Thom Higgins is credited for coining the term “gay pride.” He also earned national headlines when he threw a pie in anti-gay activist Anita Bryant’s face in 1977. And for most of his 44 years, Higgins called Minnesota home.
Yet Higgins remains a footnote in LGBTQ history. Given that it’s Pride weekend here in the Twin Cities, I thought it was the ideal time to tell his remarkable story.
“I think that Tom Higgins is a really fascinating and unique figure in the history of gay politics, not only in the Midwest, but in the United States,” said Myra Billund-Phibbs, a University of Minnesota doctoral student who has extensively studied Higgins. “I think he represents a real confluence of gay liberation, the most radical ideals that were percolating within gay liberation at that time. But he’s also a really important figure of the general counterculture in that period.”
Thom Higgins works as Arts & Entertainment Editor at the University of North Dakota student newspaper, Dakota Student, in 1967. (Courtesy of the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota)
Thomas Lawrence Higgins was born on June 17, 1950, in Beaver Dam, Wis. His family moved several times while Higgins was growing up and he attended Catholic schools in both Minnesota and North Dakota. In 1967, he entered the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks as part of a program for gifted students. He studied journalism and theater and worked on the campus newspaper the Dakota Student.
Political tensions at UND ran hot at the time and while Higgins didn’t consider himself a hippie, he was staunchly opposed to the Vietnam War. He was a sharp dresser known to wear ascots and was involved in Catholic student groups. He also made quite an impression on everyone who met him.
“I never knew him to knock on a door, because every door that he opened was always open to him,” Lyn Burton, a former editor of the Dakota Student, told the Grand Forks Herald in 2024. “You’d definitely invite him to your parties.”
But Higgins didn’t last too long at college. He was suspended in 1968 because of his involvement in a satirical underground newspaper that one school official called “the most vulgar and obscene publication he has seen during his 10 years here.” (In an interview with the Grand Forks Herald, fellow student and longtime friend Pat Carney laughed off the incident: “It’s really funny what is scandalous now compared to what was scandalous then.”)
“I think Tom just really had an idea of who he was, and he wasn’t afraid to stick out,” said his sister, Maureen Kelly. “He liked to stick out. I’m probably not being kind enough to him, but he was always somebody who would rather not fit in. Now, when I think of what he did, I’m really proud of him.”
After getting kicked out of UND, Higgins returned to the Twin Cities and worked a series of jobs, starting as the chief announcer and program manager for the Radio Talking Book Network, a state service for the blind. He also freelanced for the Minnesota Daily and for Hundred Flowers, an underground newspaper. In 1969, Higgins was the first person in the state to be granted a presidential conscientious objector draft classification. His deep dive into politics soon followed.
“He very rapidly becomes the most pugnacious and one of the most radical among a group of gay radicals,” Billund-Phibbs said. “Higgins was part of a very small wing of gay liberation activists who were very much aligned with trans women, gender minorities and sexual minorities as part of what they called the gay imperative. It was the idea that to really change society in a holistic sense, the validity and worth and beauty of different ways of being, of different sexualities, of different gender presentations, really had to be held up and had to be respected, and it had to be demanded. It had to be demanded unapologetically, and he was unapologetic. He was confrontational. He was a total s— kicker. All the mainstream media coverage of him in the ’70s often described him as this kind of little bulldog.”
A 1977 photo of gay rights activist Thom Higgins. (Courtesy of the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota)
After the Stonewall riots in 1969 sparked the gay liberation movement, Higgins gave it a name: gay pride. In a piece for the ACLU of North Dakota, advocacy manager Cody Schuler wrote: “In the Twin Cities, religious leaders were vocal, and Higgins wanted to counter the negativity coming out of the church. His parochial education seemed to have prepared him well for this moment. Higgins cleverly paired one of the seven deadly sins, ‘pride,’ with ‘gay’ since church teaching held same-sex behaviors as violations of divine and natural law.”
A local activist was invited to speak in Chicago in 1971 and introduced the phrase “gay pride” to the crowd. It stuck.
In the early ’70s, Higgins had his iron in many fires. He did volunteer draft counseling and work with Minnesota Clergy and Laity Concerned, two committees of the Minnesota Human Rights Council and the steering committee of the University Strike Against the War. His day job was in advertising and in his free time, he worked for political campaigns.
Higgins also co-founded the Church of the Chosen People, which advocated homosexuality as a “healthy and fulfilling personal option.”
“It was a sort of hippie pagan church that had a lot to do with gay politics. One of the sacraments of that church was smoking pot. He was just a really eccentric and fascinating person,” Billund-Phibbs said.
In 1974, the St. Paul City Council passed a nondiscrimination ordinance that, among other things, banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. But it was repealed four years later thanks to the work of … the 1958 Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner.
Anita Bryant began her career as a pop singer and recorded a series of hits from 1959 to 1964, including “Till There Was You,” “Paper Roses” and “My Little Corner of the World.” During the ’60s, she frequently joined Bob Hope on USO holiday tours. In 1969, Bryant became a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission.
In 1977, Bryant used her celebrity to boost the political coalition Save Our Children, which aimed to overturn a nondiscrimination ordinance in Miami. They succeeded that June, leading to St. Paul and other cities repealing similar ordinances.
Emboldened by that victory, Bryant announced plans to open a network of Anita Bryant Centers where “homosexuals could go for rehabilitation.” On Oct. 14, 1977, she held a live televised press conference in Des Moines to discuss the centers and her recent political victories. Higgins and several other Twin Cities gay rights activists were in attendance, pies in hand.
The practice of what was called “pieing” was controversial among activists, but Higgins and his cohorts saw it as a nonviolent way to protest, and ridicule, authority figures. So in the middle of Bryant’s press conference, Higgins got up, walked over to her and pushed a banana cream pie into her face.
“At least it’s a fruit pie,” a clearly shocked Bryant said before breaking into tears and praying for God to forgive Higgins “for his deviant lifestyle.” She didn’t press charges, but the incident quickly went the 1977 version of viral.
“This is the year of the pie,” Higgins told reporters. “I saved her a bullet. The pie thing relieved a lot of anger that gays feel toward her … It left another bigot with a sticky face.”
The incident was the beginning of the end for Bryant. Public sentiment soured on her and, by the end of the decade, she had lost her endorsements as well as her husband, whom she divorced in 1980. The St. Paul City Council approved a nondiscrimination ordinance for a second time in 1990, and activists defeated a second repeal attempt the following year.
It was a turning point for Higgins as well. The looming AIDS crisis inspired Higgins to pursue a nursing degree at Minneapolis Community College, and he worked in the field until his death from AIDS complications on Nov. 10, 1994. Higgins is buried in Roseville.
“I really think that his place in the history books has not been cemented, and it ought to be,” Billund-Phibbs said.
Kelly laughed when she called Higgins her crazy brother. “My friends loved him, they absolutely loved him. He had a crazy laugh. He was a character and he just wasn’t afraid to be himself.
“What Thom did was amazing. Not too many people would have had his strength and courage.”
Related Articles
Supreme Court says Maryland parents can pull their kids from public school lessons using LGBTQ books
With multiple Pride flags vandalized in St. Paul, neighbors responding with more flags
A judge resisted Trump’s order on gender identity. The EEOC just fired her
How US adults’ views on same-sex marriage have changed since the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling
What to know about the Supreme Court ruling 10 years ago that legalized same-sex marriage in the US
