Windy City Times recently asked a variety of people three questions about the LGBT demographic:
1. What do you remember about the LGBT scene in 1985?
2. What's the biggest change you've witnessed regarding LGBTs in 2015?
3. What do you feel the future holds for LGBTs?
Below is what they had to say.
Lauren Verdich, entrepreneur:
1 ) It was the height of the AIDS crisis and, when I came out, it seemed that everything was happening at once. There were a lot of sick people, there was no organized support through the city, state or, certainly, the government with Reagan, thank you very much. And people were trying to figure out a way to help those who had been infected. It seemed to be a time of an incredible amount of activity—people were identifying problems, trying to solve them and moving forward.
And it was the first time—and I didn't come out until '85, so I didn't know what the party was like before—that the women's and men's communities really worked together.
2 ) That we're all in this together, and you don't marginalize anyone because, then, you marginalize yourself. So I think that a lot of programs that are accessible for trans people are really late to the party—but at least they're here now.
3 ) I think we need to find a way to help the generations coming up behind us to understand that the fight will never be over. If they just looked to the civil-rights movement, you see that you have to keep fighting for your rights. That's the message that we, as older LGBT people, should make sure the youth hears.
John D'Emilio, historian:
1 ) In 1985, it was almost impossible to be with other gay men and not have the conversation turn to AIDS. AIDS seemed to be everywhere and inescapable, deeply frightening and also enraging. Also in 1985, so, so many gay men were still "in the closet." They were living gay social lives, but not open to family, at their workplace, or to many of their heterosexual friends.
2 ) There's been an explosion in the most recent period of media and popular culture attention to transgender lives. Some of it is exploitative and voyeuristic, but it also opens up possibilities for activism, organizing, and making change.
3 ) I'm not sure. My worry is that marriage equality will have the effect of so "normalizing" gay and lesbian lives and loves and integrating them into the mainstream that the community institutions and solidarity that have been built over the last 30+ years will start to fade away. Does that make me sound old-fashioned and not "with it" today?
Jerry Pritikin, activist:
1 ) It was a time that I decided to move back to live in Chicago after 25 years in San Francisco. I left Chicago in 1960s because it was still taboo to be openly gay in my hometown.
Thankfully, Chicago has become a gay friendly city to live or visit.
2 ) I have been in the front line of the gay-rights movement for 40+ years, and never in my lifetime have I seen more LGBT people get closer to equal rights then ever before. It's better at home, in the workplace and schools. We are moving forward in big cities, and hopefully soon in rural blue and red states.
3 ) I am scared that the religious right will bring out the worst in the Republican Party. They seem to be going out of their way to fight each and every gain made in the LGBT communities by using "code word" causes such as same-sex marriage and religious rights. We will have to work harder to make sure all the gains we made are NEVER taken away from us!
Judith Markowitz, consultant:
1 ) Like today, it was a time filled with legal victories and setbacks in the United States and elsewhere.
The AIDS plague was very much with us. What we have come to call the "religious right" were claiming AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality ignoring the facts that many heterosexuals had HIV and AIDS and that lesbians tended not to become infected. Related to that, the revelation that Rock Hudson was gay and had died of AIDS, revealing to the straight world that gay and lesbian people were everywhere.
2 ) The cultural change that has made it possible for the Supreme Court to support gay marriage, adoption and spousal rights.
3 ) I would like to think that the barriers facing the LGBT communities will continue to fall.
Lori Cannon, activist and LGBT ally:
1 ) Questions one and two almost seem to answer themselves, i.e., the plague called AIDS—how it defined the LGBT community here and across the country.
Nobody went out looking for AIDS—it found us!
The LGBT community responded when no one else would. The decade of the '80s through the mid-'90s was completely defined by the AIDS epidemic. Our friends were dropping like flies.
The local activists and I started Open Hand Chicago, the city's only meals-on wheels program for the AIDS community. We were among the early direct-service programs like Stop AIDS Chicago, Chicago House, Test Positive Aware, Names Project and others who served those who were dying.
We galvanized as a community to offer compassionate services.
2 ) AIDS CHANGED EVERYTHING! It flung open that closet door, forcing people to have an open and frank conversation re: sexuality, their diagnosis, shame and isolation, as well networking to receive services and rally for support.
Politically, everything is different than back in '85, when very few out and proud candidates were elected. Many had to dragged out of the closet under the threat of being outed.
The conversation was forced [back then]. Out and proud candidates now campaign to the LGBT community, encouraging others to freely come out and support legislation that supports the community.
This type of openness only came about due to the AIDS epidemic, when more and more LGBT candidates felt it was time to be open and honest—like the Hon. Tom Chiola, who campaigned in '94 as Illinois' first openly gay candidate when he ran for circuit court judge.
The rest, as they say, is history.
3 ) As the crusty ol' curmudgeon that I am, it's difficult for me to grab hold of what the future will hold after having already seen so much progress so quickly—the type of push and promise I could not have imagined years ago.
Clearly, marriage equality is way up there on my list. We'd have to agree that there'd be no marriage equality without the AIDS epidemic, when the early rumblings of an LGBT political powerhouse was just being thought of—and, all the while, people were fighting for their lives.
I see the trans movement of primary importance going forward. It's just beginning to take hold and organize into a strong and powerful mission. Good people are stepping up to speak of the horrors and nightmares of their struggle—about it being open season on their lives.
