Jim Toy—the person widely considered to be Michigan’s first openly gay man and one of its most prominent LGBTQ activists—passed away at age 91, http://MLive.com reported.
Toy died on New Year’s Day, said Washtenaw County Commissioner Jason Morgan on social media.
Many LGBTQ+-rights activists believe Toy to be the first publicly out man in Michigan, having come out at a rally in Detroit in 1970. Toy told MLive/The Ann Arbor News in 2015 his coming out was an accident, though he was representing the Detroit Gay Liberation Front at the rally as a founding member. Other work in Ann Arbor included co-founding the Ann Arbor Gay Hotline in 1972, writing the city’s “Lesbian-Gay Pride Week Proclamation” the same year and formulating the city’s non-discrimination policy on sexual orientation.
A clinical social worker by training, he graduated with his master’s degree from the University of Michigan. He accomplished much of his work at the Ann Arbor-based university, serving as the diversity coordinator in the former Office of Institutional Equity until 2008.
The full article is at http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2022/01/michigans-first-openly-gay-man-prominent-ann-arbor-lgbtq-activist-dies-at-91.html.