Blog: Humanist Voices

Learn about our own LGBT history here in Minnesota.  Through the efforts of Matt Stark, long time member of Humanists of Minnesota and former member of our Board of Directors, this e-book chronicling the gay rights movement is available here (1.2MB .pdf) or here  (4.6MB .docx). Gay Pride v. The City of Minneapolis: The Gay Pride Block Party Case by Jason Smith.  The following is an excerpt from the forward by Norman Dorsen.

This short and affecting book captures an important slice of the Gay rights movement that is in danger of being lost to history. The 1969 “riot” at the Stonewall Inn was a turning point. But it is hardly known – except by a few scholars and those who lived through the events – that in 1980 and 1981 a small group of determined persons in Minneapolis fought, and eventually won, the right to hold a Gay pride block party on the city’s leading thoroughfare over the opposition of almost the entire Minneapolis political establishment.

When a request was made to city leaders to hold the event, it was denied; and denied again. Eventually, it took extraordinary efforts by Gay activists and a principled and able Federal District Court Judge (Miles Lord), as well as the handy work of a young lawyer, Jonathan Adams, and the unremitting support of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union’s executive director (and former president), Matthew Stark, to establish the Gay pride block party.

Attachments:

Gay-Pride-E-book-Version1.pdf

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