Being There: A Memoir of Gay Lives in Minnesota 1950s-2020s

The author does not generally repeat the facts that were reported in the news or by other writers. Rather, he only summarizes some of them as background to the untold and mostly unrecorded people, organizations and events that the gay community created for its private lives. Most are those in which he and his life partner, John Rittman, were active participants and observers. The narrative tells the history from their personal and insider perspective. There were many more events, organizations and personalities whose histories still need to be told by LGBTQ people in the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. All the things recounted in this memoir are seen through the eyes and experiences of one of the first Minnesota gay Boomer couples to pair up for life in the Seventies. That pairing led to decades of gay activism for civil rights and same-sex marriage. As of December 21, 2023, it has lasted 50 years.

The period in question will stand out in history forever since it was the first time that GLBTQ people all over the world often successfully found their voices and their strength in sufficient numbers to challenge the oppression that many human cultures had imposed on LGBTQ people for millennia. By coming out, gays could no longer be picked off one by one. Coming out was and is the most powerful action a LGBTQ person can do.

As usual in this time, the movement for change began in the USA. LGBTQ people were aided by the social and cultural changes wrought by "The Sexual Revolution" of the Sixties. After the birth control pill and legal abortion freed women from surprise pregnancies, society was thereby freed to reconsider all the age-old customs, gender roles, sexual sins, taboos and laws surrounding sexual behavior and marriages. These reconsiderations led the Boomer and succeeding generations to slowly see that LGBTQ people needed to be freed also.

Many efforts and strategies originated in Minnesota and spread nationwide and internationally. Minnesota LGBTQ community members and some of our politicians were national and world leaders in this long effort. They mostly remain unknown beyond the state's borders due to the fact that most histories of the time have been written by people on the East and West Coasts. This memoir is a strong remedy for that omission of Minnesotans' roles and contributions to the movement.

Writing this memoir was inspired by a request to Tom Trisko from the History Department at his alma mater, St. John's University, to do a ZOOM interview on Minnesota LGBTQ history in the midst of the COVID pandemic on October 21, 2021. He agreed to write this memoir after that interview and being told that he was an "original source" of historical information on Minnesota gay history and that the history needed to be recorded before it was forgotten. The narrative is necessarily from the perspective of a gay white man of the time. Many of the people who were alive then would no doubt have different perspectives and experiences. Unfortunately, many of them are already deceased. Some of their stories are recounted here.