Toy earned his B.A. at Denison University in 1951. He holds a master\'s degree in Clinical Social Work from the University of Michigan and serves as a pro bono counselor and therapist. Toy underwent bureaucratic retirement in 2008 from the University of Michigan as the diversity coordinator in the Office of Institutional Equity. He was awarded the Alumni Citation, Denison\'s highest alumni honor, in June 2001, and was featured as an early LGBT alumnus in an article on the college\'s LGBTQ history in 2013.\n', '

Jim Toy identified as being gay during his speech at an anti-Vietnam-War rally in Kennedy Square, Detroit, in April 1970. At the rally Toy was representing the Detroit Gay Liberation Movement, of which he was a founding member.\n', '

He was as well a founding member of the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front. In 1971 he helped establish the Human Sexuality Office (HSO) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (later renamed The Spectrum Center.) The HSO was the first staff office in a United States institution of higher learning, and presumably the first of its kind in the world, to respond to sexual-orientation concerns. Jim served as its Co-Coordinator, and Gay Male advocate, from 1971 until 1994. The HSO, now named the Spectrum Center, has named its library in Jim\'s honor. The Jim Toy Library (JTL) currently hosts a collection of over 1500 titles and supports LGBTQA student development by exposing students to, and engaging them in, the rich cultural, social, historical, psychological, political, and relational aspects of LGBTQ people, identities, experiences, and communities.\n', '

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