Gay rights activism In January 1969, Dunn founded the
Scottish Minorities Group, holding its inaugural meeting in his parents' house in Glasgow. His early activism was inspired by the fact that 1967 reforms in the law concerning
gay sex only applied to
England and
Wales and thus gay sex continued to be illegal in Scotland. Dunn took a leading role in legalising gay sex in Scotland, and along with two other activists he took the case to the
European Court of Human Rights. In 1980, the previous reforms of 1967 reforms were extended to cover Scotland. In 1972, Dunn helped to launch
Gay News, Britain's first gay newspaper.
Politics Dunn was a member of the
Labour Party and a trade union activist in
Nalgo and
UNISON. He was a local council candidate for Labour, but was dropped by the party when his paedophile activism was exposed in the media. Dunn later returned to the Labour Party, and applied to become a candidate in the new
Scottish Parliament. Dunn agreed for his home in Edinburgh to be used as a contact address for paedophile theoretical journal named
Minor Problems, The Ian Dunn Memorial Award is no longer listed on the official website of the
Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland, which until 2007 had been responsible for managing the award. In 1998, British LGBT+ rights activist
Peter Tatchell wrote an obituary in
The Independent for Dunn. However, on learning of Dunn's paedophile activism, he later stated: ==Death and legacy==