Murder out of hate: the death that created a movement

On 6 June 1976, Richard J. Heakin Jr. is beaten to death in the car park of the Stonewall Tavern in Tucson, Arizona. The 21-year-old gay man from Lincoln, Nebraska, is on holiday visiting friends. In the night of 6 June, a group of 13 drunk high school students aged between 15 and 17, deliberately looking for gay men, lie in wait for him. When Heakin and his friends leave the bar, the youths attack him and beat him unconscious. He dies of his injuries.

Only four of the thirteen perpetrators are charged: those whom witnesses could identify as having struck the blows directly. The other nine are considered accomplices against whom there is insufficient evidence. Judge Ben Birdsall downgrades the crime to manslaughter, as he sees no intent despite the coordinated attack, and tries the case as a juvenile matter. The files are sealed, and all four receive probation. The verdict outrages Tucson: the public floods the newspapers' letters pages, and gay and lesbian people organise as a community for the first time. Only eight months after the murder, in February 1977, the Tucson City Council passes an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting LGBTQ people in employment, housing and access to public facilities. Tucson thus becomes one of the very first cities in the United States with such a law. That same year, the first Gay Pride picnic is held in Heakin's memory, from which Tucson Pride, still active today, emerged. In 2002, the city unveiled a memorial stone for Heakin outside City Hall.