“The arrest of gay men entrapped by undercover Capitola police officers in 1980, and the subsequent publishing of the names and home addresses of those arrested in local newspapers, led to over 200 people protesting the actions at a Capitola City Council meeting.
Santa Cruz County was the first in the nation to adopt a gay non-discrimination policy for its own employees in 1975, and the City of Santa Cruz and Metropolitan Transit District’s domestic partners benefits programs were among the first in the nation in the mid-1980s. In 1983, I had my own 15 minutes of fame as one of the first three openly gay mayors elected in the United States.”
Read more about Santa Cruz Pride’s early years from Santa Cruz County’s first gay mayor, John Laird, in The Good Times Weekly