Following the Stonewall Riots, the LGBTQ community experienced a surge of awareness due to its new courage and openness. Cities across the country started enacting non-discrimination laws, and states were considering them as well. However, forward advances in civil rights are often followed by a backlash.

Our scene is set in San Francisco, 1978, at the height of Anita Bryant’s campaign against gay rights. The city’s residents had just elected their first openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk. But the state was facing the Briggs Ballot Initiative that would ban LGBT teachers from the classroom. One man proposed a radical appropriation of mainstream culture – the formation of was then called a Gay and Lesbian Marching Band to march in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. That June, a block of 70 musicians, led by this skinny music teacher from Smith Center Kansas, turned onto Market Street, playing “California Here I Come”, leading Harvey Milk in the parade. The leader of the band was Jon Reed Sims.

The band was such a success that this one-time project turned into an ongoing enterprise, the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Freedom Band, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Bands in Houston and Los Angeles formed shortly afterward, then the band movement spread across the country, leading to the formation of LGBA in Chicago in 1982.

Jon Sims had more plans in 1978. What better way to spread acceptance than through a chorus? He set about forming the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus that fall. They had only reached their third rehearsal when Harvey Milk was assassinated. The chorus made its debut on the steps of City Hall singing for the masses gathered to assemble in mourning. Soon after, Gay Men’s Choruses and LGBT Choruses began to form, and today there are over 190 choruses in countries around the world.

Jon Sims succumbed to AIDS in 1985. His obituary in the San Francisco Examiner was one of the first to list this cause of death. So little was known about AIDS at that time that his obituary included an explanation of the disease. Even in death, Jon Sims expanded awareness, acceptance, and understanding.

The early members of the San Francisco Band used to joke about Sims’ Kansas heritage, saying that marching behind him was like following Dorothy down the yellow brick road. However, as people who have found a welcoming place in the space he created, we can say “There’s No Place Like Home.”

From those of us who are today entrusted with his legacy in Bands across the world, it is our honor to present this Pillar of Pride award to Jon Reed Sims.