Departures of note

On October 14, 1977, Thomas Lawrence Higgins attended a televised press conference where singer Anita Bryant was promoting her plan to open centers for the 'rehabilitation' of homosexuals. During the event, Higgins stood up and pushed a banana cream pie into Bryant's face. He and four companions then left the studio to answer media questions, and Bryant's husband, Bob Green, retaliated by pressing an unused pie into the face of one of the group. Criminal charges were not filed against Higgins. Earlier that year, he had also been involved in the pieing of John Roach.

Higgins was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and attended Catholic schools in Minnesota and North Dakota before studying journalism and theater at the University of North Dakota, where he was suspended in 1968 for his involvement in an underground student publication, Snow Job. In 1969, he became the first person in Minnesota to receive conscientious objector status from the Vietnam War. Around that time, he joined the Fight Repression of Erotic Expression (FREE) group, where he is credited with coining the term 'gay pride.' His affiliation with FREE led to his termination from a job at State Radio Services for the Blind, prompting FREE to picket the workplace in protest for anti-discrimination protections.

In 1980, Higgins and fellow activist Bruce Brockway founded the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force in response to an influx of refugees fleeing Cuba, including gay men who faced legal persecution in their home country. The refugees were housed in camps and could not leave without an American sponsor. The organization mobilized Minneapolis's gay community to sponsor gay refugees, allowing them to leave and resettle.

Higgins died of AIDS complications on November 10, 1994, and is buried in Roseville, Minnesota.