BEING THERE

A Memoir of Gay Lives in Minnesota 1950s-2020s

De: Thomas Edward Trisko

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This unique, lively and open memoir of gay male life in Minnesota in the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries captures the people, organizations, events, atmosphere, facts and flavor of those gay times. With honesty, humor, laughter and tears, wins and losses, lives and deaths, the author recounts the experience of being Minnesota gay men. The memoir includes many photographs, links to videos, sound recordings, reference materials, an extensive Bibliography and a Timeline. Utilizing these will lead the reader and researchers to many more materials, especially at the University of Minnesota’s unique Tretter Collection in LGBTQ World, USA and Minnesota history.

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, straight society was thereby freed to reconsider all the age-old customs, gender roles, sexual sins, taboos and laws surrounding their own sexual behavior and marriages. These reconsiderations led the Boomer and succeeding generations to slowly see that LGBTQ people needed to be freed also. There has been a strong reaction from social and religious conservatives that has slowed the movement nationally in the USA.

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. That 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.