The 40th anniversary of a watershed event in modern civil-rights history has come and gone, but not by much. In the early morning of June 28, 1969, a number of patrons resisted arrest during a violent police raid at a Greenwich Village gay bar; the upshot spilled onto the street, where as many as 1,000 people, easily outnumbering the cops, took matters into their own hands. Gays had had it up to here and beyond with covert and overt oppression—and the so-called Stonewall Riots, named after the inn at which the initial melee took place, would set the stage for the nation’s first Gay Pride march in New York exactly one year later. In 2008, the pride movement yielded parades and events attended by millions in cities from San Diego to Tel Aviv (San Diego’s first such bona fide march took place in 1975 through part of Downtown). The closet door isn’t only open; it’s been removed (sometimes forcibly) from its hinges, never to be replaced–yet a certain contingency has stood firm in its opposition to same-sex marriage, arguably today’s hot button among gay activists. As a result, the local element is quick to note a substantial change in the summer schedule at a major Downtown landmark. The American Association for Justice (AAJ), formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, has relocated its annual convention from San Diego to San Francisco amid a local hotelier’s support of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage statewide. Downtown’s Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego hotel, at One Market Place, is the target of a pro-gay boycott following owner Doug Manchester’s $125,000 donation to last summer’s “Yes on 8” campaign. Despite the May announcement of Manchester’s matching gift to the gay community, the boycotts continue at the Hyatt and at other Manchester properties. Boycott supporters include gay San Diego City Council member Todd Gloria, San Diego LGBT Pride and the nonprofit Californians Against Hate. The Hyatt has reportedly lost $7 million since the boycott began in July of 2008. The flap stems from the state Supreme Court’s May 2008 declaration of California’s decades-long same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional. The declaration took effect the following month. Opponents successfully mounted a campaign to get Prop 8 on the November ballot; it passed, and the Supremes upheld that result in May of this year, although they allowed the state’s 18,000 same-sex marriages from 2008 to stand. AAJ officials said a citywide convention hosting 13,000 attendees in 22 hotels is taking place over the same dates, prohibiting the event’s movement to another facility. They added that alternate San Diego dates were infeasible. Manchester, chairman of the Manchester Financial Group property developer, has more than $2 billion in assets in 11 states, including the 1,635-room Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina. He didn’t return a call placed to the group by Downtown News. Neither did Joyce Marieb, CEO?of the gay-oriented Greater San Diego Business Association — then again, she didn’t have to, as she spontaneously fielded a recent call about the boycott and AAJ’s pullout. “What happens in our community,”?Marieb explained,”is that if people get news of injustice or any kind of discrimination against LGBT people, that word gets around. People who are planning a conference will ask people in San Diego, ‘What’s the situation??We’ve heard A, B and C; should we go to the The 40th anniversary of a watershed event in modern civil-rights history has come and gone, but not by much. In the early morning of June 28, 1969, a number of patrons resisted arrest during a violent police raid at a Greenwich Village gay bar; the upshot spilled onto the street, where as many as 1,000 people, easily outnumbering the cops, took matters into their own hands. Gays had had it up to here and beyond with covert and overt oppression—and the so-called Stonewall Riots, named after the inn at which the initial melee took place, would set the stage for the nation’s first Gay Pride march in New York exactly one year later. In 2008, the pride movement yielded parades and events attended by millions in cities from San Diego to Tel Aviv (San Diego’s first such bona fide march took place in 1975 through part of Downtown). The closet door isn’t only open; it’s been removed (sometimes forcibly) from its hinges, never to be replaced–yet a certain contingency has stood firm in its opposition to same-sex marriage, arguably today’s hot button among gay activists. As a result, the local element is quick to note a substantial change in the summer schedule at a major Downtown landmark. The American Association for Justice (AAJ), formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, has relocated its annual convention from San Diego to San Francisco amid a local hotelier’s support of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage statewide. Downtown’s Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego hotel, at One Market Place, is the target of a pro-gay boycott following owner Doug Manchester’s $125,000 donation to last summer’s “Yes on 8” campaign. Manchester?’ There’s an incredible amount of word of mouth that happens in our community. “Too bad [AAJ] took their meeting out of San Diego, though. It’s one thing to not deal with a particular group, but to take the business from San Diego, that’s too bad.” But in the civil rights arena, wars have been fought and won for less. San Diego will lumber along without the AAJ’s presence accordingly. Meanwhile, the 35th annual local Gay Pride festival is on tap Saturday and Sunday, July 18 and 19, kicking off with a parade through the Uptown area of Hillcrest July 18 at 11 a.m. More information about the festival events is available at sandiegopride.org. The event’s official hotel is the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Downtown, which isn’t too shabby. Neither is the Hyatt, of course — but for one segment of the local community, discretion toward this particular venue is the better part of valor.