicly criticised George W. Bush. Words hold power, and we must harness that power wisely. Cancel culture has redirected the brick from those who seek to harm us to the very community it was meant to protect. Across the world, we see infighting among queer groups. We hear rhetoric about 'normal gays,' as if some of us are not normal. This echoes the conservative narrative that queer people should be treated as a separate but 'equal' group. But separate is not equal. Separate has always meant second-best at most, and we are not equal. We are impacted differently, therefore we seek equity, not equality.
Statistics show that 74% of queer people – nearly 3 in 4 – have experienced a mental disorder in their lifetime, compared to 41% of heterosexual people. This stems from harmful rhetoric spewed by politicians, media stigma, and systemic bullying in schools, where queer youth learn social survivalism instead of being allowed to thrive and learn in safe environments. This, in turn, leads to higher dropout rates and other barriers to opportunity, keeping many in a cycle of oppression.
Today, it feels as though we have taken steps backward. Society is divided, with the media working to draw harsh lines between 'us' and 'them'. We have lost the solidarity that ignited the first brick thrown by Marsha P. Johnson and begun vilifying each other instead. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, 'A house divided cannot stand.'
This is my call to action – to my community, the community that took me in, saved me, and gave me the tools to break my own generational chains. We must look to our history. We must immerse ourselves in the stories of our elders – the trailblazers who walked through fires far hotter than anything we have faced in modern history. Those fires are burning again, more malicious, more calculated, and more urgent than many of us have seen in our lifetimes. We must stand together and dig our high heels in.
We must shift from a culture of vilification to one of healing, from cancel culture to productive accountability. We must find our collective voice as queer people and recognise the power we each hold. We must call out division, expose what separates us, and rally together to rebuild bridges.
We must work to build confidence in our community again, not only with our words but our feet. We build trust by showing up for one another. You cannot build a bridge from one side alone. We must work to understand each other and find common ground. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and truth to disarm those who seek to demonise us. We must fight hatred not with hatred, but with love, joy, visibility, and knowledge.
It may feel like change is beyond our grasp, but together, we can lay a new foundation – one built on hope and reconciliation. A foundation that stands as a barrier against those who seek to destroy rather than understand. A foundation against complacency. Together, we can create something new, something better – not just for some, but for all.
Change may feel insurmountable, but brick by brick, we can build a new foundation – one of hope, reconciliation, and resilience. One that does not seek to erase but to embrace. One that strengthens us all.
Together, we can move the conversation forward – not just reflecting on what we’ve done or where we’ve been, but focusing on what we have left to do and how far we can go. Together, we can build a new foundation for modern liberation, ensuring no one is left behind.
Brick by brick, we can change the narrative. Brick by brick, we can protect our most vulnerable. Brick by brick, we can reclaim our power, our voice, and our flame.
Together, we can – brick by brick.
By Dustin Lowrey
Bio: Dustin Lowrey (he/him/they/them) is an American-Australian author and artist born in rural Arkansas –now residing on the Gold Coast, Australia – who performs as Cadillac DeVille. Follow Dustin and Cadillac on: Instagram: @dustinlowreycreative and @cadydeville