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.
Famous quotes containing the words chicago, gay, lesbian, hall and/or fame:
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“What then in love can woman do?
If we grow fond they shun us.
And when we fly them, they pursue:
But leave us when they’ve won us.”
—John Gay (1685–1732)
“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)
“Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshadowed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Today one does not hear much about him.... The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)