All Thing’s Considered’s Tom Crann talks with Lee Greenfield, former state legislator from Minneapolis, about his friend Senator Allan Spear and Spear's posthumous autobiography "Crossing the Barriers." Spear was one of the first openly gay Americans serving in elected office.
Spear was both an educator and a Minnesota senator, who served almost thirty years in the Minnesota Senate, including nearly a decade as President of the Senate. He was instrumental in passing the 1993 Minnesota Human Rights Act, which guaranteed protection from discrimination in education, employment, and housing to LGBT Minnesotans.
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TOM CRANN: It's All Things Considered from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Tom Crann. Senator Allan Spear was a trailblazer. The former president of the Minnesota Senate was also one of the first openly gay legislators in the country. He represented a Minneapolis district in the state Senate from 1973 to the year 2000.
When Allan Spear died in 2008, he left a manuscript of an autobiography he'd been working on. And that book has just been published. It's called Crossing the Barriers. Allan Spear shared that manuscript with his friend and political colleague Lee Greenfield, who himself served in the Minnesota House for over 20 years. Greenfield joins me now to talk more about Allan Spear, his book, and his legacy. It's good to have you here. Thanks for coming in.
LEE GREENFIELD: Great to be here.
TOM CRANN: Did he say to you-- give you a reason of why he wanted to write this and have this story out there? His story.
LEE GREENFIELD: Well, he thought it would be interesting and he thought it would convey some help to particularly gay/lesbian people in general, but people coming of age. And he thought his history would be useful for that. I think it goes well beyond that. There is a great deal on local politics and how it works, how being a member of a state legislature works, and how one learns the ropes and what those kinds of things are. It also involves a good deal of the history of the '60s and '70s and what went on politically of time that was different.
TOM CRANN: At the time that he came out, this was the 1970, 1974, I believe?
LEE GREENFIELD: December of 1974.
TOM CRANN: And this was just not a common thing for a public figure, much less a legislator. There was only one previous state legislator in Massachusetts who had--
LEE GREENFIELD: That was Elaine Noble, and she ran in 1974. She ran openly as a lesbian and was elected.
TOM CRANN: So he was already serving in the Senate.
LEE GREENFIELD: He was elected in 1972, started serving in '73. And he came out in an article that was on the front page of the Minnesota Star in December of 1974.
TOM CRANN: What a way to do it.
LEE GREENFIELD: We knew when he was doing the interview and when we expected it to be printed.
TOM CRANN: Yeah.
LEE GREENFIELD: So that day, a number of us went to his house and spent a day with him, having people answer the phone just to make sure who was calling and what. And actually, there was very little negative. I think there was one call that wasn't positive. But it's hard to live your life like that out in public. Most of us don't have to do that and seldom do to this extent. But he did, and it went very well.
TOM CRANN: What would you say the time he was most proud of in his time in the Senate was?
LEE GREENFIELD: Well, I think there were a lot of issues he was very proud of having carried and done. But obviously, the final passage of rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people was at the top of the list.
TOM CRANN: And this was in 1993?
LEE GREENFIELD: Correct.
TOM CRANN: I want to hear what he said at the time. This became quite a famous speech in 1993, and I want to ask you about your memories of that time. So let's hear Allan Spear from 1993.
ALLAN SPEAR: I have been told by many people who oppose this bill that sexual orientation should not be included in the human rights law because it is a choice, because it is a choice that people make. And if they make a choice, they can change that choice. Well, let me tell you that I am a 55-year-old gay man, and I am not just going through a phase.
[LAUGHTER]
I can also assure you that my sexual orientation is not something I chose, like choosing to wear a blue shirt and a red tie today. Why in the world would I have chosen it?
TOM CRANN: Lee Greenfield, as we sit and listen to Allan Spear there, he had a way of disarming people with humor, it sounds like, with facts and humor mixed together.
LEE GREENFIELD: Correct.
TOM CRANN: There is a real honesty. And also he sounds totally comfortable, the fact he's using humor and all. This had been 20 years, almost 20 years after he came out in the paper. It sounds like to him, anyway, by that point, this was no big deal and this was just who he was.
LEE GREENFIELD: Right, and people had accepted and had elected him president of the senate, which is a vote of the entire body. In a sense, he was trying to put on them, look, you know me, you vote for me. Vote for protection for other people who are gay and lesbian.
TOM CRANN: Lee Greenfield, thank you very much for sharing some insight into your friend Allan Spear, whose autobiography has been published posthumously. It's called Crossing the Barriers. Thank you.
LEE GREENFIELD: Thank you.