It is the beginning of Pride Month, and this year we're seeing a lot of organizations which have taken advantage of the post-Obergefell sentiments towards the LGBT community by merely throwing up some rainbow pfps distancing themselves in light of rising anti-LGBT sentiment and terrorist threats. These organizations didn't stand up for the LGBT community when it mattered, and they will reproduce this pattern now. Some may not know this, but the math community has - in the past - taken an active stance to stand up for its queer members and taken political action when it has mattered. That is, the intersection of LGBTQ history and Math history is not empty and not even measure zero.

The 80s were, to say the least, a very hard time for the LGBTQ community due to the AIDS epidemic and the complete lack of response from those in power about it. The medical community was slow to get research rolling and did not initially communicate with the gay community which made accessing proper medical care and information difficult. The Reagan Administration didn't even acknowledge the existence of AIDS for years, let alone invest resources into the development of treatments. The iconic Silence = Death poster is in response to the lack of action and acknowledgement for AIDS. Gay people were demonized and ostracized and the disease was seen as merely the "natural" consequence of their "delinquent" lifestyle. And arriving immediately after the religiously motivated Save Our Children homophobic activist campaign, AIDS was seen as a correction for moral degeneracy (weird how kids are consistently used to justify hate, almost like we could learn from the past...). By the early 90s, people had begun to take it seriously, but there was still a long way to go before people recognized the gay community as a community in need and struggling with a horrific disease. This is why pictures like that of Princess Diana showing compassion and touching someone struggling with AIDS is so iconic and important.

Point being, in the early 90s the LGBTQ community was struggling, not viewed with favor by the public, and finding themselves alone without any meaningful institutional support.

In 1992, Colorado voted on and passed an amendment to the state constitution which said that being queer was not a protected status. This meant that things like discrimination against LGBTQ people was totally fine and that violence against them would not be considered a hate crime. This was in response to many cities, such as Boulder and Denver passing laws in the 70s and 80s protecting LGBTQ people and functioned to strip away these rights. Coincidentally, the 1995 Joint Math Meetings were planned to take place in Denver. This would mean that mathematicians from around the nation (and world) - many of which are queer - would be congregating in a place that was actively unsafe for them. I think that the tragedy of Alan Turing should resonate strongly within the math community of what happens when we don't support those who are marginalized.

In response, two mathematicians - one gay and one just a real good ally - independently wrote and petitioned the heads of the MAA and AMS to move the JMM to a state which could protect vulnerable members of its community. This would not be an insignificant, easy, or cheap act. There would be backlash by those within the community who were less-than-understanding. Contracts and reservations are done years in advance with hotels and conventions spaces which the JMM would have to pay for breaking. And finding a new space and new bookings on a shorter timeframe would not be easy while all this was going on. That is, it would be not an insignificant cost to the AMS and MAA to move the meetings.

But the heads of both organizations met and agreed to move the 1995 JMM to San Francisco - a pointed decision given the LGBTQ haven San Francisco had consistently been and its history with Harvey Milk. This move ended up being a part of a larger dis-investment of organizations from Colorado. The state was branded "The Hate State" - a moniker we could probably bring back these days. Eventually appeals took this amendment to the Supreme Court which overruled it. Moreover the AMS and MAA have both made commitments to protecting vulnerable members of the math community as they now always have a "Change of Civil Rights Legislation Clause" in the contracts that they make for the JMM. As of now, the future JMM meetings appear to all take place in safe states.

When people say that math is not political, that identity doesn't matter, that it's all objective and just about proofs, or that we don't need to do work to resist the systemic injustices that infect all groups of people - including the math community - it's just clear that they are ignorant of their own privilege and ignorant of the history of math. Probably most prominently historically, the math community has struggled with antisemitism and has taken actions to both help and harm Jewish members of the community. The members of the AMS and MAA in the 90s knew the importance of taking risks to protect vulnerable members of its community and opening up mathematical spaces to them, and that mathematics is a political field and sometimes politicized statements are needed. And their action was not without internal backlash, the MAA even published dissenting letters which sound like they could have been written today (just replace "political correctness" with "woke").

The appropriately named mathematical LGBTQ organization Spectra came out of this action and provides a place for queer mathematicians to find community. They also do what they can to continue the work begun in the 90s. You can read more about this story and the founding of Spectra in this MAA article. The math community itself still has issues that it needs to work through regarding almost all marginalized groups and closing our eyes so that we blind ourselves to them under the illusion of "pure objectivity" is not the move. In general, mathematicians can take pride during Pride Month that - even if it still has major issues and work to do - that the mathematics community has it within them to take risks and act.