National
Grenell says both parties play politics with gay equality
Former Romney staffer ‘humbled’ by support after stepping down
Richard Grenell (Photo courtesy of Grenell)
Richard Grenell, the gay man who resigned from Mitt Romney’s campaign after intense criticism of his hiring from the left and right, said his stepping down should not be seen as a sign that a Romney administration would be hostile to gays.
“I would caution you not to jump to any conclusions about what this means for hiring gays in a Romney administration,” Grenell said in an interview with the Washington Blade. “You can’t compare campaigns to governing.”
Noting that he did not want to speak for the campaign, Grenell said he was overwhelmed and humbled by messages of support he received from Republicans during the flap. He sees the reaction to his resignation as a sign that the Republican Party is gradually moving in the right direction on gay rights.
“I received an overwhelming number of private emails, texts and calls from Republicans sending their support,” Grenell said. “The private support was overwhelming and humbling; the public support wasn’t. … It’s frustrating but also encouraging at the same time because I’ve been involved in the party long enough to remember when the private support wasn’t there.”
He noted that no elected Republican in Washington spoke out against his joining the Romney campaign.
Grenell was hired by the Romney campaign in April as foreign policy spokesperson after informally advising the foreign policy team for about six months. He said his sexual orientation was never an issue during the interview process.
“Everyone I’ve been working with knows I’m gay and knew my partner,” he said. “I’m very out; it’s not something I ever hide. I don’t have the ability to not be myself and talk about my life with my partner.”
Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton is among the Romney advisers who Grenell said were supportive. Grenell worked in the George W. Bush administration as United States spokesman at the U.N.
“There’s not a Republican who doesn’t know I’m gay,” he added. “The [Romney] campaign was unequivocally supportive and said that doesn’t matter to us or to the governor and that we hire according to experience and qualifications.”
But that support didn’t extend to the right wing of the Republican Party. Shortly after Grenell’s appointment, Christian conservatives pounced, criticizing Romney and suggesting that his hiring an openly gay man constituted an attack on families.
Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, Tweeted, “If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead.” Later, Matthew Franck wrote in the National Journal, “Whatever fine record he compiled in the Bush administration, Grenell is more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else.”
Further, Franck suggested that Grenell — who supports marriage equality — would jump ship and support President Obama if Obama endorsed same-sex marriage during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Obama, of course, has since endorsed marriage equality.
“I’m not endorsing Obama,” Grenell said. “Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of playing politics with gay equality.”
Grenell echoed the sentiment expressed by many gay conservatives that they sometimes feel unwelcome by elements in the Republican Party and equally unwelcome in the LGBT community.
“The claim that gays should be barred from conservative activism is a bipartisan bigoted view,” he said. “The far left doesn’t want a gay to be conservative; the far right doesn’t want a conservative to be gay. I don’t have the luxury of being a one-issue voter. I’m more thoughtful and complex than that. I am comfortably gay and conservative.”
The criticism of Grenell’s hiring didn’t come exclusively from conservatives. Bloggers and commentators on the left denounced Grenell, too, mostly over Tweets he sent that were deemed misogynistic and even homophobic.
One Tweet, in particular, sparked outrage among LGBT critics. Grenell wrote, “rachel maddow needs to take a breath and put on a necklace.”
Richard Grenell (Photo courtesy of Grenell)
Michelangelo Signorile, who hosts an LGBT-themed talk show on SiriusXM radio, wrote, “It was the kind of crack many people would expect from a homophobic straight guy.”
“I’m not a mean-spirited person,” Grenell said of the Twitter controversy. “I attempted to be funny and I wasn’t and I see how very hurtful that could be. I apologized immediately for that.”
Grenell said he regrets some of the Tweets and acknowledged that he deleted hundreds of Tweets after the criticism.
“The fact is when I was confronted by some on the left that I had inappropriate Tweets, I reviewed those Tweets and in reviewing the roughly seven Tweets that people pointed out, there were some I couldn’t find so I deleted everything before January 2012.”
He added that the impression he deleted hundreds of misogynistic Tweets was “ridiculous, I love strong women.” In addition to Maddow, Grenell targeted Hillary Clinton and Callista Gingrich in some Tweets. The angry reaction to his Twitter feed amounted to an attack from the Obama campaign, Grenell said.
“It’s the classic Obama playbook,” he said. “Republicans are either racist, homophobic or misogynistic. I’m not a hurtful person.”
