Taking a Queer History Boston tour on the Boston Common

Steph here. I made the last of Queer History Boston's summer tours downtown a couple of weeks ago.

Why it matters: I learned more about the history I take for granted as I go downtown every week.

How it works: Roughly a dozen people, myself included, met with a tour guide outside Park Street Station on a Tuesday evening.

• He took us through various spots throughout the Boston Common and Public Garden — some with clear connections to queer culture, and others with tangential links.

A few highlights:

👨🏻‍⚖️ Queer people existed long before the nation's founding, and Puritan Massachusetts imposed some of the earliest laws outlawing sodomy and "lewd" behavior.

• Two Plymouth men, Edward Preston and Edward Mitchell, were charged with "lewd and sodomical" practices in 1642.

🪧 I had heard of Bayard Rustin, but I didn't know that he was gay or that he advised Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• And I certainly didn't know that King had distanced himself from Rustin after a Black congressman threatened to spread a rumor that the two were having a love affair.
• It ultimately killed their plans to for a demonstration in Los Angeles.

🐫 Boston Pride has outlived wars, recessions and the Big Dig, but the annual march often raises questions about whether it is a protest or an apolitical celebration.

• Pride in 1984 leaned toward the latter, sparking criticism over the focus on entertainment — including a hot air balloon and camels — and the $1 donation request.
• The hot air balloon never took off. Neither did the entry fee after the first year, Astuto said during the tour.