The gay rights movement in Eastern Iowa -- Part 1

The struggle for equal rights among gays and lesbians began as far back as the 1920s in other parts of the country, but even into the 1960s, members of Iowa's LGBT population felt the need to try to blend into their communities. Segments of Eastern Iowa's gay community began public efforts to be recognized in the early 1970s following the June 1969 Stonewall Riots.

Over a dozen men were arrested in a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay gathering spot in New York's Greenwich Village. Instead of dispersing to gather unobtrusively elsewhere, hundreds and then thousands of gays, lesbians and transgender people began fighting back. The skirmishes with police lasted several days. The event was hailed as the watershed for the LGBT rights movement, which fanned from small groups of largely ignored activists to a nationwide protest for equal rights and acceptance.

The State College of Iowa (now UNI) Student Senate hosted a “Controversial Speakers” program to “acquaint students with 20th century problems.” In January 1967, the two Chicago speakers were Paul R. Goldman a lawyer who had lobbied for enlightened laws on homosexuality in Illinois, and David Stienecker, a member of Mattachine Midwest, an organization that promoted civil rights for gays.

When asked about state universities bringing in such speakers, Gov. Harold Hughes said he wasn't afraid to have students listen to controversial views as long as “they're going to listen to all sides.”

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The governor said he understood there had been homosexuals throughout history and he doubted if it did any good to sweep their problems under the rug or to pretend they didn't exist. Asked if he would appoint a known homosexual to a state job, he replied, “I would not.” He added that he would not give a teacher's certificate to a “known homosexual if I had the power to grant it.”

Soon after the United Nations was asked to help homosexuals achieve recognition of their civil and legal rights in 1970, the newly formed Gay Liberation Front at the University of Iowa entered a float in the UI homecoming parade. Its purpose was to make observers aware that gays were discriminated against politically and socially. The organization was the first university-affiliated gay group in the country.

The group was asked by Iowa City teacher Michael Roe the following year to provide information for his family living course in sex education at Southeast Junior High. Roe did not clear the move with his principal. He was told by Supt. James Reusswig, “Had you done so, I am confident your principal would have vetoed the use of the Gay Liberation Front, or if he had referred it to me for determination, I know I would have vetoed it.” Roe was immediately removed from his teaching post and put on clerical duty. Several petitions and lawsuits followed demanding suspension for Reusswig and firing for Roe.

The Midwest Gay Pride Conference, “Alternative Lifestyles” made its debut at the Iowa Memorial Union in April 1974. Keynote speaker Mark Segal cited “psychiatrists and Bible-quoting Christians” as the two major groups keeping gays us from public acceptance. Up until 1974, homosexuality had been deemed a mental illness.

The superintendent of the Mental Health Institute in Independence, Dr. D.L. Kyer, summed up prevailing Iowa opinion on homosexuality in a 1955 article written for The Gazette. He defined homosexuality as an impulse that has “remained immature or undergone deviation during the course of reaching maturity.” He went on to say, “ … Homosexuality seems to be a psychological condition. In most of these cases there is a defective parent-child relationship. As a consequence, the child fails to leave behind the infantile homosexual step in his development and carries it with him as he matures chronologically.”

Segal said the American Psychiatric Association “may have removed homosexuality from its list of mental disturbances, but it then turned around and termed it ‘sexual orientation disturbances.' This is progress?”

Two GLF members decided to push the envelope in 1976. Tracy Lee Bjorgum and Kenneth L. Bunch, both of rural Solon, appeared in Johnson County district court, required blood tests in hand, and requested a marriage license. Saying they were “sincere in wanting to further the rights of gays,” they were nevertheless dismayed to see heterosexual couples receive licenses almost immediately, while Clerk of Court Jack Wombacher turned them away until he could get a ruling from Johnson County Attorney Jack Dooley. Dooley said Iowa code defines marriage as “husband and wife,” and on that decision, Wombacher refused to issue the license.

Bob Kus, a register nurse and assistant professor in the UI College of Nursing, began teaching a gay studies course at the UI College of Nursing in 1982. Kus, who held a doctorate in sociology from the University of Montana, taught a similar course there. He said, “Gays compose 10 percent of the population … if we can't understand 10 percent of our patients, then we're in big trouble.”

However the gay rights movement was dealt a severe setback. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, an incurable disease that surfaced in gay communities in 1981, began appearing in Iowa in 1983. AIDS was associated with gay men, Haitians, hemophiliacs and drug addicts. The federal Center for Disease Control had identified 4,690 cases in the U.S. between 1981 and the first half of 1984, seven of them in Iowa. But a 1984 story in The Gazette reported that gay men in the Iowa City area were more likely to contract hepatitis than AIDS. The doctors who conducted the study said the reason for the low incidence of AIDS in Iowa was fewer casual sexual contacts than gays in more metropolitan areas. The widespread publicity about the epidemic fueled public fear of contracting of the disease. It took a number of years of intensive education efforts to alleviate those fears.