The Tweets, he said, were never discussed internally at the Romney campaign.
Perhaps the last straw for Grenell came in late April, when he helped organize a conference call with reporters to discuss national security issues. As the New York Times reported last month, Grenell was told by a senior Romney aide not to speak on the call because the campaign wanted him to “lay low for now.”
The Times story depicted Grenell as “seething” over the slight. When asked about the Times story, Grenell did not dispute the account but declined to comment further.
Days later, Grenell announced his resignation from the Romney campaign. Senior campaign staffers tried to talk him out of leaving. Aides to Romney were convinced the controversy would blow over, the Times reported. But Grenell quit anyway. He said he was frustrated that the media and his critics were focused on his “personal life” and not on the important foreign policy issues he wanted to discuss.
“I care very deeply about national security issues and it became increasingly clear that I wasn’t going to be talking about national security,” Grenell told the Blade. “The far left and far right wanted to talk about my personal life and my stance on gay marriage.
“For someone who’s hired to talk about the president’s failed policies on Iran and North Korea, that’s frustrating,” he continued in explaining his decision to resign. “These are my issues — foreign policy and that’s what I spend my time with. It’s ironic, too, because I served eight years in a high-profile position in the Bush administration, comfortably out, but national campaigns are hyper-partisan operations.”
The Romney campaign has declined Blade requests for comment and interview requests throughout the primary season. The campaign issued a statement to reporters in response to Grenell’s resignation.
“We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons,” said Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, in a statement. “We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
Grenell declined to say what the campaign could have done differently that might have encouraged him to stay on.
“Campaigns are not the real world,” he noted. “They have hyper-partisan activists on both sides shooting to kill. It’s not governing. The evidence shows Obama was an amazing campaigner and a terrible governor.”
Asked about Romney’s record on LGBT issues, which includes signing a pledge from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage that says he would support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Grenell urged both Democrats and Republicans to view gay rights as a civil rights issue.
“I wish that Gov. Romney would not view gay equality as a partisan issue,” he said, “it’s a civil rights issue.”
He continued, “The Democratic strategy is to point out extremists in my party and play politics with the issue. I recognize the historic nature of Obama’s personal stance on gay marriage. What I don’t hear from Democratic partisans is a critique on the fact that he hasn’t changed his policies.”
Asked to elaborate, he said that Obama supports the right of states to decide marriage for themselves, something Grenell opposes.
“We gay conservatives are fighting within our party on a daily basis and critique our own party,” he said. “I don’t see that critique on the Democratic side. The extreme lefties are just as intolerant as the far right.”
He went on to criticize Obama for the timing of his marriage announcement — just after a vote to add a ban on marriage and civil unions to the North Carolina Constitution.
“The president waited until after the North Carolina vote to talk about his personal stance and his policy stance is that North Carolina gets to be hateful — that’s his policy stance. Obama, [Nancy] Pelosi, Romney, [Speaker John] Boehner should recognize that this is a civil rights issue and asking other citizens to vote on someone else’s equality is wrong.”
Obama criticized the North Carolina amendment effort prior to the vote and has said he opposes similar efforts to “take away rights” in other states. His administration has also declared that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and the Justice Department is no longer defending the statute in court.
But Grenell said Democrats have failed to confront anti-gay voices in the party. “Prop 8 proves that Democrats have work to do too,” he said.
In a wide-ranging, nearly two-hour interview, Grenell spoke passionately about his hope that both parties would stop viewing gay rights as a partisan issue and instead as a civil rights issue. He also spoke about the need to confront religion-based objections to equality.
“We can learn a lot from North Carolina and California in that gay equality issues should not be a political issue,” he said. “It’s clear the Democrats have a lot of work to do and I would suggest that all gay leaders in Washington concentrate on religious leaders and other groups that have the ability to support civil rights issues.”
Grenell was raised an evangelical Christian and his brother is a minster. He attended an evangelical undergraduate school. Despite the attacks from Christian conservatives, he said he received private support from religious activists and asserted there’s “clearly an opening” to engage with conservative Christians.
Asked about a recent Washington Post story that Romney participated in an assault on a gay student while in high school and forcibly cut the boy’s long hair, Grenell assailed the mainstream media.
