Ian Campbell Dunn

Vocation

Notable

British gay rights campaigner who lived and worked in Scotland. Dunn began his work in gay rights activism after finding that the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalized homosexual relations between adult men, applied only to England and Wales and not to Scotland. In January 1969 Dunn organised the first meeting which led to the foundation of the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG), of which Dunn remained the de facto figurehead for many years. In January 1971 he helped start SMG News and was its editor for many years. At the first International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh in 1974 he was involved in setting up the International Gay Association. Also in 1974 he helped to establish the Edinburgh LGBT Centre, the first such centre in Britain. He joined the Labour Party in 1977. That year he also became involved in the Edinburgh Books Collective, an organisation that opened a bookshop in Edinburgh called the First of May selling left-wing political and lifestyle books. Dunn was an active Humanist minister and celebrated ceremonies of affirmation for lesbian and gay couples. Ian Dunn died on 10 March 1998 at the age of 54 of a suspected heart attack. Link to Wikipedia biography