No one is playing “It Was a Very Good Year” on that bar juke box these days—well, unless you’re a fabulously rich East Side gay Republican who got his tax cut. For the rest of us, 2017 opened and closed ominously, like a tragic opera. Its overture had already played just after the presidential election with two attacks on an LGBTQ health facility in Harambee. A third followed in the New Year.
Then, as the presidential inauguration began, the White House scrubbed its website of any mention of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. Throughout 2017, as anti-LGBTQ legal assaults mounted, we faced ever-increasing anxiety over the future of gains made in the half century of struggle since Stonewall. Violence against us soared. A Nevada father shot and killed Giovanni Melton, his 14-year-old gay son, because, according to his foster mom, he preferred a dead son to a gay son. A mother and her boyfriend tortured 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez to death (over weeks) because they thought he was gay. Murders of transgender people increased. The rate of LGBTQ youth suicide, often the result of bullying, continues to outpace that of their straight peers; locally, we remember 14-year-old Elijah DePue. Meanwhile, the West Virginia Supreme Court decided attacking gays is not a hate crime.
But, in politics throughout the country, eight trans politicians took office and Alabama elected a Democratic senator (with a gay son, btw). De Pere, Wis., passed comprehensive non-discrimination protections for gender identity and expression. The state’s seventh city to do so, it slowed our slide to Wississippification. Meanwhile, the ACLU sued the State of Wisconsin on behalf of transgender state employees.
The year’s obituaries included Rainbow Flag creator Gilbert Baker, marriage equality pioneer Edith Windsor, actor Jim Nabors and filmmaker Debra Chasnoff. Locally, we mourned popular drag queen Jackie Roberts; Bill Serpe, former SAGE executive director; activist Rick Finger, who with his partner Sheldon Schur (who died two months earlier), helped produce Milwaukee’s earliest Pride Parades and Pride celebrations.
With the closing of Hybrid Lounge in February, we lost a popular destination. However, other venues opened their doors for “queer nights” and other LGBTQ events.
With 35 years of service, Cream City Foundation (CCF) led a litany of landmark anniversaries. PrideFest celebrated its 30th year. The weekly “Queer Program” broadcast its 25th anniversary segment. The LGBT Community Center turned 20 and Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce, now with 500+ members, marked its fifth year.
In sports, SSBL founded a rugby team and a kick ball league. Elsewhere, leadership changes took place at CCF and the LGBT Community Center.
Wisconsin made national LGBTQ news in 2017 when a Milwaukee priest came out as gay (ta-da!), a petition was launched to remove Madison Bishop Robert Morlino for his assault on gay Catholics, and local diva Jaymes Mansfield joined “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 9.
The Awards: the 2017 Side-Glance of the Year Award goes to Cream City’s former Archbishop Timothy Dolan, infamous ecclesiastical con and mastermind of the “cemetery fund” scheme to bury church assets to avoid paying the claims of clergy sex abuse victims, for his appearance in a PBS Martin Luther documentary as an expert on church corruption.
The Epic Success Award goes to PrideFest for its record attendance of more than 37,600.
Happy New Year! I’d love to say “it gets better” but we’ll wait and see.
