- Ten Percent Society
The Ten Percent Society is the name of the first
gay rights organization inNorth Dakota to be created by students and faculty at theUniversity of North Dakota in 1982. The organization gained its name from a widely held (but false) belief that scientistAlfred Kinsey 's research in the 1940s and 1950s had stated that ten percent of the population was gay. While the organization had little early success, it started to foster an increasedtolerance for gay people and a more active gay rights movement in the region.Gay Rights in North Dakota
When the Ten Percent Society was created in the early 1980s there was no organized movement for gay rights in the state, and the only gay bar in North Dakota was in the City of Fargo. While
homosexuality had not been a crime in the state since the 1970s, North Dakota was deeply conservative on matters relating tosexual orientation andgender identity . Hence it was only in the few urban areas, with significant college populations, that the state had any organized gay community. UND had the first gay rights organization in the state.The UND Ten Percent Society would soon be joined by a second chapter at
North Dakota State University , and a third atMinnesota State University Moorhead (Moorhead is a border city in west-central Minnesota, which tends to share the conservative values of North Dakota). SeveralPFLAG chapters would later spring up in larger cities in North Dakota as well, but throughout the 1980s to the mid-1990s these organizations had little public visibility and often chose to focus less on state or regional politics, and more on providing a non-homophobic semi-regular events and dances. Advocacy for gay rights seemed like a lost cause - and with good reason.In the 1980s, the North Dakota legislators refused to include
sexual orientation in the state-wide human rights act, and the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled that thesexual orientation of a parent was grounds to deny that parent custody of a child. Outside the more socially progressive atmosphere of the college towns, few people seriously entertained the notion of promoting gay rights in the state. This began to change in 1999 with the creation ofEquality North Dakota , the first gay rights organization in North Dakota that was not affiliated with a state college or the largely supportive role that localPFLAG chapters engage in.That same year, the
I-beam night club opened inMoorhead , MN and became the only gay bar accessible to people in North Dakota and west-central Minnesota. In 2001 thePride Collective Community Center was created as the firstLGBT community center forNorth Dakota and for the west-central region ofMinnesota . The growing popularity of theInternet allowed for formally isolated gay people to network for socialization and for gay rights.Campaigns to increase political and legal rights and protections for
LGBT issues have had mixed results. In 2003 the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled that the sexual orientation of a parent should no longer be grounds for automatic loss of custody. In contrast, the 2004 North Dakota legislature passed a constitutional amendment that banned legal recognition of same-sex marriages, domestic partnership benefits andcivil unions . Although this was a major setback forLGBT advocates, this amendment did have organized opposition from gay rights organizations, other progressive organizations and the Dem-NPL candidate for Governor. The amount and visibility of opposition to this highly controversial amendment alone demonstrates significant growth ofLGBT culture and a more general trend of changing awareness ofLGBT rights in North Dakota overall.References
* [http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/tenps/ UND Ten Percent Society]
* [http://www.acm.ndsu.nodak.edu/Ten_Percent/ Fargo-Moorhead Universites Ten Percent Society]
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