Obscure Local History #8: St. Paul Voters Overturn Gay Rights Protections in 1978

[Tribune headline the day after the vote.]

I was reading the 50th Anniversary Pride edition of Lavender the other day, a short summary of the history of Twin Cities' pride written by Ashley Berning, and came across a fact I hadn't seen before. St. Paul passed protections for LGBYQ workers, a "nondiscrimination ordinance" in the 1970s. But then conservatives, led apparently by the Catholic Church, organized a referendum to overturn those protections. It passed in 1978. 

Here's the passage:

By the end of the decade, however, cultural backlash had begun. Conservatives developed strange unjustified concerns that queer men and women were attempting to recruit children into the LGBTQ community thorughteh public school system, and began mcapiangs to protect the children from such abuse. (If this sounds familiar, it's because its the same rhetoric being used currently in Florida, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere.)  St. Paul Minnesota nd Miami-Dade County, Florida both reversed their antidiscrimnation ordinances in response, leaving gay teachers no protection from termination or slander. Twin Cities Pride 1978 was held in Mears Park, St. Paul in retaliation, and that year attendees danced int eh rain.

It's an interesting and reactionary moment in St. Paul history, and a reminder (as if we need such a reminder these days) that the path toward human rights is not straightforward. 

Sadly, I can't find any photos online of the '78 Mears Park pride, but I did track down a few other sources about the St. Paul campaign and the anti-gay referendum. It sounds horrible!

[MPR article on the "gay marriage debate" that includes a section on the 1978 referendum.]

[TC Daily Planet column covering the history of the 1978 vote.]

[Sad story from the Star about anti-gay violence in 1970s Twin Cities.]