David Thorstad Collection

David Thorstad was an American gay activist, writer, political organizer, and editor from Northwest Minnesota. An outspoken socialist, gay liberation, and anti-war activist, he was most active from the late 1960s to early 1990s.

Thorstad was born in Thief River Falls, Minnesota on October 15th, 1941 to a working-class and devoutly Pentecostal Norwegian-American family. After graduating from the local Lincoln High School in 1959, he moved to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota, where he earned a BA in French and German (1963) and an MA in French, German, and Scandinavian Languages (1966.)

During his time in Minneapolis, Thorstad became politically active in socialist and anti-Vietnam War circles. A member of the Minneapolis chapter of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA,) Thorstad attended the 1966 founding convention of the Student Mobilization Committee and was a member of the Paris Secretariat of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal in 1967. In 1967, he joined the Trotskyist-aligned Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP,) becoming a full-time organizer for the party the next year. He additionally ran as the party’s candidate for Congress (1968) and mayor of Minneapolis (1969.)

Thorstad moved to New York in 1969 to work in the YSA’s national office; he would remain in Lower Manhattan for the next twenty-five years, and most of his political activity would take place there. Still an ardent member of the SWP, Thorstad worked as a staff writer for its newspaper The Militant until his 1973 departure from the organization over its refusal to take up a pro-gay liberation stance.

After leaving the SWP, Thorstad joined the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA,) an offshoot of the post-Stonewall Gay Liberation Front (GLF) that focused on organizing for policy changes to benefit gays and lesbians in New York. He additionally served as the organization’s president from 1975 to 1976, and in 1977 was a founding member of the similarly-focused Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights (CLGR.)

An outspoken gay rights activist in the city, Thorstad was also a working author and book editor whose writings were featured in a number of magazines. Most notably, he co-authored The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) with fellow GAA activist John Lauritsen in 1974.

Thorstad’s exit from conventional gay and left-wing politics began with his co-founding in 1978 of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA.) NAMBLA positioned itself as variably a political organizing coalition, communication hub, affinity organization, and prisoner support network for gay men seeking, engaging in, or otherwise defending the validity of sexual and romantic relationships with boys below the legal age of consent (known within NAMBLA as “intergenerational intimacy.”) Controversial from the outset, NAMBLA was consistently a target of public scorn, police interest, and political condemnation from all corners.

Thorstad remained actively involved with NAMBLA until the mid 2000s, serving on its Steering Committee, attending most conferences and meetings, helping handle press relations, finances, internal correspondence, and the operations of the NAMBLA Bulletin and other organizational publications.

Upon leaving New York in 1994, Thorstad returned to Minnesota to live for a time on the East Side of Saint Paul, where he worked primarily as a freelance writer and editor while remaining involved with NAMBLA and in touch with friends and colleagues. In 1999, he bought 60 acres of land on the east side of Island Lake, just south of Lengby, Minnesota and within the boundaries of the White Earth Indian Reservation. Thorstad continued to be politically active during his final years in Northern Minnesota, remaining outspoken around issues of Native sovereignty and the preservation of the Big Bog, and was an avid gardener. Thorstad died on August 1st, 2021, at the age of 79, during an angioplasty at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, North Dakota.