Queer clout Chigo: Tellg gay history beyond Stonewall and the Castro.

Contents:

• LESBIAN AND GAY POLICE ASSOCIATION – GAY OFFICERS ACTION LEAGUE
• THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985
• PRIMARY LABEL FOR GAY POLICE OFFICERS IS COP
• 3 MEN KILLED H-AND-N OUTSI CHIGO GAY BAR, SPECT AT LARGE
• SPECT ARRTED FATAL H-AND-RUN OUTSI CHIGO GAY BAR
• BEG BLACK OR GAY IN CHIGO MAK YOU MORE PRONE TO HATE CRIM
• 'HORRIFIC ACT': 3 AD, 1 JURED AFTER CHIGO H-AND-N OUTSI GAY BAR, POLICE SAY
• BEYOND STONEWALL: HOW GAY HISTORY LOOKS DIFFERENT FROM CHIGO
• CHICAGO POLICE SHOULDER PATCH: GAY PRI
• KEV MAXEN, JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH, OUT AS FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE ACH NFL

LESBIAN AND GAY POLICE ASSOCIATION – GAY OFFICERS ACTION LEAGUE

”The LGBTQ liaison posns are part of the Police Department’s efforts to improve relatns wh the cy’s queer two groups have had a rocky past gog back s, gog back to and beyond New York Cy’s Stonewall Rebelln of 1969, which was sparked by police raids of gay bars.

The Lbian and Gay Police Associatn–Gay Officers Actn League (LGPA–GOAL) was found 1991 by four Chigo Police Officers: Mary Boyle, Dorothy Knudson, Sue Sasso, and Karen Conway, who felt that was time that lbian and gay police personnel had an anizatn of their own. Among s many achievements, the LGPA—as was known between s foundg and 2005—sought and won the right to wear the Chigo Police Department (CPD) uniform annual Pri Paras; earned the right to post LGBT related notic the police bullet; fought agast ter-partmental discrimatn toward LGBT officers; earned the support of the Fraternal Orr of Police (FOP) Lodge for their sponsorship of the Pri Para float; worked wh the FOP and Cy attorneys to clu sexual orientatn a CPD ntract non-discrimatn clse; participated heargs on domtic partner benefs before the Chigo Cy Council; and supported the effort to brg the 2006 Gay Gam to Chigo. Sce the merger, addn to assistg the ordatn and sign of LGBT Trag Vios orr to te and ensure that CPD members are sensive to the cy’s LGBT muni and LGBT officers’ ncerns, the group has, among other thgs: supported and promoted the 2008 Osr-wng short documentary film “Freeheld;” worked wh the 2006 Gay Gam and provid volunteer secury officers for the event; provid meetgs, social events, and fundraisers for s members, cludg the annual Halsted Market Days booth and Pri Para float, where members participate wearg partment uniforms; worked on acquirg pensn plans for same-sex partners and spo; promoted and sponsored numero chary events supportg fellow officers; and supported LGPA–GOAL members agast unjt or discrimatory actns enuntered wh the workplace or elsewhere.

"At a time when the ary is stgglg to implement the ntroversial "Don't ask, don't tell" orr on homosexualy the armed forc, the clost unterparts civilian life-police partments-seem to be g to terms wh gay and lbian Chigo and the suburbs, the year-old Lbian and Gay Police Associatn has 50 members, up om 17 when started, said Mary Boyle, an vtigator the civil rights un of the Chigo Police Department and one of the founrs of the associatn. The group was formed as a way for gay and lbian ps to support each other and to enurage more gays and lbians to bee police, who has been a Chigo police officer for eight years, said that she se evince that the partment is actively recg more openly gay and lbian officers. A special closet for psSome gay officers say they are ncerned about the reactn of their fellow officers, while others exprs the same ncerns that other closeted gays and lbians do: Their parents don't know yet, their former spo might take their children; their neighbors or landlords might e trouble.

