OutFront Minnesota

The Sabathani Community Center, 310 E. 38th Street, Minneapolis

Minnesota’s oldest extant organization for queer community services is a testament to the changing social climate of Minnesota’s queer life since Stonewall. A small meeting of volunteers at Gay House began the organization around 1970. Working as the Gay Action Council (GAC), these individuals acted as impromptu counselors for closeted and newly-out people before psychiatrists could be trusted—the American Psychological Association only removed Homosexuality as a character disorder in 1973.

For most of the 1970s, the GAC (later the Gay-Lesbian Action Council, and later still the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council—GLCAC) worked to increase its credibility as a counseling service. Trained and licensed therapists replaced the volunteers when allegations of unprofessional sexual advances rocked the council.(1) This scandal was the first of many for the embattled organization’s various incarnations.

The GLCAC’s counseling services were delivered by a telephone service; this interaction with troubled community members encouraged development of the Action Council’s legal, spiritual, and think-tank branches. Following the HIV/AIDS crisis, the GLCAC handled preliminary work regarding the disease in Minnesota. Eventually, the council reduced its HIV/AIDS health services—with the Advent of the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP)—and instead focused on related political and legal advocacy work.

The first board and staff of thh Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

The parameters of this work expanded when Ann DeGroot—arguably OutFront’s most resolute figure—took the helm in 1987. DeGroot became the organization’s (and perhaps the community’s) spokesperson during a significant time in local history. She decried the Immigration and Naturalization Department’s anti-AIDS policy at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport in 1989,(2) applauded a ruling that awarded partner benefits to lesbian employees of the Minneapolis Pulic Library in 1992,(3) and warned of the inherent discrimination in a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2003.(4)

This amendment did not pass, and OutFront Minnesota (which changed its name in 1999) continues to focus on Minnesota’s marriage debate, as well as other issues.

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(1)Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. Interview with the author, 2/23/10

(2)“AIDS Carrier Withdraws Visa Application.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 6/8/1989

(3)“The Broad Net of ‘Gay Rights.’” Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, 12/4/1992

(4)McCallum, Laura. “Massachusetts Ruling Prompts Minnesota Lawmakers to Clarify Marriage Definition.” Minnesota Public Radio, 11/20/2003

This page is still under construction. -SVC

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)