“That report was more hyper-partisan campaign mudslinging,” he said. “It shouldn’t be an issue — it was a Washington Post partisan hit job. … The credibility of Washington journalism has imploded. When you get out of Washington, the majority of people don’t buy what you’re selling. That’s why mainstream media print journalism has imploded; they created this problem by pretending to be unbiased reporters and being partisan activists.”
His critique of the mainstream media extends to gay writers. In March, Grenell wrote an op-ed published in the Washington Blade criticizing gay Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart for failing to challenge Obama on marriage while attending a White House state dinner. Capehart responded, suggesting that Grenell was hypocritical for taking the Romney job because Romney opposes marriage equality.
“I have nothing against Jonathan,” Grenell said this week. “He’s a reporter who’s in the tank for Obama. We all have a role to play and if you’re going to take a reporter’s role then you should act like a reporter.”
“What Ric repeatedly fails to understand is that I am a reporter with the privilege of being required to have an opinion and to express it,” Capehart told the Blade this week. “And in my opinion, Ric cannot accept that President Obama has something that Gov. Romney does not: a strong record on LGBT equality.”
Grenell urged the Log Cabin Republicans to endorse Romney, though he noted that he is not active in the organization. Log Cabin hasn’t yet said whether it will issue an endorsement in the race. In 2004, the group declined to endorse Bush’s re-election over his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, something that Romney has also endorsed.
On foreign policy, Grenell’s favored topic, he sees a role for the United States to play in advancing LGBT rights abroad and offered praise for Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on LGBT rights in Geneva.
“Absolutely the United States should use its influence to advance rights and freedoms,” he said. Among those rights, he cited access to the Internet, the ability to freely assemble and the ability to be openly gay. “These issues cannot be separated. I think the U.S. should always stand as a beacon of hope for those who are seeking greater democracy and freedom.”
Grenell described Clinton’s Geneva speech — in which she famously said “gay rights are human rights” — as “a great speech for human rights. As much as I can critique Condi Rice’s foreign policy limitations, I have to recognize that she, too, pushed the State Department to accept gays and lesbians more. She was very forward leaning. Hillary built on some of what Condi was doing and has raised the bar even further.”
But that’s where the praise ends for the Obama administration. Grenell fears that Obama doesn’t understand foreign policy and cites as evidence the U.S. policy in Syria and Iran. Grenell faults the administration for not taking a more aggressive approach to Iran at the United Nations and for sending an ambassador to Syria, something Bush resisted.
“There’s no strategy, it’s trial and error diplomacy,” he said. “The Syria policy is to look the other way; the Russians are controlling the policy.”
Asked whether Obama deserves credit for combating terrorism and authorizing the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Grenell said Obama’s performance on these issues reflects a dramatic change from his posture during the campaign.
“There are three or four terror issues where candidate Obama didn’t know what he was talking about and when he got in the White House, he realized how wrong he was.”
The Obama campaign declined to comment on Grenell’s criticisms.
Grenell, 45, works with an L.A.-based public affairs firm, Capitol Media Partners, on international public affairs consulting projects. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner of nearly 10 years, Matthew Lashey, an executive in the media and entertainment industry.
“We’d like the right to marry but don’t live in a state where that’s an option,” he said. “I think it’s important to have the option be a legitimate federal option where you get all the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage.”
New York
NYC lawmakers seek to repeal bathhouse ban
Current policy enacted in 1980s in response to AIDS crisis
New York City lawmakers are pushing to repeal a decades-old prohibition on adult bathhouses, arguing the regulation was created during the height of the AIDS crisis and no longer reflects modern science or public health practices.
Erik Bottcher, the openly gay New York state senator who represents the 47th District that includes the Upper West Side, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and portions of the West Village in Manhattan, is leading the charge to remove the decades-old ban. (Openly gay state Assemblymember Tony Simone has sponsored the repeal bill in the New York State Assembly.) Bottcher sat down with the Washington Blade to discuss why he is advocating for more bathhouses in New York City.
“This is simply about ensuring that our public health policy is in line with today’s science,” he told the Blade. “The prohibition on adult bathhouses was put into place in 1985 at the height of the the AIDS epidemic, when there was very little information, very little treatment options, few treatment options, and great deal of fear. Science has changed. Treatment has changed, and the laws need to change too.”
The proposed legislation would direct the New York State Department of Health to repeal the 1985 regulation and establish a new framework for regulating bathhouses.
