Tag: Chicago IL

When Alfredo Garcia III checked into Chicago’s Seasons Hospice MacNeal Inpatient Center on July 18, he was dying of stage IV liver cancer and had Hodgkin’s lymphoma spreading through his lymphatic system. Bryan Pottow, director of the hospice, asked Garcia his dying wishes. He wished to marry his boyfriend of five years and “the love of his life,” Erwin Sigueroa. The two had been lifelong friends growing up together in the Little Village neighborhood. So Pottow helped organize the wedding. Although the...

A gay man has pled guilty to the vicious killing another gay man as part of a twisted fantasy. British citizen Andrew Warren made a deal with prosecutors in Cook County, Illinois, to testify against Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem, who was allegedly his partner in crime. As part of the deal, prosecutors will recommend Warren, 58, get only 45 years in prison. The case involves the murder of Lathem’s boyfriend, Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, who was stabbed 70 times in Lathem’s...

The governor of Illinois signed an executive order to help protect transgender students on the day that Chicago’s pride parade was scheduled. Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the order on Sunday, creating a task force to address transgender students needs in schools. 25 people will be appointed to the task force and will study what schools in the state are doing be “affirming and inclusive for transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students.” Their report is due by January of next year. “This...

A church is planning out planting “hundreds” of Pride flags after their flags fell victim to vandalism. The Wicker Park Lutheran Church in Chicago flies a rainbow flag and a transgender flag year-round outside its doors. Over a week ago, someone tore down the flags. The church put them back up, but then over the weekend they were vandalized. At 3 am this past Sunday, someone was caught on video spray-painting in black on the flags. The vandal painted a giant “X”...

Chicago police are investigating a now-retired sergeant amid allegations that he coerced a Black transgender woman to perform oral sex on him in his squad car while on duty. The 39-year-old woman, who’s name has not been released, said that she has been with her boyfriend when the officer’s patrol car rolled up. The officer asked her what she was doing in the neighborhood, and she told the officer she was going home. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune,...

A California court ruled in favor of a man who was denied service at a barber shop because he’s HIV-positive. In 2017, the owner of the King of Kuts barbershop in Los Angeles, Ramsy Milton, refused to cut personal trainer Nikko Briteramos’s hair and said that no one who worked at the shop could either after he found out that Briteramos is living with HIV. Milton allegedly said that he was worried that his “celebrity clientele” would stop coming to the...

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has decorated several train cars with rainbows for Pride Month. Some trains on the north-south Red Line will bear pride colors this month. CTA wrapped some of the cars in rainbows, like they did in 2017 and 2018. The Howard Brown Health Center sponsored the cars, and they’re decorated on the inside with images highlighting the center’s diverse patient population. 14 crosswalks in Boystown, Chicago’s gay village, will also feature pride colors. 13 of them are rainbows,...

A conservative radio host and Christian pastor complained that gay people have stolen the terms “husband” and “wife” from straight people, and straight people are now calling each other “partners” because they’re “weak.” Jesse Lee Peterson discussed South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on his show this past Tuesday, and he got into a rant about how gay people who are married refer to their spouses with words that people have been using for centuries. “Now they’re...