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Dpe such lgerg ncerns, police officers say they sometim have more trouble beg open about their occupatn among their gay and lbian iends-who have long nsired ps the enemy-than beg ndid about their homosexualy at Hadley, a telemunitns officer wh the Bloomgdale Police Department, said he has lost potential gay iends when they found out he was a p.

But if the danger is the same for gay ps, so is the assurance that the rt of the force will be there for them if there is trouble, they works midnights patrollg the area om Madison Avenue south to 16th Street, om Damen Avenue east to the Dan Ryan.

I mean, this room be packed wh people, and everyone is jt exced to grab ffee, and walk around and be a part of , " Gil, many LGBTQ+ lears and bs owners are ncerned about anti-gay and anti-trans threats across the untry, even though police said there are no known threats Chigo for para day.

PRIMARY LABEL FOR GAY POLICE OFFICERS IS COP

On the first anniversary of Clay's ath, Ortez Alrson, a twenty-year-old black man raised on the cy's South Si and the -founr of the Black Cc of Chigo Gay Liberatn, anized a memorial march on the cy's Eighteenth District police statn his memory. 1The protts agast Clay's ath offer a wdow onto the neglected tersectn of the histori of sexualy and the rceral state by highlightg a missg lk the trajectory of gay polics: black-gay alns agast police harassment.

Yet ci such as Chigo, where gay mobilizatn was weaker and antigay policg persisted longer than the vanguard ci of San Francis and New York, they were two key nstuents a aln agast police harassment. In short, as the gay rights movement saw victory—as gay bars wh predomantly whe, middle-class patrons me unr ls scty and suffered much ls harassment—s activists largely whdrew om the fight agast the growg police state. The targeted policg of black and Lato muni was ma possible by mobilized social nservativ and by the evaporatn of anized support om whe liberals—cludg gays—for reg ways that few scholars have appreciated, the llapse of once-promisg black-gay aln efforts agast excsive policg had ser yet ially hidn nsequenc for the gay rights movement.

Scholars have traced the associatn of gays and lbians wh crime the 1950s, but far ls has been wrten about how antigay policg changed the 1960s and 1970s, as big-cy police partments adopted a more aggrsive approach to black surgency. In part, this is for good reason: scholars have not foced on state and lol levels of ernance, stead illumatg prevly neglected reasons for growth the feral ernment's hostily toward the gay muny by the mid-twentieth century. Christa Hanhardt's book on gay antivlence anizg sce the 1970s reveals the embeddns of such activy the ascendant polics of gentrifitn and crime, while Christopher Lowen Agee has shown the remarkable abily of gay-bar owners San Francis to align themselv wh polil reformers by challengg police graft.

3 MEN KILLED H-AND-N OUTSI CHIGO GAY BAR, SPECT AT LARGE

While historians have emphasized differenc between the homophile movement and the gay liberatn movement that quickly overtook after the 1969 uprisg at the Stonewall Inn New York Cy, the movements' shared foc on police excs was an important siary.

Police raids were the most important pot of ntact between gays and lbians and the state, and the practic of lol law enforcement were the ccial targets of activism for most of the movement's first half century. In Ameri's postwar antigay wch-hunts, even though “such a charge will probably be dismissed the followg morng, ” “there is a name spread on a rerd that will not be lost” and ultimately “the whole of this very mon procre will surely spell ‘pervert’ blazg letters for anyone who r to take the trouble.

6Even before the Stonewall uprisg created a radil gay liberatn movement centered ci and universy towns, Amerins perceived the issue of gay visibily as part and parcel of a breakdown of law and orr.

SPECT ARRTED FATAL H-AND-RUN OUTSI CHIGO GAY BAR

Urban policy makers rpond to perdic police rptn sndals and lls for reform by mandg that crimal vice activi—not least those, such as gay nightlife, that were ntrolled by anized crime—be rooted out.