Clearly, there's a lot of work ahead of us—locally, nationally and internationally.
I continue to honor, celebrate and salute the early and young AIDS warriors who fought until their dying breaths for the rights and respect of their dying co-conspirators. Could they have ever imagine the LGBT community of today?
I consider these victories to be theirs as well, and I THANK THEM!
Max Smith:
1 ) In 1985, I remember Rev. Hiram Crawford as a spokesperson against LGBT rights. Warner Saunders invited me to debate him on WMAQ-TV 5. I met privately with him after the debate. He was afraid of BDSM, leather, exotic and fetish sex between men, and that motivated his opposition to gay rights.
2 ) Over the last 30 years, the size of crowds at the June LGBT Pride Parade has grown tremendously. I never imagined back then how many corporations would be in the parade by now, and how mainstream it would be.
3 ) It will be revealed in the future that the side effects of PrEP will be very undesirable, such as tremendous loss of bone mass, and resultant bone fractures among people who took Truvada. By then, people will realize it was a bad idea to normalize pill-taking as prevention. People will see it served mainly to make millionaires and billionaires of big pharmaceutical company executives.
Greg Harris, Illinois state representative:
1 ) I remember the mid-1980s as the time that the emergence of HIV began to galvanize the LGBT community and our allies as we had never been before. People began to organize to provide services, health care, food, housing and spiritual support for longtime friends and for strangers across the city. People who had never been active politically were suddenly working to bring change at the local, state and federal levels in ways and numbers that had never happened before for our community.
2 ) In 2015, we have seen marriage equality sweep the nation, and public opinion shift at a velocity without parallel in our country. I hope we can maintain this level of organization and sense of mission now to lift up every family and every person for whom relationship recognition has been one fight, but who still need affordable healthcare and housing, good jobs, good schools, safe neighborhoods and freedom from intolerance.
3 ) I hope the future holds LGBT people and families being proud of our cultural heritage, and also seeing commonalities with other communities and supporting their struggles as they supported ours.
Victor Salvo, founder and executive director of The Legacy Project:
1 ) The activist in me had yet to emerge. It was all about getting laid. :- )
Everything was transitioning from a '70s disco vibe into the "modern" '80s. It was the dawn of the Sidetrack era, when video was brand-new. We used to huddle there several nights a week ( when it was 1/12th its current size ) to watch Dynasty, Golden Girls, Brothers and a host of things that were campy and all the more fun when served up with your community and a cold beer. We talked to each other. We connected. We shared. And we partied—A LOT.
AIDS hadn't begun its full-throttle death march down Halsted just yet. We were poised at the end of the last happy time there would be for decades—only we didn't know it. Everything was about to change.
2 ) In many ways we are still the same. We are a race of people and we share an indescribable ethos, regardless of the era. But communication is too pre-occupied with technology, too impersonal. Even hooking up is now almost entirely device-dependent. Young people seem less able to interact in a genuine real-time way. The changes that we fought for—which produced the repeal of DADT and the overturning of DOMA—came to pass with a sweeping swiftness that robbed younger people from being able to grasp their own history; it just washed over them with a profound, seeming inevitability. There was no transitional generation to carry the memories and share the lessons. It has altered our understanding of politics and the value of the hard work that real, fundamental change requires.
And, it goes without saying in Windy City Times: AIDS CHANGED EVERYTHING and this paper was at Ground Zero. Yet, our young people barely understand it and are taught nothing about it. That is a travesty.
3 ) Because all people, all realities, intersect in the LGBTQ communities, I think it is important that we take our successful, fundamental reshaping of society and use that experience to lead an era of reconciliation for everyone else.
Beginning with the vast swaths of this country where, in many ways, the last 50 years seems to have not occurred. The same goes for the rest of the world. Until we can make the lives of LGBT people safer and happier everywhere, our work is not done. Alabama. Uganda. Texasistan. Russia. Our brothers and sisters need help. So many people—gay and straight, Black and white and brown—are being torn apart by seemingly irreconcilable differences. Yet we have shown that there is a way to make change happen. We can reshape our reality, our politics. We can do this. We can help. Think of the forces that were ( and still are ) arrayed against us! Yet, we prevailed against all odds. We must pay it forward or our success means nothing.
Israel Wright, activist and photographer:
1 ) Lots of activists fighting to make a difference in LGBT lives
2 ) Much assimilated into the normative lifestyles, and less opposition to LGBT issues
3 ) We are able to live our lives freely without the hatred of our sexual/lifestyle choices.
Tom Tunney, 44th Ward alderman:
1 ) Unfortunately, I remember how AIDS really started to hit Chicago hard in 1985. There were many more cases on the coasts, and we were aware of the few cases here, but around 1985 is when we started to see numbers of friends and loved ones getting sick and dying.
2 ) While we are celebrating great marriage-equality victories and transgender visibility and awareness nationally, I think it's pretty remarkable to have five openly LGBT members of the Chicago City Council. It was ground-breaking 12 years ago when I was elected and I think it shows how far we have come as a city and a society. Our new LGBT Caucus represents diverse populations and neighborhoods across the city and I am proud to serve with them.
3 ) I am excited for more high-profile contributions from openly LGBT individuals across the board—in business, politics, academics, the arts and cultural institutions.
