Heine, R. Bertrand. Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell apply for a marriage license in Minneapolis. March 18, 1970. Negative Number 015051-8, Minnesota Historical Society.
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Jack Baker and Michael McConnell met in 1966 and quickly became a committed couple. Hoping to earn a solid living and to find a route to legally marry, Baker enrolled in law school at the University of Minnesota in 1969, where he became the president of the first gay student organization on campus and later became the first openly gay student body president in the United States. While doing research during his first semester, he discovered that Minnesota laws did not explicitly ban same-sex marriage, so on May 18, 1970, Baker and McConnell went to the Hennepin County courthouse to apply for a marriage license. The clerk, Gerald Nelson, refused to approve their license, and the resulting publicity cost McConnell a job offer from the University of Minnesota libraries. McConnell sued to regain his job offer but failed, and the couple together sued Gerald Nelson in the case of Baker v. Nelson, the first lawsuit attempting to win legal same-sex marriage in the U.S. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Baker and McConnell, but the two found a different way to get married by changing Baker’s legal name to the gender neutral Pat McConnell in order to trick a Blue Earth County clerk into approving a marriage license. After becoming the first legally married gay couple in the United States, Baker and McConnell continued to be leaders in the Minnesota LGBTQIA+ community before largely leaving public life in the 1980s.
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