“Municipalities around the country and all around the world allow for adult bathhouses. There’s no reason why New York City alone needs to maintain this outdated prohibition. Our bill orders the New York State Department of Health to strike the 1985 regulation and replace it with a regulated public health framework that’s grounded in science.”
Under the proposal, bathhouses would operate as licensed and regulated facilities subject to health and safety standards. Backers of the proposal say that framework could also give public health officials greater access to people who may otherwise be difficult to reach through traditional health care settings.
“What the Department of Health would do is work with public health experts and advocates to develop a regulatory framework that allows licensed regulated facilities to operate under clear health and safety standards — and under this — it would allow public health agencies to have greater opportunities to provide STI and HIV prevention resources, connect people to testing and treatment, conduct instructions, and address legitimate health concerns.”
Supporters of the repeal also argue banning bathhouses does not eliminate the sexual activity that takes place in them or elsewhere. Instead, they say, it pushes those activities into the shadows, where public health officials have fewer opportunities to provide life-saving services that include STI and HIV testing.
“This is also about a safer alternative than pushing activity into unregulated settings where there’s little opportunity for public health engagement because these activities are happening, but they’re happening in the shadows,” Bottcher continued. “We know that the best public health policy is to establish clear public safe public health guidelines that allow for public health intervention.”
Demetre Daskalakis, a physician and longtime HIV prevention advocate who has worked to create sexual healthcare opportunities in bathhouses, also worked with Bottcher on the proposal.
Daskalakis was a high level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee until 2025, when he left federal health landscape after the Trump-Vance administration ousted then-CDC Director Susan Monarez. There he worked as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and was director of the Division of HIV Prevention at the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.
Daskalakis explained his experience has shown him the potential for these spaces to become points of contact for people who do not regularly access traditional health care.
“I’ve seen what happens when you push sex into the underground,” he said. “From my perspective, this is a great opportunity to be able to reach people who really will not come to normal clinical care and won’t go to normal routine places for testing or screening.”
“As a public health person, I look at it as a great opportunity,” added Daskalakis. “If there’s like regulation of those venues, and if there’s like a prevention plan that sort of sprouts in those places with really solid public health and clinical partners, I think it’s a great opportunity for public health good.”
Daskalakis said a regulated bathhouse could offer more than HIV and STI testing, potentially creating spaces where people could access prevention medications and other health services.
“The bottom line is if there is a good relationship between the government and the venues, we can develop spaces in the venues to actually deliver services,” he said. “It’s not just infectious disease services — I mean yes, you can do HIV testing, STI testing. You can provide doxypep and pre-exposure prophylaxis for people who are HIV negative and at risk for HIV.
“As an example, at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center (in New York City), where I’m the chief medical officer, we developed a prevention pack in a very low threshold way. We gave people enough doxypep and prep to get through Pride. You can also have Narcan and other things to reduce the risk of overdose.”
Daskalakis said that approach reflects what public health should be striving for: meeting the community where they are.
“If you have this sort of relationship with the government that’s not antagonistic, and the government, as New York is one to do, provides some regulatory oversight to these venues, I think what you’re going to have is a place that supports LGBTQ culture — which also which does include sexuality, and also creates a platform to be able to do like very solid prevention work.”
The public health landscape surrounding HIV has changed dramatically since the bathhouse regulation was adopted, Daskalakis said, pointing to advances in treatment and prevention.
“The bottom line is that HIV treatment and prevention have really converged. If you are someone living with HIV and you’re on HIV medicines and your viral load is undetectable, you don’t transmit HIV. That’s called undetectable is equal to untransmittable, or U = U. People who are on prep also have very low risk of acquiring HIV, and so you know the world is very different,” he said.
“Back in the 80s, when there was no way to impact transmission of HIV because we didn’t have effective ways to prevent it — or didn’t know very much about it at that point. It’s a very different world where we know a lot about HIV and have a lot of tools to be able to prevent transmission. Same with STIs,” added Daskalakis. “If you create a holistic strategy for prevention that is sex positive and aligned to these venues, you’re going to prevent HIV and STIs. Period.”
For supporters of the legislation, that public health argument is central to the effort to repeal the ban. Bottcher also sees the proposal as a way to restore LGBTQ community spaces at a time when many queer venues have disappeared and social interaction increasingly takes place online.
“In this era of social isolation created by social media and streaming services, people are desperate for third spaces,” Bottcher said. “Places for people to come together in person, to be together in person. That’s what this would help provide.”
