Queer couples marry at new LGBTQ+ center in Uptown Minneapolis after Trump win
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A Minneapolis couple ran down the block and sprinted up two stories of an unassuming brick building on Sunday afternoon, in a rush to catch their appointment. They had lost track of time with their routines: walking dogs, working out, doing chores. Five minutes later, they were married.
Katie Rehani, 39, and Jessica Giordano, 40, were among a handful that exchanged short vows on Sunday at a free marriage license signing event hosted by The Little Wedding Co. at Queermunity, a new social space for LGBTQ+ people in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood.
Rehani and Giordano’s lives were already intertwined after eight years together. A Queermunity social media post simply advertised the perfect opportunity to make things official.
“The ability to be in queer space and get married was a big part of it,” said Giordano. “We’ve been talking about it for a long time and just wanted it to be something that was just for us and not a big deal.”
The deciding factor for them, and other couples, was the result of the 2024 election: Republican control of the federal government.
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“I want to be able to not have things taken from me,” said Rehani.
Right after, Emma Eck married her partner Abigail Eck with a small party of family and friends. Their cat Coco served as ringbearer in a light gold dress. The two teachers had planned to get engaged next year, but with uncertainty around what could happen, they decided to move up their timeline.
“We wanted to at least legally get married so we could protect each other,” said Abigail Eck.
Symone Clay co-owns The Little Wedding Co. with her wife Jamie Grays, and said they decided to offer free marriage license signings to queer couples after the election knowing that many felt threatened by the results. They anticipate making it an annual event.
“Typically, LGBTQ+ people have been a target for political gains,” said Clay. “We’re on the chopping block and that’s scary for a lot of people.”
The opening of Queermunity provided the perfect backdrop.
Queermunity starts with another love story
Kayla Barth had just moved to the Twin Cities after active-duty military service when she met her now partner Hilary Otey on a dating app in 2021. She said they both struggled to find community and a place to be authentically themselves at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As we moved into a post-COVID world, finding in-person opportunities to develop connections with people is more difficult, and especially for the queer community because we don't have a lot of spaces that don't center alcohol,” said Barth.
In 2022, Barth and Otey started envisioning a solution. In 2023, they got a boost to develop what a space could look like and determine what community needs are when Otey was awarded a Finnovation Fellowship. They also drew help from a steering committee with people of diverse viewpoints and local business organizations like the Lake Street Council.
Barth calls the final product “a social club, gathering space that’s centered around the needs and wants and desires of the queer community here in the Twin Cities.”
Queermunity is open daily now with a full-service café, gallery and event and co-working space for all, with an emphasis on people who identify as LGBTQIA+. Barth said it’s also intergenerational.
With its location near the corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street, nestled between Magers & Quinn Booksellers and an empty storefront papered with a flyer for an upcoming coffee shop, Barth wants Queermunity to be part of the neighborhood’s revitalization.
“Uptown has historically been the queer hangout space,” said Barth. “As we were talking with many of our elders, they were talking about how Uptown was the place to hang out and then it got gentrified, all the big corporations. And then as soon as they weren’t able to extract from the community, they left. And then we’re left with all these vacant buildings and it looking, you know, empty, but it's not empty. It just needs a little bit of a resurgence of local businesses and local interests to come back.”
The need for queer spaces
Queermunity is one of several establishments focused on LGBTQ+ people to pop up near Uptown, according to Rox Anderson, a queer Minneapolis fixture of many hats including radio host, artistic director and executive director.
They named Queer Space Collective, Umbra Arts and Twin Cities Leather as a few.
“Our community needs as many spaces as they can to feel safe,” said Anderson, who previously owned Café Southside, which was “a radical community hub” for queer Black and brown people before it closed in 2019, and is now behind Our Space, a campaign to build LGBTQ+ community centers in the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota.
Our Space aims to build a cooperative model where LGBTQ+ serving organizations — like Outfront, Twin Cities Pride and Reclaim — can have an ownership stake in a building they own. Our Space currently runs “activations” through a private home called QT Castle near Uptown.
On the heels of the general election, the opening of Queermunity came at an important time for some like Bailey Twyman-Metzger, who visited with their wife and two twin toddlers over its grand opening weekend.
They appreciated knowing with certainty that queer families are welcome and can find joyful space, given national rhetoric about transgender people and reproductive rights.
“When you have a family that is visibly identifiable as one of the things that is being targeted right now by the party in power, it can be scary. And it is scary,” said Twyman-Metzger. “And so I think it’s important in times like this to go to spaces where you know upon entering you are accepted for who you are.”
MPR News contractor Anika Besst contributed reporting.