‘A beacon of light in a dark world’

"Drag March for Change," June 14, 2020. (Photograph for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin)

      This is my fourth column in a yearlong series celebrating the paper's 75th anniversary. Since June is Pride Month, it seems apt to look at how we've covered the LGBTQ community. In the paper today, this runs alongside reflections by Tracy Baim and Ismael Perez.

      Night-shift reporters do what the desk tells them to. And this night, late in 1991, a sneering little bully of an assistant city editor I thought of as “Quartz” ordered me to get myself over to the Town Hall police station.
     “The cops are having a meeting with the fags,” he said, or words to that effect. "Go see what it's about."
     I went. The night is seared into my mind for the pure slapstick quality. The police, embarrassed, formal, had actually brought a rape specialist — the cops’ thinking no doubt being, “gays=sex crimes” — to talk to the group. They did ask about the safety concerns of what we still called the homosexual community, and those gathered responded in one voice: We’re afraid of the police.
     As Windy City Times columnist Paul Varnell eloquently put it that night: “I’ve been arrested and I’ve been mugged and I’d rather be mugged.”
     At the time, as a night reporter, my interaction with what is now thought of as the LGBTQ+ community came through protests — AIDS awareness, Act-Up, Silence=Death vigils around the governor’s Chicago residence. But that was only one phase of a long history.
     The Chicago Sun-Times, published since February 1948, has reflected and led society’s slow integration of sexualities that depart from traditional heterosexual male/female roles. (As well as, sometimes, lagged behind.) This being our 75th anniversary as a daily newspaper, and Pride Month, it’s a good time to look back.
     The word “homosexual” didn’t appear in the paper until May 1948, in an AP report of a “homosexual ring” charged with sodomy at the University of Missouri. Gays tended to appear in print related to crime or in reviews of edgy books and plays, with an occasional vice story, such as Mayor Martin Kennelly closing a couple of bars for “homosexual activities.”
     Of course, no period is as uniform as it seems at a remove. There is a story in 1950 quoting the Kinsey report that “homosexual contacts accounted for as much as 22.6 percent of the total sexual outlet of bachelor men from 31 to 35 years old” and the “Kinsey figures on women it can be anticipated will show an even greater incidence of homosexuality among women.” The news is delivered plainly and without sensation.
Advice, sympathy from Ann Landers
     The most important writer at the paper changing attitudes about gays and lesbians was Eppie Lederer, known to the world as Ann Landers, who wrote a widely syndicated advice column.

     “Dear Ann Landers,” a letter published in the Sun-Times in 1961 begins, “I’m a happily married man who needs an outside opinion....”
     A childhood friend had moved to town; brilliant, talented, thoughtful, kind.
     “The problem is, he’s a homosexual,” the letter continued. “His effeminate manner, his haircut as well as his flamboyant manner of dress leaves no room for speculation.”
     The writer wanted to invite the man to dinner, but his wife forbade him even to be seen talking to his old friend. “It will ruin us, socially,” she said.
     “I feel like a heel ignoring him,” the man wrote. “Please give me your thinking.”
     Today, Ann Landers’ response at first might seem unsympathetic, even shocking.
     “You wouldn’t snub a friend if he was crippled by polio, would you?” she began. “Well your boyhood friend is an emotional cripple.”
     Then, she made a point that was radical at the time.      “Many homosexuals lead useful lives and enrich society through their creative efforts,” she wrote. “A person so afflicted, if he behaves in a socially acceptable manner, should not be insulted or snubbed.”
     It was the first time she had addressed the topic in almost six years on the job, and the response was enormous. The Sun-Times ran a page.
     “I am thoroughly disgusted with you,” a reader from Cleveland wrote. “The idea of a woman of your position standing up for queers!”
     “Your column about homosexuals was like a beacon of light in a dark world,” a reader from Los Angeles wrote.

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