Stephen Robert Endean was an early gay rights activist, first in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, then nationally.

He was born in Davenport, Iowa

Davenport, Iowa

Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk...

, and came to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

 from 1968-1972, majoring in political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

.

Some of the visionary items he worked on:

• 1971: founded Minnesota's first gay and lesbian political group, Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights Legislative Committee).
• 1972: became the first gay and lesbian rights lobbyist in Minnesota; helped to pass gay rights ordinances in Minneapolis (1974) and St. Paul
  Saint Paul, Minnesota
  Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
  
   (1974-1975). Neither of these ordinances, as initially enacted, protected transgender people. However, the Minneapolis ordinance was amended to include trans protections in December, 1975.
• 1972: helped hold a gay picnic in Loring Park
  Loring Park
  Loring Park is the largest park in the Central Community of Minneapolis, Minnesota on the southwest corner of downtown Minneapolis. It also lends its name to the surrounding neighborhood.- Park :...
  
  , and a small march down Nicollet Avenue
  Nicollet Avenue
  Nicollet Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and three of its suburbs. It passes through a number of locally well-known neighborhoods and districts, notably Eat Street in south Minneapolis and the traffic-restricted Nicollet Mall in the city's downtown.It began as a military road...
  
  , the beginning of Twin Cities Pride http://www.tcpride.org/ celebrations.
• 1975: Along with the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (MCGR) and Democratic legislators, Endean opposed trans-inclusion and public accommodations in a statewide gay rights bill, giving as their reason the belief that the bill would not pass with such inclusion. An editorial in the Advocate sneered at those who supported inclusion. Although the supporters of trans-inclusion did ultimately convince Republican Representative Arne Carlson
  Arne Carlson
  Arne Helge Carlson, Sr. is an American politician and the 37th Governor of the state of Minnesota.-Early years, education and family:...
  
   to introduce a trans-inclusion amendment to the bill, both Carlson's amendmendment and the overall bill ultimately failed. The language of Carlson's amendment is what was added to the Minneapolis ordinance later in 1975. Although Dudley Clendenin and Adam Nagourney
  Adam Nagourney
  Adam Nagourney is an American journalist covering U.S. politics for The New York Times.-Biography:...
  
  , in Out For Good, give the impression that those who protested for trans-inclusion in 1975 caused the defeat of that statewide bill, in 1976 MCGR had conceded that actually the prospect of gay teachers scared off enough support to doom the bill.
• mid 1970's: Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force (later NGLTF). Helped fight to try to prevent overturning or gay rights measures in Dade County, FL (1977) and St. Paul, MN (1978).
• 1978: moved to Washington, DC to become Director of the Gay Rights National Lobby.
• 1980: started the Human Rights Campaign Fund
  Human Rights Campaign
  The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
  
  (later just HRC), and served as its first Executive Director.
• mid 1980's: created the Fairness Fund, a grassroots program to generate constituent mail to Congress (later HRC(F)'s Field Division, later renamed Speak Out).
• 1985: diagnosed with AIDS. After this, increasing health problems led to semi-retirement.
• 1991: created National Endorsement Campaign, an effort to get straight political leaders and media figures to endorse equal rights for GLBT people.
• 1991: wrote his memoir, Into the Mainstream (Haworth Press).
• 1993: was present (in a wheelchair) at the Minnesota State Capitol when the Legislature passed the Minnesota GLBT Equal Rights law.

Steve Endean died of AIDS-related complications on August 4, 1993, just 2 days before his 45th birthday.