It was the 1980s. She was a law student at the University of Chicago and, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot recalls it, there was a certain resignation in deciding to tell her parents and friends that she’s a lesbian: She had to do it, to be true to herself, but thought it would likely doom her to a solitary existence.
“When I was in my 20s and kind of going through my own coming out process, I feared that I would lose my family. I feared that I would grow old alone. And that was a real part of my struggle,” the mayor told the Chicago Tribune in a recent interview.
Today, she is married, she and her wife have a preteen daughter and the three of them will march in Sunday’s Chicago Pride Parade. Lightfoot, the city’s first African American woman and openly lesbian mayor, will be serving as the parade’s grand marshal.
Not only did her family embrace her, but so has her adopted home of Chicago, whose voters handed her a decisive victory in April over Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Lightfoot won each of the city’s 50 wards.
“Being the mayor of the third largest city in the country, that’s humbling, but it also gives me incredible hope,” she said, adding that she feels she must be vigilant about proving she’s “worthy” of that confidence.
Many of the past grand marshals of Chicago’s Pride parades have been trailblazers, and not just from Chicago, evidence that while the event can be a big party, it has roots in the Stonewall riots of 1969 — a revolt against the regular police raids of gay bars in those days and the seed of the LGBTQ rights movement.
Lightfoot likes to call Chicago a “beacon” regionally and even nationally for the LGBTQ+ community.
It certainly beckoned a future mayor from Massillon, Ohio, in the 1980s. And then, as now, it has been a draw for young people growing up in small Midwestern towns, said Rick Garcia, a longtime Chicago LGBTQ activist who runs a political consulting firm.
“Chicago was a mecca for gay people throughout the Midwest. If you were growing up in Missouri, just by example, you went to Chicago or Atlanta,” he said, noting those were big progressive cities that made it easier for gay communities to flourish.
While we tend to hear about yuppies defining those years, gay activism also soared, made more urgent by the AIDS crisis, Garcia said.
“What you had in the ’80s was this confluence of things happening — there was the gay rights legislation — non-discriminatory legislation that the (Chicago) City Council passed, and that took on high visibility. So you had a lot of people now feeling comfortable, feeling strong about calling for LGBTQ rights, but at that time just called it gay rights. And then you had young gay men dying all over the country, and the Act Up activists were out there really addressing HIV and AIDS — and just pushing the community farther,” he said. “But then you also had had television and theater that was addressing gay issues more frequently. All these things came together, and that’s why the movement was so powerful in the ’80s.”
While she attended Pride parades and worked for AIDS funding over the years, Lightfoot’s frequent refrain is of gratitude to those gay and lesbian activists who she says paved the way for her personal and professional success. At a recent Pride reception, she ticked off trailblazers in the LGBTQ community including a well known-favorite, Art Johnston, an activist and co-owner of Sidetrack bar, an anchor in the Lakeview gay community; Mary Morton
“To be where I am now — to be married — I mean marriage (for those in the LGBTQ community) wasn’t even a possibility in those days. To be in a position where not only am I married and I have a great wife and we have an incredible child, and we have a life that’s rich and fulfilling — those possibilities were beyond my wildest dreams back then,” Lightfoot told the Tribune.
Lightfoot and Garcia say that today’s battlefronts for activists and elected leaders include dealing with a disproportionate number of African American and Latino teens who are homeless, along with discrimination and hate crimes targeting the transgender community.
So the march continues.
Recently, Lightfoot’s wife, Amy Eshleman, talked about the two meeting 20 years ago and was moved by the experience of their family marching in the 2018 parade.
“Walking down Halsted Street during last year’s Pride Parade hand in hand with Chicago’s first openly gay candidate for mayor and with our daughter was one of the most profound, emotional and humbling experiences of my life,” Chicago’s first lady, donning a shirt emblazoned with the modern-day LGBTQ mantra “Love is Love,” told a crowd at a Pride month reception last week.
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