Daskalakis echoed Bottcher’s point that bathhouses could transform from underground, tabooed spaces into venues that combine sexual health services with broader LGBTQ culture.
“When you make them illegal, they become seedy and dark. When you make them something that is allowed, they actually then become sites that may have sex on premises but also support other sorts of cultural things, and in a universe where people are trying to make LGBT folks seem invisible, creating a safe space for them is exactly what we need right now.”
That community-space argument is also tied to health disparities, Bottcher said, arguing that greater access to health education and prevention services could help people who are less likely to seek care through traditional medical settings.
“Creating opportunities for in-person public health education, prevention, treatment that will help improve health outcomes when you push people into less safe settings without any opportunities for education, prevention tools, or treatment. That’s when we see these disparities, these health disparities grow. So it’s very important that we be laser focused on opportunities to address these disparities and reduce them.”
He continued, explaining the proposed change is ultimately about updating public health policy as medical science evolves, just as other practices are updated when new information comes out.
“This is a matter of an outdated public health regulation and the government has a responsibility to continually revisit its public health regulation and ensure that they’re in line with modern day science,” Bottcher said. “Science and healthcare are continually evolving, and the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment landscape has changed tremendously in the last few years. Our public health regulations need to keep pace with science.”
For LGBTQ New Yorkers who lived through the AIDS crisis, however, changing the policy could carry a different meaning.
Bottcher says the experiences of those who lived through the epidemic — one that killed nearly 300,000 gay men since the 1980s — should inform how any new system is implemented, rather than being dismissed.
“These are in order to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS and other STIs,” Bottcher said. “We have to bring people engaging in these activities out of the shadows and into safe settings that provide the opportunity for public health entities to engage with education, treatment, prevention — that’s what this would do.”
Daskalakis said those concerns should be approached through what he described as trauma-informed care.
“My response is that of trauma-informed care,” Daskalakis said. “We have totally been through it, but we need to sort of move past the trauma and realize that the science has changed. I’s not it’s not the ’80s anymore, but we definitely need to look at those folks who have gone through the experience (of the HIV/AIDS crisis) to make sure that what we’re building, from a public health perspective, are effective programs.”
“There’s a great opportunity to learn from folks with experience rather than to alienate them,” he added.
Bottcher also pointed out this policy revision and effort to bring regulations in line with modern science is not only happening in New York. Multiple other cities across the U.S. have moved away from bathhouse prohibitions.
“Minneapolis just passed their ordinance in June,” he said. “San Francisco, despite the fact that they repealed their prohibition some years ago, they are still working to change the policy … However, around the country, even in red states, they have bathhouses … and they haven’t presented a detriment to public health in any way.”
The proposed change could also revive a part of New York’s LGBTQ cultural history, Bottcher said.
“Bathhouses were a big part of gay culture for decades. We all know the legendary stories of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow performing at the Continental Baths. I envision a resurgence of bathhouse culture that includes things like live music, arts, and entertainment. So it’s exciting to think about.”
And if that resurgence happens, Bottcher already has a dream performer in mind to be the first to take the stage.
“Oh, that’s such a good question … Cher.”
Daskalakis picked a similarly essential female singer of gay culture that he’d like to see in the bathhouses of today.
“I feel like my list could be so long, but I think that would be a great place for Madonna.”
The debate over New York’s bathhouse regulation ultimately reflects a broader question about how public health policy should respond as science, medicine, and LGBTQ communities change.
For Bottcher, regulation, rather than prohibition, would give health officials more opportunities to provide prevention and treatment while allowing LGBTQ people to gather openly.
For Daskalakis, the central lesson from his extensive healthcare work in bathhouses is that pushing sexual activity underground will make public health outreach more difficult — the opposite of what the government and healthcare providers should be doing.
“The opportunity to create safe spaces means that we’ll have more opportunities to reach people, not just for public health, but for so many other things … The strategy of banning things that are natural really doesn’t tend to help you very much. It ends up creating misalignment between the community and policymakers.”
U.S. Military/Pentagon
Hegseth uses transphobic slur while campaigning for Iowa congressman
Defense Secretary was speaking in support of Republican Zach Nunn
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday used an anti-transgender slur while campaigning for U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), drawing attention to the Trump-Vance administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict trans people from serving in the military.
“At the Department of War, we do training, not t***nies,” Hegseth said, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, which first reported the remarks.
