Dr. Matthew Stark Named 2008 Grand Marshal for Twin Cities Pride Festival
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Twin Cities Pride is pleased to announce that it has selected former Minnesota Civil Liberties Executive Director Dr. Matthew (Matt) Stark to be the 2008 Grand Marshal for the Twin Cities Pride Festival. The Grand Marshal is someone who has made a significant, positive impact on the Twin Cities GLBT community.
Dr. Stark is a tireless defender of civil rights and equal protection for all people. He has a long history of support for the GLBT community in Minnesota and across the country.
As the Executive Director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union (1973 - 1987), and before that from 1967 - 1973 as President of MCLU, Matt Stark was an early supporter of GLBT rights in Minnesota. He was instrumental in bringing GLBT rights cases to court, including the first Gay Marriage case in the United States (Baker v. Nelson, 1971). Under Dr. Stark, the MCLU also brought the case that guaranteed the right of gay men and lesbians to hold a block party on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis (Gay Pride vs. City of Minneapolis, 1980), and for several years in the early history of Twin Cities Pride he was the first non-GLBT person to speak publicly at the Pride Festival on behalf of GLBT rights.
"The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union was certainly a leader on GLBT rights at the ACLU. The folks there recognized that GLBT rights were an important civil liberties issue well before the national ACLU, or other affiliates did," said Matt Coles, Director, ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.
Other prominent GLBT cases in which Dr. Stark was involved with MCLU volunteer attorneys, include: whether a gay man could be denied the right to take the bar exam and be allowed to practice law in Minnesota; whether public utilities could refuse to hire gay men and lesbians based on their sexual orientation; whether the Minneapolis School Board could prohibit gay and lesbian speakers in public elementary schools; whether Minneapolis Public School administrators could censor a Gay Pride advertisement in a high school newspaper; challenging a probate court decision denying a lesbian guardianship of or visitation rights to her incapacitated partner; and whether custody of a minor child could be denied to a birth parent solely on account of her sexual orientation.
Matt Stark, Executive Director Emeritus, MCLU, was helpful in the founding of the Quatrefoil Library, and in lobbying at the State and National levels for the passage of equal rights laws for GLBT people. He was one of the founders and a significant Board Member of the Minnesota Gay and Lesbian Legal Assistance Center (1979 - 1989). During his retirement, he has initiated a major project of publishing documented histories about the local GLBT community.
All four of this year's Pride Award recipients, including Grand Marshal Dr. Matthew Stark, will be honored at the annual Grand Marshal's Ball, which will be held Saturday, May 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Graves/601 Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Tickets for the Ball are on sale on Pride's website, tcpride.org for $75. The event will feature a brief awards ceremony, silent auction, full dinner, and entertainment.
Celebrating its 36th year in 2008, Twin Cities Pride, the organizer of the Twin Cities Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender (GLBT) Pride Celebration, began in 1972 with a small group of activists meeting for a picnic in Minneapolis' Loring Park and a short march down Nicollet Mall. Over the intervening years, the Twin Cities Pride Celebration has grown to be the largest GLBT Pride Celebration in the region and 3rd largest in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance. Twin Cities Pride is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
It is the mission of Twin Cities Pride to commemorate and celebrate our diverse heritage, inspire the achievement of equality and challenge discrimination.