Why did a gay man throw a pie in Anita Bryant's face, and who was he?

One of the most famous moments in Anita Bryant’s career of antigay activism occurred October 14, 1977, when a gay man threw a pie in her face in Des Moines.

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Bryant had come to Iowa for a concert and to continue her homophobic crusade after persuading voters to repeal a gay rights ordinance in Miami-Dade County in Florida. During a press conference, gay activist Thom Higgins tossed a pie at her. She joked, “At least it’s a fruit pie,” then started praying out loud for him to be “delivered” from his “lifestyle.” She didn’t want authorities to take any action against him, she said.

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The man behind the pie

While Bryant, who died in December, is being remembered for her homophobia, the pie thrower, Higgins, had his own considerable career in activism. He grew up in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. In the latter, he attended a Catholic high school and the University of North Dakota, where he started an alternative newspaper, Snow Job, which got him suspended from the university in 1968, according to an article on the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota’s website.

He then moved to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where he became an advocate for gay rights. He also was chief announcer and program manager for the Radio Talking Book Network, a service for the blind, and was a freelance writer for the Minnesota Daily and Hundred Flowers, an underground paper, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

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A tireless activist

He even is credited with coining the phrase “Gay Pride,” the ACLU notes. “In the Twin Cities, religious leaders were vocal, and Higgins wanted to counter the negativity coming out of the church,” the article says. “His parochial education seemed to have prepared him well for this moment. Higgins cleverly paired one of the seven deadly sins, ‘pride,’ with ‘gay.’”

He was a “tireless activist,” according to the ACLU. He cofounded the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force, which assisted those fleeing persecution in Cuba and was a founding member and officer of Fight Repression of Erotic Expression, the Gay Imperative, and the Church of the Chosen People, “a gay pagan religion,” the historical society reports.

Making marriage equality history

He also managed Jack Baker’s campaign for Minneapolis City Council in 1973. Baker and Michael McConnell were the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license, doing so in the early 1970s, long before same-sex unions were legalized. Baker did not win the election.

Higgins was an advertising copywriter in the Twin Cities in the 1970s, and in 1981, he began studying to be a nurse. He received his degree in 1983 and worked as a nurse until his death from AIDS complications in 1994. He will always be remembered for throwing the pie at Bryant, but there was much more to his activist career.