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Apple launches new App Store section showcasing LGBT content to commemorate 1969 Stonewall riots

Apple this evening has added a new featured section to the App Store focused on showcasing content that reflects LGBT pride. Apple notes that it is commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots with the App Store section. The riots occurred during 1969 in New York City and are often seen as a pivotal moment in the fight equality for the LGBT community.

In the featured App Store section, which replaces the section from last week that listed popular apps with support for VoiceOver, Apple is highlighting apps, movies, music, TV, podcasts, and books that represent the LGBT community. Selections include Milk, a 2008 drama based during the 1970s push for gay liberation, the HBO film The Normal Heart, the drama Brokeback Mountain, music from artists like Adam Lambert, Sam Smith, and Neon Trees, and various other TV shows, podcasts, books, music, movies, magazines, and apps.

Regarding the 1969 Stonewall riots, Apple writes the following in the App Store:

Every June, we commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots—a history-making moment in which gay men and women fought back after decades of relentless discrimination. It heralded the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, launching the struggle for public visibility, cultural acceptance, and legal equality that the LGBT community has continued battling for ever since. To celebrate these efforts, we’ve gathered a selection of movies, music, TV shows, apps, and more—all reflecting the broad and diverse spectrum of LGBT pride.

You can view the LGBT collection of content here. This isn’t the first time Apple has voiced its support for LGBT rights. Last year, the company played a huge role in the San Francisco Pride Parade, sharing a video on its YouTube channel of the event, as well. Apple and CEO Tim Cook were also outspkoken regarding legislation in Arkansas and Indiana that largely was largely seen as discriminatory agains the LGBT community.

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Comments

  1. It’s not the App Store, it’s iTunes. For now at any rate, they are still separate entities.

  2. Cannot *wait* to hear the complaning about this one…

    • patthecarnut - 9 years ago

      Don’t worry, I’m sure THAT complaining would be called intolerant of others rights to be who they are and practice their own personal beliefs, you know like waving a flag.

      • lovetogetcrap - 9 years ago

        Actually, both of those cases, being bigotry and racism are the practice of intolerance. One thing that we don’t need to be tolerant of is the discrimination of others. One does not need to push another down to raise them self up.

      • patthecarnut - 9 years ago

        @lovetogetcrap Thanks for the ethics lesson. As if we need someone to explain to us what is widely known and accepted as decent. My point above is, one object that means something to a group of people is banned and any extreme of removing that object for appeasement of another group is a very slippery slope and one that seems to be taken very lightly these days. I could care less about either side of this except when it starts to censor one or the other. The flag, like the swastika, may not be a symbol of a happy time in history, nor one I would display but it IS history and you can’t erase that fact, nor can you change the way people use them.

        What the people ahead of these “good causes” don’t get is, the world is a complicated place and no one will EVER change EVERYONE. It always comes out in the news after something tragic like the shootings in SC, to the effect of “we want to do this so that this never happens again.” But it WILL! None of this will help either cause. There will ALWAYS be nut jobs using symbols as their rally cry, and there will ALWAYS be intolerance of people who are different. Apple and all these groups and companies need to realize the world is not like a computer, you can’t just take the bad part out and the rest of the existence of that computer will be rainbows and unicorns because of it.

        There has to be tolerance on all sides, not just the side your agenda resides on.

  3. I can’t believe that Apple would bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla

  4. Gee… I wonder — if I said I was offended by this, would it be removed from the app/iTunes stores? Or can I only be offended by things Tim Cook is offended by?

    • mytimeline89 - 9 years ago

      Do you kno anything about the significance of the Stonewall Riots?? Or are you just trying to incite a shitstorm of arguments?

      • Teapot - 9 years ago

        Definitely just trying to stir up trouble over Apple removing Confederate-branded stuff a few days ago…

      • patthecarnut - 9 years ago

        Seems to me 9to5 Mac is trying to “incite a shitstorm of arguments” with the flag blog the other day, now this. Can’t sites just stick to what they know? Why drag politics, ethics, racism and sexual preference into every freakin article? Why, you ask? :o) Hits baby! They know the buttons to push for hits! They get paid everytime this page is loaded and a cookie is dropped on your device. Those ads you see up there are all they care about….

      • patthecarnut - 9 years ago

        And yeah, kinda like the “remove the flag” shit stirrers from the other day. Take down something that offends part of the population, then put up what offends the other part. Brilliant! I could care not one shit either way, but this is just the “new” typical liberal hypocritical-ism that I’m afraid is here to stay, especially at Apple. I didn’t know Steve Jobs but my guess is he would say “run the effin company Cook and leave this crap out of it”

      • Hey mytimeline89, Do you know anything about the American Civil War? That’s a bit more important than the Stonewall riots. I’m not trying to incite the storm of arguments, but rather point out how hypocritical Apple is acting these days.

      • suchkunt - 9 years ago

        See this is part of the narrative. We promote the gay agenda and we associate the confederate flag with evil racists™. What happened to just making computers?

        For all of Tim Cook’s high minded rhetoric, actions speak louder than words, and what Tim’s gang are promoting is just what the media and the George Soros crowd are promoting. Thinly veiled degeneracy.

        “Think Different” yeah sure.

      • Christopher’s opinion is no more or less valid than yours and if he what he says incites a shit storm of arguments then that is up to the people who actually reply to it to manage. If you disagree, or don’t believe that he should be saying what he did then you are a hypocrite, and are a parody of the very thing this article is about.

        Do you agree with free speech or do you only agree with free speech if it is something which doesn’t offend you personally? You can’t have it both ways.

    • patthecarnut - 9 years ago

      Only Taylor Swift can make things happen…. :o)

      • rahhbriley - 9 years ago

        Only Taylor Swift can melt steel beams.

      • mbalensiefer - 9 years ago

        …and Chuck Norris, too!! Don’t forget Chuck.

  5. mbalensiefer - 9 years ago

    Nice, Apple! You have GOT to love how the World’s Largest Company is getting political on it’s own choice of shit. Apple, under Cook’s guidance, is rolling off a ledge. Let’s showcase a riot, and un-showcase a much much larger riot(The Civil War)–Choice!!

    • Your comments are exactly right. However, Apple isn’t the world’s largest company – it’s 12th.

    • Yes, it’s totally crazy to celebrate marginalized people who fight for their rights and to not celebrate people who “riot[ed]” for the right to own other people as property….. What a nut job Cook is….

      • mbalensiefer - 9 years ago

        So we should get rid of which of all flags then, Patrick?

      • suchkunt - 9 years ago

        What part is worthy of celebration exactly? The degenerate “bug chasers,” the epidemic levels of domestic violence in female couples or the extremely high representation among the ranks of pedophiles?

      • mbalensiefer - 9 years ago

        Oh–one more thing. In the US Navy, 54% of reported assaults are same-sex. In Obama’s America. Go figure.

Author

Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com