Hegseth made the comment at JR’s SouthPork Ranch at the Iowa State Fair, where he joined Nunn for a rally. The remark came as Hegseth discussed his priorities for the military and argued that the department’s focus should be on military readiness rather than issues of race or gender.
In the same speech, Hegseth claimed that the military operates without regard to race or gender.
“Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness — the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior — is the only focus of our department,” Hegseth said. “Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”
Hegseth’s remarks come as the Trump-Vance administration continues its efforts to restrict trans people from serving in the military.
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration has moved to remove trans service members from the military while also taking steps to prevent trans people from joining.
Trump signed “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” in January 2025, which attempts to bars trans individuals from serving or enlisting in the U.S. military, citing “military readiness” as the reason, despite there being no factual basis for the ban. The policy has been challenged by LGBTQ advocates and military service members, who argue there is no evidence that trans service members undermine military readiness.
Earlier this year, Hegseth made headlines again over the administration’s contradictory approach to hormone therapy, as the military moved to restrict gender-affirming hormone treatment for trans service members while encouraging cisgender military members to receive hormone therapy for “low T,” or testosterone.
The administration’s policy has faced a series of legal challenges from trans service members and advocacy groups.
In June, a federal appeals court panel ruled the administration could not discharge the trans service members who brought one of the lawsuits challenging the ban while their case continues, providing a moment of relief amid the administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict trans military service. The Trump-Vance administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling and, in the meantime, keep it from taking effect.
The Washington Blade reached out to the Pentagon for comment on Hegseth’s use of the slur, but the department did not push back on his choice of words.
“We have nothing further to add beyond the secretary’s remarks,” the statement read.
Illinois
Chicago’s LGBTQ+ youth: Why their zip code still matters
South and West side residents face longer commutes to access affirming services
On Chicago’s West Side, the ballroom scene doubles as a lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth.
Every week, teens are drawn into TaskForce Prevention & Community Services for its popular Vogue School. Once there, they then have access to a variety of resources like housing support, a food pantry, fresh produce, and mental health services.
For many, it’s the only affirming environment in their neighborhood.
“We’re located here in Austin, and there isn’t really any other LGBTQ+ youth program like us on the West Side,” said Reyna Ortiz, program director at the nonprofit. “It’s special because young people don’t have to go Downtown or to the North side to feel like they belong here.”
Ortiz’s perspective underscores a long-standing reality that access to LGBTQ+ youth resources often depends on your zip code.
The city’s largest LGBTQ+ institutions have a prominence on the North Side, which is home to LGBTQ+ enclaves like Northalsted and Andersonville. This can leave queer youth on the South and West sides having to face longer commutes and other barriers when trying to access affirming services.
And when queer youth don’t have these kinds of resources nearby, it can create gaps that shape their health, education and economic futures. But North Side-based institutions—as well as smaller LGBTQ+ orgs on the South and West sides and some citywide organizations—are working to fill these gaps.
Two of Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ organizations, the Center on Halsted and Howard Brown Health’s Broadway Youth Center, are both situated on the North Side.
At Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., youth and family programming spans drop-in spaces, leadership and mentoring opportunities and support groups for LGBTQ+ youth. statewide LGBTQ+ hotline provides additional access for young people beyond its Lakeview base.
CEO Joli Robinson said the Center has been intentional about expanding youth programming beyond the North Side through partnerships with other LGBTQ+ organizations and by introducing programs to its South Side location, the Center on Cottage Grove, 6323 S. Cottage Grove Ave.
“A week or so ago, we started our first drop-in space at the Center on Cottage Grove, which has been a priority for us over the past year and a half that I’ve been with the organization,” Robinson said. “We also partner with organizations like Chicago House and Life is Work, … and work to strengthen relationships with the GSAs in schools and PFLAG organizations that exist on the South and West sides.”
These kinds of collaborations are crucial to reaching LGBTQ+ youth in all neighborhoods of Chicago, Robinson said.
“These are organizations that they may already have a strong relationship with, and by deepening our partnerships with them, we’re leveraging the expertise of people who are in these neighborhoods to make sure we’re working in collaboration,” Robinson said.
The Broadway Youth Center, 1023 W. Irving Park Road, serves LGBTQ+ youth ages 12 to 24, particularly those experiencing homelessness or housing instability. It provides integrated medical and mental health care, sexual and reproductive health services, case management and mental wellness support.
