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Friday, August 26, 2016

Gay marriage history summary by Jim Burroway's blog posts

May 18, 1970 Michael McConnell and Jack Baker married by Hennepin County Minnesota Justice of the Peace

PHOTO: On May 18, 1970 Michael McConnell and Jack Baker were married by Hennepin County Minnesota Justice of the Peace, which was not barred by law in Minnesota at that time and which led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage in1972. (See previous post Gay marriage pioneer Jack Baker starts blog (confirmed) (4/4/12))

in my previous post Gay marriage history on PBS by Marc Solomon still omitting Jack Baker and Michael McConnell (3/2/16), I show two books about the history of the fight for gay marriage -- one by Marc Solomon, "Winning Marriage: The Inside Story of How Same-Sex Couples Took on the Politicians and Pundits--And Won," Foreedge 2014 and the other book an autobiography by Michael McConnell, with Jack Baker, as Told to Gail Langer Karwoski, "The Wedding Heard 'Round the World - America's First Gay Marriage," University of Minnesota Press, 2016, which chronicles Michael McConnell's marriage to Jack Baker, whose marriage activism led to the first U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage in 1972. Also, in another previous post (PBS history of gay marriages in 1975 Boulder omits Jack Baker and Michael McConnell (7/1/16)) I mention how the history of gay marriage is often retold incorrectly as being a recent thing and I include a still from a PBS documentary that omitted any mention of Jack Baker's U.S. Supreme Court Ruling in 1972, but it did show the 1975 marriage of Richard Adams and Tony Sullivan who legally obtained a marriage license in Boulder, Colorado. The documentary fails to document how, these two men had been inspired to marry by Jack Baker's story.

Therefore, I was happy to see a series of Jim Burroway's blog posts that provide a good summary of gay marriage history over the last century, which includes Jack Baker's 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision and the 1950's and 1960's discussion of "homophile marriage" that was printed in a homophile activist magazine edited by the former Oregon State University Professor W. Dorr Legg. See the excellent series of Jim Burroway's blog posts as listed below:

Also, see previous post Jack Baker case still cited to bar gay marriage (3/12/11) and also the following links:

Finally, here is a list of some other and unrelated posts by Jim Burroway that you may find interesting: