Lillian Faderman is a historian and author of "The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle." The views expressed are those of the author. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) To lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the story of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village has iconic weight, like the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising has to Jewish people. The victimized fought fiercely and gave a community a desperately needed symbol for pride. But as director Roland Emmerich learned through the firestorm created by his new film, "Stonewall," emotions run very high over who can claim the strongest link to what happened back then.

The Stonewall riots began on June 28, 1969, during a routine 1 a.m. bar raid. This time, though, the harassed gay clientele didn't go quietly. Indeed, they kept fighting for five nights, their number growing to thousands. The Tactical Police Force had to be called out to regain control of the streets. Many rioters were beaten so badly that Seventh Avenue from Christopher to West 10th was said to look like a battlefield in Vietnam. But gays came away feeling victorious, and the riots were a crucial turning point in LGBT history. As one wit of the day prophetically pronounced, they were "the hairpin drop heard round the world."

Lillian Faderman

Radical gay groups formed soon after the riots and grabbed media attention as homosexuals never had; they eventually emboldened other gays to start "mainstream" organizations such as the powerful Human Rights Campaign. Those organizations would wage the winning battles to lift the prohibitions on gays in the military and on same-sex marriage.

Clearly, all segments of the LGBT community have some link to Stonewall. So how has Emmerich caused such a stir?

Emmerich's fictional hero, blond and blue-eyed Danny Winters, is kicked out of his home in small-town Indiana by his football coach father when he discovers that Danny is gay. Danny boards a bus to Greenwich Village, where he meets other throwaway and runaway kids. They're exploited even in the grungy, mafia-controlled Stonewall Inn, where they hang out for want of a safer place. On a hot summer night, when the cops raid the Stonewall for the second time in less than a week, Danny and his friends throw bricks, smash windows, scare the hell out of the police who are trapped inside the bar, and start the revolution.

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