BEG BLACK OR GAY IN CHIGO MAK YOU MORE PRONE TO HATE CRIM

In tailed terviews wh 458 whe gay men, nducted Chigo 1967 by rearchers om Indiana Universy's Ksey Instute, fully half reported that they “often” or “sometim” worried about “beg ught by the police” while seekg sexual partners. ” Gay and lbian cizens' experienc wh the police set the terms by which they participated the polil culture of their cy an era of crisis, as crime and policg beme creasgly important polil issu after the Augt 1965 Watts uprisg California. 11All but fotten today, the agile allianc of black and gay activists stretched om the late 1960s to the early 1980s, fueled by a backlash agast police surveillance and timidatn of black ants.

He was particularly stck, he said, by a talk by Renlt Robson, who had found the Ao-Amerin Patrolmen's League the prev summer: “He found the disorrly nduct charge discrimatorily applied to Chigo's black populatn, approximately the same manner as homosexuals equently fd .

” At a police-muny meetg the Lln Park neighborhood, where urban renewal had pted progrsive activists and clergy agast homeowners and velopers, radil gay activists mand to know “why homosexuals the district are arrted for kissg and holdg hands.

'HORRIFIC ACT': 3 AD, 1 JURED AFTER CHIGO H-AND-N OUTSI GAY BAR, POLICE SAY

” Placloth vice officers equently proposned and then arrted men cisg gay bars, on cy streets, parks and public rtrooms, and at highway rt stops search of nsensual sexual enunters wh other men; such harassment cled many U. Black ndidat, unable to w cywi electn whout at least some whe vot, saw whe gays and lbians as the low-hangg u; like other Ain Amerin mayoral ndidat, Chigo's Harold Washgton reached out to gay voters 1983, acknowledgg that gay Chigoans had “suffered at the hands of btal policemen. ”14 Followg an Augt 1970 gay power march om Tim Square to Greenwich Village, New York Cy policemen pull one young man by the hair and club another long-haired prottor as members of the New York Police Department Tactil Patrol Force attempt to disperse monstrators ont of the New York Women's Hoe of Detentn.

BEYOND STONEWALL: HOW GAY HISTORY LOOKS DIFFERENT FROM CHIGO

As more gays and lbians weighed disclosg their sexualy more often, more spher of their liv, they faced the risk of beg fired and anized to protect themselv by expandg the state antidiscrimatn apparat.

The Watergate sndal of 1972–1974 empowered reformers of many strip, and good-ernment anizatns and prosecutors creasgly saw police rptn and crimaly as a graver threat to the social orr than whe gay sociabily.

Simultaneo wh the velopment of the racialized apparat of mass rceratn, whe gays and lbians—no longer subjected to prev levels of arrt, prosecutn, and rceratn—moved toward a renciliatn wh the law-and-orr state.

CHICAGO POLICE SHOULDER PATCH: GAY PRI

A movement that had only recently seen big-cy police partments as s enemy began not only to negotiate wh police chiefs but to advise them on police amy curricula and ph for the recment of openly gay officers.

Johnson's crime missn 1967 clud the rehabilatn of offenrs, flexibily sentencg for dg posssn, and a dramatic expansn of the welfare state; one of the few remendatns realized the ensug four s of public policy was the crimalizatn of homosexualy.

As more gays and lbians uld hold down good jobs, a gulf opened between those who uld live rpectably and the more margal queer cy dwellers who cross-drsed or engaged sex work or participated other survival enomi. On the other hand, whe men beme the most visible face of aids activism and did not always see the benefs of a aln wh Ain Amerins—even as black activists began to make a siar lculatn about the gay rights movement. Moreover, the crisis troduced a new source of tensn by makg the gap anizatnal astcture between poor black neighborhoods and newly visible, predomantly whe middle-class gay enclav more nsequential.

KEV MAXEN, JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH, OUT AS FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE ACH NFL

It was at the heart of the sger Ana Bryant's succsful 1977 antigay mpaign Miami that sparked a wave of repeals of lol gay rights laws; was central, too, to the narrowly feated 1978 California referendum that would have banned gay and lbian schoolteachers statewi.