I think about acceptance a lot. When I was a young twentysomething, I heard a lot about “acceptance” versus “tolerance.” That it wasn’t enough to merely put up with queer people. We were striving for something more, something solid. But these days even tolerance feels like a high bar to meet. I have been writing […]
Author Archives: Adam M. Rhodes
Posted inNews
Criminalizing queerness
Bernina Mata’s attorneys say prosecutors used homophobic rhetoric to secure a death sentence in 1999. Now they’re asking the governor to set her free.
Posted inNews
Deaths of Black trans women rock Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community
The deaths once again bring an epidemic of violence against the community close to home.
Posted inNews & Politics
Let them play
A bill to prevent trans children from sports teams that align with their gender identities stalled in the state assembly last year, but advocates warn the threat still looms large.
Posted inArts & Culture
Collective healing
Queer bars are more than just bars that happen to be queer. They can be a refuge, a meeting place, and, quite literally, a safe space. They’re also places where our history has been written: from the Stonewall riots to the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Sam Mueller’s latest production unpacks what happens when the safety and […]
Posted inNews
Queer Ukrainians in Chicago fear the worst amid Russian invasion
Russia’s violent history toward the LGBTQ+ community has many worried that anti-queer violence will be meted out in Ukraine.
Posted inNews & Politics
CPS nurses are exhausted
Nurses say conditions remain dire more than a month after a standoff with the mayor.
Posted inNews
CPD’s chief LGBTQ+ liaison officer left the post amid internal turmoil
Sources familiar with the department say the liaison office has become an understaffed PR ploy.
Posted inNews & Politics
Most Illinois prison staff haven’t gotten COVID boosters
Fewer than one in ten prison staffers have received a booster, even as cases spike in correctional facilities across the state.
Posted inNews & Politics
Huff, huff, pass
I remember the first time I tried poppers. It was with my first serious boyfriend during my sophomore year of college in Orlando, Florida. He was older, sweeter than I deserved, and graciously showed me the proverbial and literal ins and outs of gay sex. It was one of those sweet, brief relationships that is more […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hidden no more
One of my favorite passages in Chicago journalist Michael J. O’Loughlin’s new book, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, opens like an old-school joke. A nun named Sister Carol Baltosiewich is sitting in a New York City gay bar and eyeing the men around her, when […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The cost of living
Despite a move to make HIV prevention drugs free through insurers, those living with the virus fear high prices and endless red tape.
Posted inCity Life
Comfort in the face of the unknown
The numbers boggle the mind. More deaths than AIDS in 40 years, the most recent epidemic in recent memory. More deaths than the 1918 influenza pandemic, previously the deadliest disease event in American history. More deaths than the U.S. Civil War, the deadliest conflict in our nation’s history. More deaths. More. More. More. The COVID-19 […]
Posted inNews & Politics
As pandemic restrictions ebb and flow, health care for trans people hangs in limbo
Patti Flynn thought that April 2020 would be a momentous month. She was slated to fly from Chicago to India for gender-confirmation surgery, which would finally bring her body and sense of self in line. And then came COVID-19. Flynn, like many people, faced pandemic-related impacts to her health care. But unlike most, transgender and […]
Posted inCity Life
We’re here, we’re queer, we’re at the beach
What makes Hollywood Beach and others like it welcoming to LGBTQ+ Chicagoans?