Former Mayors Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor, were all champions of the LGBTQ+ community.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is apparently determined to follow in his predecessors’ footsteps — by making Chicago what he called, “the largest U.S. city with an executive-level position dedicated to advancing LGBTQ+equity.”
The newly created job will be filled by Antonio King, who has spent more than two decades as the LGBTQ+ health and outreach liaison for the Chicago Department of Public Health.
King's marching orders from the mayor are to devise a policy plan tailor-made to “strengthen protections and opportunities” for LGBTQ+ Chicagoans.
It will tackle everything from eliminating health disparities to providing support and resources to “business owners within the LGBTQ+ community who have sometimes felt ignored or not as visible [to] previous administrations,” King said.
“Business owners and agencies don’t always hear about things coming out of the cultural affairs department or ways that they can participate and put in applications for contracts to work with the city,” said King, 63. “This administration has been intentional about ensuring that the LGBTQ+ community is informed and understands that we have a seat at the table. We’re being put at the table with a plate, with a seat, and told that, 'Your voice is viable. Your presence is wanted.’”
Over the years, there has been talk about creating a set-aside program for businesses owned by LGBTQ+ Chicagoans similar to the percentage of city contracts earmarked for minorities and women. King, however, has no plan to open that political and legal can of worms.
“As a Black gay man, I don’t want any special set-aside. I want to be not pushed aside,” King said, adding Johnson "made sure that [members of] the LGBTQ+ community are not treated like second-class citizens. Any administration should follow his example of inclusivity and not shut the door, but open the door and say everyone can walk through. Not to let different ones in and shut others out.”
King said he plans to focus on the problems of youths, young adults and homelessness — and on strengthening education and outreach programs in the Chicago Public Schools to combat bullying of LGBTQ+ students.
Other priorities are what he called the “plight of aging LGBTQ Chicagoans, who have not had a consistent voice” in Chicago, and “security for trans women of color,” he said.
“Ensuring that there is, maybe not a relationship with” the Chicago Police Department, “but there is a respect so that, when something happens with a trans woman, that it is investigated and it is prosecuted,” King said.
Daley engineered $5.4 million in loans and subsidies for the Center on Halsted, an LGBTQ+ community center where a rooftop garden bears the former mayor’s name.
Chicago's longest-serving mayor also championed gay marriage, appointed 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney, the city's first openly gay alderperson, along with gay department heads, and extended health benefits to registered live-in partners of gay and lesbian city employees. He welcomed the 2006 Gay Games, increased city support for AIDS funding and established the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.
Emanuel matched Daley's record as a champion for the gay community, in part by appointing an unprecedented number of openly gay men and women to his City Hall Cabinet. Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to make Chicago a more welcoming place for the LGBTQ+ community.
Her agenda included working to establish "24-hour drop-in centers" at Chicago Public Schools to provide LGBTQ+ youth struggling with family acceptance and homelessness. She promised to implement an "LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum" to prevent bullying, and appoint three mayoral LGBTQ+ liaisons to work directly with the South, West and North sides, and coordinate with Chicago police and the Department of Public Health.
She mandated special training for police officers to end profiling of transgender people, prevent violence and hate crimes against them, and aggressively investigate those crimes when they occur.
King said he's up for the challenge, after all that he has seen and already done.
“When I started in the work of HIV advocacy, HIV was called 'GRID’— gay-related infectious disease. There was such trauma and stigma attached to that along with being gay. It made you not ever want to come out. You wanted to stay in the closet because you were ridiculed,” King said.
Even now, King said, "When I walk into a room [and] someone knows I'm gay, there is sometimes a wall or a stigma. So although we live in a very different world today, it's not that much different in some people's minds."