The Broadway Youth Center’s drop-in space also offers meals, clothing, showers and other essentials, while cultural programming like art and dance provides additional affirming outets.
Both organizations state their programs are open to youth citywide and emphasize outreach through hotlines, housing services and broader support networks.
Still, their physical bases on the North Side mean that young people in other parts of the city often face barriers to access them.
“And we don’t want transportation to be a barrier for individuals,” Robinson said. “We don’t want location to be a barrier for individuals to participate in some of our programming, so it really is incumbent upon us to be very strategic and think creatively about how we engage the full city.”
TaskForce is among the organizations working to fill these gaps.
Based in Austin on the West Side, the nonprofit offers youth services that are culturally specific, including housing support, food access, and sexual health testing.
Equally as important is TaskForce’s Vogue School, which uses voguing and ballroom culture to strengthen community and encourage self expression.
“Ballroom is important because it’s the one place where they can showcase their talents, where they can showcase who they are without any type of restrictions, without any type of judgment,” Ortiz said. “Ballroom and vogue are how our kids see themselves celebrated. It’s culture, it’s community, and it’s also leadership development.”
Ortiz said TaskForce also provides a steady presence in a neighborhood where resources are limited.
“We are consistent, we are here, we are present and we are open,” Ortiz said.
TaskForce is also home to PrEP 4 Teens, a citywide program focused on HIV prevention and sexual health among youth. While it’s open to teens across Chicago, staff said they are especially focused on reaching those on the South and West Sides who often face the steepest barriers to access.
“We’re looking to collaborate more with agencies, both in the south and west side of Chicago,” said program lead David Gauna. “We know those are the young people who need us most.”
That focus reflects the larger imbalance in the city.
“It’s about equitable access,” said Jim Pickett, one of the program’s organizers. “And so there’s a real lack of equity throughout Chicago, and we could certainly have a much more equitable distribution of opportunities.”
PrEP4Teens was shaped by youth themselves, Gauna added.
“Young people created this,” Gauna said. “They decided the colors, the imagery, the language. They said, ‘We don’t want this to be medical. We want this to be something fun. We want this to be engaging.’”
That youth-driven design is what makes it resonate, said Skai Underwood, who also runs PrEP4Teens.
“We try to meet youth where they are, and culture is part of that,” Underwood said.
Schools can also play a part in filling these gaps on the South and West sides.
“I think that there’s a great opportunity for schools to be like the glue that brings everything together,” said Julio Flores, program director for the Alliance, which promotes school safety for LGBTQ+ youth through advocacy, education, youth programming and research.
For some students, he said, school-based GSAs are the only affirming space they have.
“A GSA can be the only affirming space a young person has,” Flores said.
And those spaces can change a student’s trajectory, he added.
“When young people can lead a GSA, they’re not just building community, they’re building the skills they’ll use in college, in jobs and in life,” Flores said.
The gaps in geography don’t just shape whether young queer people can find community. They also shape whether they’re set up to succeed.
At TaskForce, Ortiz said success often begins with visibility. Young people who first came in for the Vogue School or drop-in services have gone on to train as medical assistants and phlebotomists.
“Some of our youth that frequent the Vogue School start to volunteer. Then we hire and train them, and now they’re building careers,” Ortiz said.
For youth involved with PrEP 4 Teens, growth is just as tangible.
Gauna said teens were engaged in a program that empowered them to build the look, feel and voice of a PrEP awareness campaign. By the end of the cohort, youth who had once been too shy to speak were leading workshops, presenting artwork and giving speeches.
“They started off super shy… and by the end they were showcasing what this program had done for them — not just to take charge of their sexual health, but to feel a lot more confident in themselves,” Gauna said.
Pickett tied those individual transformations back to the bigger picture.
“So many queer young people of color don’t necessarily have many safe spaces throughout the day in their lives,” he said. “Providing these opportunities to engage with other young people and develop their skills and have fun and be fully who they are is so empowering. It sets them up for success.”
Robinson of Center on Halsted said the link between geography and opportunity often comes down to whether young people have their most immediate needs met close to home. Without food, shelter or a safe place to connect, long-term success could remain out of reach.
“For people to really have the safety and security they need to think about economic development or to be provided with a stronger footing and foundation to focus on maybe college or career, they need to have some of their most basic needs met,” Robinson said.
This article was originally published by the Windy City Times and is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com/
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