So much of what I think and write about is shaded by an inescapable fact: Women’s history is simply not well-documented. Gaps are often filled with stories, historically informed and speculative, that have been passed down. (By some accounts, women occupy a mere 0.5 percent of about 3,500 years of recorded history.)

L.G.B.T.Q. history is no different.

Even the event credited as the foundation of the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement — the Stonewall uprising, which erupted 50 years ago this month, in the early hours of June 28, 1969 — is ultimately a patchwork of accounts.

What we know for sure is that the police raided the Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn — and it wasn’t the first time. But this time, patrons had had enough. The raid ignited a violent conflict, and then protests, that lasted for days. The lesbian, gay and transgender people who were herded out that night revolted: shoving, punching and throwing stones, bottles and (as the story goes) bricks at police officers.

But as my colleague Shane O’Neill found out for his new mini-documentary, “Who Threw the First Brick at Stonewall?,” no one can agree on almost anything else (or even if a brick was thrown at all), other than that it was a messy evening that accelerated and defined gay rights.