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83 3 Act Up Here A Legacy of Activism On July 17, 1974, the seven-member St. Paul City Council extended human rights protections in employment, housing, public services, and accommodation to include cases of sexual preference. Writing in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the St. Paul Pioneer Press dedicated one-quarter of the paper’s fifteenth page to the story. Councilman John Christensen, who sponsored the gay rights ordinance, responded to the objections of religious leaders who argued against it for more than an hour.1 “I’ve heard a lot of religion and morality this morning,” he said, “but we have a constitutional question here I’d like to get into.” Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, he added: “It is my opinion that not to offer protection of this ordinance when it is asked for by citizens who feel oppressed is to selectively take away rights and may be an unconstitutional act.”2 The ordinance was a plank in the Democratic-FarmerLabor (DFL) Party platform that year, and it passed 5 to 1 without scandal and with little evidence of intrigue.3 Barely a month after Minneapolis enacted its own human rights ordinance, St. Paul became the second city in Minnesota to legalize gay rights, and one of the first in the nation. Three years and three months later, a jubilant Anita Bryant sat with her husband in Des Moines, Iowa, before a slew of news reporters, clicking cameras, and broadcasting equipment. The face of the “Save Our Children” campaign planned to attend a religious conference, but she paused to briefly discuss her recent victory against a similar ordinance in Florida’s Dade County—home to the city of Miami. With Bryant’s help, Florida voters overturned the measure by 69 percent to 31 percent.4 As she had said in the past, Bryant assured the media that her efforts came from Christian love—not, as many gay rights activists claimed, because she was filled with fear and hatred of something she did not understand. Act Up Here Ac t Up He re 84 “If we were going to go on a crusade across the nation to try and do away with the homosexuals,” she said as news cameras rolled, “then we certainly would’ve done it on June the 8th after one of the most . . . overwhelming victories in the country. Um, but we didn’t, we tried to avoid it, and went into a place called Norfolk , Virginia, and we met with protests and all kinds of problems, and every—”5 As she spoke, a shadow crept across the singer’s face and—before she could stop talking—a hand suddenly pushed a banana cream pie into her face. A chorus of shocked “Ohs!” erupted from the journalists, the cameras began snapping furiously, and Bryant covered her face with her hands. “Well, at least it’s a fruit pie,” she said, wiping the dessert from her eyes. Her husband, Bob Green, was serious: “Let’s pray for him right now. Anita? Anita, why don’t you pray? It’s alright.” As her husband put his arm around her shoulders, she did just that. “Father,” she began as whipped cream dripped down, “we want to thank you for the opportunity of coming to Des Moines. I want to ask that you forgive him, and that we love him, and that we’re praying for him,” her voice trembled, “to be delivered from his deviant lifestyle, Father. And I just . . .” But, before she could continue, she broke into sobs. Thrust by Thom Higgins, a young activist who drove from Minneapolis to give Bryant her “present,” the banana cream pie became a symbolic turning point in the national struggle for gay and lesbian rights. During the decade that led up to that fateful day, Minnesota had developed an underground reputation as a national center of gay activism. The pie incident wasn’t the first to propel Minnesota activists into the center of the national spotlight. Seven years earlier, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell made headlines when they became the first same-sex couple in the United States to apply for a marriage license. In the years that followed, activists such as Tim Campbell, Brian Coyle, Janet Dahlem, Steve Endean, and Karen Thompson each left their mark on the local political landscape, while such organizations as the Lesbian Feminist Organizing Committee (LFOC), the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights, the Minnesota Family Research Council, ACT...

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