On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn raid in New York, which ignited multiple days of protests and garnered the attention of the media across the country, Michael McConnell reflects on the fight for gay rights that was happening in Minnesota at that time. F.R.E.E. — "Fight Repression of Erotic Expression" — was formed in Minneapolis weeks before the now-famous riots.
Michael McConnell was a member of F.R.E.E. and made history when he and Jack Baker were the first gay couple in the country to apply for a marriage license in Hennepin County in 1970. The couple, both 28 at the time, were blocked from getting a license which prompted a lawsuit that was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.
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SPEAKER: This month marks 50 years since the Stonewall riots in New York. The raid and arrest of patrons at a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, ignited multiple days of protests and garnered national media attention. But the fight for gay rights was also gaining momentum before that pivotal moment in New York, including here in Minnesota.
FREE or Fight Repression of Erotic Expression was formed in Minneapolis weeks before the now-famous riots. Michael McConnell was a member of FREE and made history when he and Jack Baker applied for a marriage license in 1970. They were the first gay couple in the country to do so.
MICHAEL MCCONNELL: It's not as if gay people hadn't done what had happened at Stonewall before. There had been riots in San Francisco. There had been riots in Los Angeles. And gays stood up to the police in several other places.
I think the reason that Stonewall became so widely known is that it's in probably the media capital of the world or certainly one of the major media capitals of the world. What we were facing was a society that was quite ignorant. We were seen as predators, sexual beings, not human beings, sinners, insane, or sick. All those things were who gay people were defined as during those times.
And so we knew we had a major educational process ahead of us. That didn't scare us so much as it was daunting because we knew the ignorance was wide and deep. However, when we got to Minnesota and began pursuing our dream of marriage, we found a society that was more open.
Yes, there were lots of people here who felt those things that I spoke of, those lies about who gay people are. But we also found a large number of people here who were just curious. Tell me about this. What is this? And why do you want to do this?
And what we found was that people, once their questions were answered, saw you as a person, not as this mythical creature. They were fine. You're just-- you're just like anybody else. We will always have our fight. But until we are clearly and absolutely defined as equal in our society by the law and by the enforcement of the law and by our treatment and security to be safe in public and be who we are in public, we will have to fight.
What I see now says that there are still part of what I call the old guard around who are really quite vocal, but frankly, they're not the majority. I look at the younger generations now., I'm just amazed. These young people are just so smart and so aware. And they see a world that most people in my generation had no idea existed.
SPEAKER: That is Michael McConnell, who made history back in 1970 when he and his husband, Jack Baker, applied for a marriage license. He spoke to MPR Reporter Marcheta Fornoff.