Two years ago, on my first and only date with Marco, we walked briskly along Cornelia from Broadway to Halsted, a block where several gay men had been attacked the previous week. Except for a porchload of frat boys hurling insults as we passed, the walk was without incident. A year later I walked down the same block to a friend’s house, following a trail of blood from Halsted right to his doorstep, where a gay man had been stabbed the night before.
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Just how prevalent is antigay violence in Chicago? It depends on whom you ask. The Chicago Police Department reported 38 hate crimes based on sexual orientation during 1993, the most recent year for which statistics are available (they also rank Lakeview first among the “Top Communities for Hate Crimes”). For the same period, the Anti-Violence Project at Horizons Community Services, one of Chicago’s largest gay social service agencies, reported 204 incidents. It’s no surprise that victims of antigay violence are often reluctant to go public, but Horizons hints at an unexpected reason for their reticence: 14 percent of the incidents reported to the Anti-Violence Project involved the police.
While the Safely Foundation is doing most of its fund-raising in the gay community, Perrigo is quick to point out that it does not have an exclusively gay agenda. “Gay this, gay that, we’re only part of the world,” Perrigo says. “What am I going to do when a woman shows up on our doorstep with a black eye and a baby in her arms? Tell her, ‘No, I’m sorry, you’re not gay?”‘
