Edmund White was present in June 1969 when the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar in Manhattan, New York. Shouts of “gay power” were heard as bartenders, hat-check boys and the owners were hauled off in vans. At first it seemed an unexpected laugh, and then the men milling round in the street started to resist the police and their billy clubs. It was the moment when gay militancy was born.
White, who has died aged 85, went on to become one of the most prominent gay writers of his generation, but by temperament he was not a blazing militant. His sensibility was that of a midwestern Marcel Proust, and he did not do anger. An evening spent cruising the gay bars, or chatting about the New York literary scene with the gay writers who formed the Violet Quill group, was more his style.
