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LGBTQ, Today in history

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

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Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

San Francisco, September 22, 1975

Sara Jane Moore

mugshot of Sara Jane Moore
Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Two Michigan guys and a mom

Two Michigan guys, strangers to each other, got out of two different beds on September 22, 1975. Neither imagined that someone was about to intertwine their lives forever. That someone was Sara Jane Moore. She got up that morning intending to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Moore put on baggy tan pants and a neatly pressed blue raincoat.  The 45-year-old mother of four packed a chrome revolver.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Oliver W Sipple

President Fort had addressed a conference at the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Outside was Oliver W Sipple, a 33-year-old ex-marine, twice-wounded in Vietnam. He  happened to be downtown that day and thought, “Why not stick around and see the President.” As the President left the hotel, Sipple was standing near Moore when he noticed her outstretched arm holding a revolver. Sipple yelled “The bitch has got a gun” and lunged at her. The bullet missed Ford and hit a cab driver who, fortunately, was only wounded.

With so much media around, a picture caught the moment: Sipple on the far left, Moore circled in red.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Hero

President Ford sent a letter to Sipple. It said in part,

“I want you to know how much I appreciated your selfless actions last Monday…. The events were a shock to us all, but you acted quickly and without fear for your own safety.

“By doing so you helped to avert danger to me and to others in the crowd. You have my heartfelt appreciation.”
Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Outed

Navy veteran Harvey Milk was openly gay and active in San Francisco politics, He saw Sipple’s bravery as an opportunity to demonstrate that a gay person could also be a hero. Milk contacted San Francisco journalist Herb Caen. A few day’s later, Caen wrote about Milk, Sipple, and Sipple being gay. The new component to Sipple’s life went national.

Being a gay ex-Marine who displayed bravery both in uniform and again as a civilian sadly changed the story’s arc. For many, it somehow tempered their view of that courage, even in San Francisco, a place more (but not completely) tolerant of gays.

On September 29, William Safire wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Sipple is guilty of committing heroism in public, and is trying to hold on to the last shreds of the privacy that was stripped from him as a consequence of his selfless act. He is probably under family pressure to go one way, and under peer‐group pressure to go the other, with publicity stakes fairly high. He will think twice before he does any good deed again.”

Until his brave act, Sipple’s parents did not know of is sexual orientation. Finding out, his parents disowned him and later when Sipple’s mother died, Mr Sipple told his son he was not welcome to attend the funeral.

Keep in mind that on September 19th, just three days before the assassination attempt, a three‐member panel of Air Force officers took 4 hours 27 minutes  to conclude that T.Sgt. Leonard P. Matlovich, gay, was unfit for military service.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Aftermath

Sipple sued the Chronicle for invasion of privacy. The Superior Court in San Francisco dismissed the suit. Sipple continued his legal battle. In May 1984 the California Supreme Court refused to reinstate his invasion-of-privacy suit. His lawyer said that Sipple would have been better off ”if he had let that woman shoot.”

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Death

Oliver W. Sipple death is listed as February 2, 1989. That is the day authorities discovered his body. He had likely been dead for a few days. He was 47.

Papers reported that he had received treatment for schizophrenia, alcoholism and several other health problems. He weighed nearly 300 pounds when he died. His apartment was in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, a mainly low rent district. By that time, Sipple’s days  consisted of getting up and going to a bar to drink.

On the wall of his apartment hung the framed letter from Ford.

President Ford, the man who pardoned the un-convicted President who’d broken laws as President, had never invited the man who saved his life to the White House. Some conjectured that that failure was due to Sipple’s sexual orientation. The President said his letter had been enough.

 

Moore

Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty. At her sentencing to life in prison she stated “Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And, no, I’m not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.“

Moore escaped from prison in 1979 for a few hours. She later said, “If I knew that I was going to be captured…I would have stopped at the local bar just to get a drink and a burger.”

On December 31, 2007, Moore, 77, was released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. When the media asked about her crime Moore stated, “I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try.”

In May 2009, NBC’s Matt Lauer interviewed her on the “Today Show.” (NYT article)

Radiolab, an outstanding podcast, presented a program on Oliver Sipple on September 21, 2017. Here is the link to that podcast.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed
LGBTQ

Richard Baker & James McConnell

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Richard Baker & James McConnell

Married September 3, 1971

Perhaps some day June 26 will be a holiday recognizing the historic import of the US Supreme Court decision on that date in 2015 when the Court decided in Obergefell v Hodges that same -sex marriage was legal according to the US Constitution.

Some day.

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Richard John Baker and James Michael McConnell met at a barn party on Halloween night, 1966, in Norman, Oklahoma. They fell in love and on March 10, 1967 Baker proposed to McConnell.  McConnell said yes, but only if they could marry.

