The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is an institution founded in 1991 to honor persons and entities who have made significant contributions to the quality of life or well-being of the LGBT community in Chicago. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley attended nearly every installation ceremony each year through 2010, his last year as mayor. His successor, Rahm Emanuel, has also attended annually. The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is the only officially recognized gay and lesbian hall of fame in the United States. Mayor Daley said that the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame "honors individuals and organizations within the LGBT communities who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity and work to enrich and unify our city." It currently has no physical facility but maintains on online website, which allows anyone to visit the Hall of Fame at any time. The Hall of Fame holds an annual installation ceremony for new members. Posters of previous inductees have also been exhibited at the James R. Thompson Center, which is the principal state government building in Chicago; at the Illinois State Library in Springfield; and at the Gerber/Hart Library, an LGBT institution in Chicago.
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“San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?”
—Edmund White (b. 1940)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“The actors today really need the whip hand. They’re so lazy. They haven’t got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)