Marking 50 years in the struggle for acceptance of LGBTQI+ rights, today’s Google doodle is dedicated to the pride history which is celebrated in the month of June every year. Designed by Nate Swinehart, the doodle commemorates different stages of pride activism with 3D graphics and an amalgam of colors that have come to symbolize the movement over five decades.
The fight for LGBTQI+ rights began in New York on June 28, 1969 when the police raided Stonewall Inn, a bar that was popular with the community. Police raids on such bars was a common practice in those days, but things took a turn when instead of buckling, a group of young individuals protested against the raids, in a rebellion that lasted for five days.
The Stonewall protests motioned a decades-long struggle for the acceptance of queer identities. From the first rainbow flag being hoisted in San Francisco in 1978 to AIDS being recognized as a medical disease in 1982 after being referred to as ‘gay fever’ for years, the movement has come a long way.
In India, the idea of acceptance of queer identities and same-sex marriage was finally realized in September last year, when the Supreme Court after a slew of petitions unanimously decriminalised Section 377, citing it as an ‘infringement on the fundamental rights of autonomy, intimacy and identity.”
Nonetheless, the movement still has a long way to go with only 28 out of 167 countries having legalised same sex marriage so far, and only 52 countries providing legal protection against discrimination against the LGBTQI+ community.