Yes you read correctly. It was 1967 and of course the large majority of Americans would have found the idea of two men marrying as laughable as it was illegal.

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Long road

In 1970, the couple lived in Minneapolis and in May they kept their and several other same-sex couples applied for marriage licenses to Minneapolis court clerk Gerald R. Nelson. The clerk denied the licenses saying that marriage was limited to “persons of the opposite sex,” though the Minnesota laws said nothing about such a limitation.

Baker and McConnell sued. Not only did the judge uphold the clerk’s decision, but he specifically ordered that no such licenses be issued.

Despite the setback, both men were determined to find a way forward. McConnell adopted Baker in August 1971 so that the couple would be able to access some tax benefits and inheritance rights for each other. Also Jack Baker legally assumed the gender-neutral name “Pat Lynn McConnell” and on August 16, 1971, using Baker’s new name, the town clerk of Mankato, a small town west of Minneapolis in Blue Earth County, issued them a marriage license.

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Married

On September 3, 1971, the Rev. Roger Lynn of the United Methodist Church officiated their marriage  in a private ceremony.

The Blue Earth County Attorney challenged the legitimacy of their marriage license, but a grand jury “found the question not worth pursuing.” Baker and McConnell considered themselves legally married from then on.

Six weeks after their wedding, on October 15, 1971, the Minnesota  Supreme Court ruled that marriage “is a union of man and woman” that the Constitution did not provide for same-sex couples to get married.

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Federal appeal

Baker and McConnell appealed their case to the US Supreme Court. Almost exactly a year later, on October 10, 1972, that Court stated: “Appeal from Sup. Ct. Minn. dismissed for want of a substantial federal question.”

That one sentence established a powerful and long-lasting precedent, one often used by the opponents of marriage equality for the next 30 years.

Richard Baker & James McConnell

A life together

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Baker and McConnell continued their lives together as a happily married couple and continued their activism. Baker became an attorney and a local politician, and McConnell had a 37 year career as a librarian with Hennepin County. They have both retired and continue to live in Minnesota.

Wedding Heard ‘Round the World

Richard John Baker v. Gerald R Nelson

In 2016 the University of Minnesota Press published The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World, America’s First Gay Marriage written  by Michael McConnell with Jack Baker.

Satisfying Coda

September 18, 2018, a district court in Minnesota issued a ruling that said, “The marriage is declared to be in all respects valid.”

“The ruling was a long time coming, but I knew the courts would eventually rule in our favor,” said Baker. “Over the years, many legal scholars have reviewed our case and concluded that the law was on our side.”

February 16, 2019, just two days after Valentine’s Day, the Social Security Administration sent a letter to Jack Baker and Michael McConnell confirming once and for all that their 1971 marriage was legal, stating that they were indeed entitled to monthly husband’s benefits.

Link >>> Marriage Equality dot org story

Richard Baker & James McConnell

Cold War, LGBTQ

Executive Order 10450

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Executive Order 10450

April 27, 1953

President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450.

Executive Order 10450When the Cold War began, irrational fear of anything associated with Communism ruled the day. Clever politicians looking to gain patriotic points simply associated fringe members of society with Communism to disgrace them and sometimes imprison them.

The LGBTQ community was included in this wide-ranging persecution. Historically this period before the Stonewall riots and their marking a new era of activism is known as the Lavender Scare.

Executive Order 10450

          The text of the executive order began with:

 Sec. 8. (a) The investigations conducted pursuant to this order shall be designed to develop information as to whether the employment or retention in employment in the Federal service of the person being investigated is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security. Such information shall relate, but shall not be limited, to the following:

(1) Depending on the relation of the Government employment to the national security:

 (i) Any behavior, activities, or associations which tend to show that the individual is not reliable or trustworthy.

(ii) Any deliberate misrepresentations, falsifications, or omissions of material facts.

(iii) Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, sexual perversion. (my emphasis)

(iv) Any illness, including any mental condition, of a nature which in the opinion of competent medical authority may cause significant defect in the judgment or reliability of the employee, with due regard to the transient or continuing effect of the illness and the medical findings in such case.

(v) Any facts which furnish reason to believe that the individual may be subjected to coercion, influence, or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national security.

(2) Commission of any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, or sedition, or attempts thereat or preparation therefore, or conspiring with, or aiding or abetting, another to commit or attempt to commit any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, or sedition.

Executive Order 10450
New Yorker, June 17, 1950

 

At that time, nearly all of society, including medical professionals, considered homosexuality a sexual perversion. In fact, it wasn’t until December 15, 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed the designation of homosexuality as a mental illness.  (NIH article)

The American Psychological Association, a different professional group, removed its designation of homosexuality as unhealthy in 1975. (2003 APA article)