A Year of Temporary Respite for LGBTQs

BY PAUL MASTERSON

Last year, 2021, began ominously. On Jan. 6 right wing terrorists inspired by the former president and with the complicity of the Republican Party attempted to violently overthrow the American democracy. Had they succeeded, we would have been thrown into the abyss of authoritarianism. It would have meant an end to LGBTQ rights as we know them.

Two weeks later, we let out a collective sigh of relief with President Joe Biden’s inauguration. It signaled a return to the advance of LGBTQ equality. Just days after his inauguration, by executive order, Biden reversed the previous regime’s ban of transgender members of the armed forces. Later, history would be made when the U.S. Senate confirmed Pete Buttigieg, a gay married man, as the Secretary of Transportation, and a transgender woman, Dr. Rachel Levin, as Assistant Health Secretary. She would later be promoted to four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, becoming the first openly transgender person to achieve that rank.

It was a year of celebrity comings-out with NFL footballer Carl Nassib leading the pack. A record number of out athletes competed in the Tokyo Olympics.

Speaking of Olympians, like clockwork, Caitlyn Jenner embarrassed us, again. However, transwoman Amy Schneider became a Jeopardy Tournament of Champions contestant, launching her run of victories in the middle of Transgender Awareness Week. On the dark side, murders of transgender women were record setting worldwide.

HISTORY LESSONS

In 2021 Wisconsin joined 31 other states in requiring the teaching of Holocaust history. Wausau and Sun Prairie joined 11 other cities in banning conversion therapy. While State Legislature Republicans again protected its practice statewide, Gov. Tony Evers blocked the funding of conversion therapy with state money. Meanwhile, the culture wars raged as certain school boards, buttressed by the Republican State Assembly, moved to erase LGBTQ recognition in public schools.

In March, the Brett Blomme child porn scandal shook the city’s LGBTQ community that had celebrated Blomme as a rising star.

Due to the pandemic, June’s traditional Pride Parade was cancelled for the second year. Milwaukee Pride, Inc, aside from organizing Pride Month events in June that included the launch of the first MCTS Pride Bus and the Hoan Bridge illuminated in rainbow colors, managed to produce a smaller PrideFest, appropriately called PridetoberFest, in October.

In the political and cultural realms, as part of June Pride, the second March with Pride for Black Lives Matter took place, again organized by activist Broderick Pearson. Jessica Katzenmeyer announced her congressional campaign to challenge Republican incumbent Scott Fitzpatrick. Transman artist Nykoli Koslow was the Pfister Hotel’s Artist in Residence and a dozen queer artists were featured on city billboards for a unique “Queering the Cream City” public art exhibit.

Both nationally and locally, 2021 was an anniversary year for many historic events.

It was the 40th anniversary of the first report in the New York Native of HIV as an “exotic new disease,” the 20th anniversary of the death of Mathew Shepherd, the 10th of the end of the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the fifth of the Pulse Massacre in Orlando.

BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER

Milwaukee commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Black Nite Brawl, a bar fight between straight sailors and gay bar patrons dubbed Milwaukee’s LGBTQ uprising. Gay People’s Union and the Metropolitan Community Church celebrated their golden anniversaries while Black and White Men Together marked its 40th. It was the 30th anniversary of the 1991 arrest of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the 25th of the Lambda Legal victory in the landmark case Nabozny v. Podlesny on behalf of Wisconsin teen, Jamie Nabozny (the first ruling in which a court decided a school district could be liable for failing to stop anti-gay bullying). Other historic silver anniversaries were PrideFest’s move to Henry Maier Festival Park and Karen Gotzler’s run for alderperson as the first LGBTQ person to do so.

The year was also the 20th anniversary of Walker’s Pint, one the nation’s few remaining lesbian bars, and the 10th of the arson fire that destroyed a local leather and Levi bar, the Boot Camp Saloon.

In other bar news, drag celebrity Trixie Mattel joined George Schneider as co-owner of This Is It, Milwaukee’s oldest gay bar. LaCage went up for sale, again. Miraculously, all of Cream City’s remaining queer bars successfully weathered another year of COVID.

LGBTQ sports made a comeback after their pandemic hiatus with teams back on their respective pitch, fields, courts and lanes. SSBL’s annual softball tournament, the Dairyland Classic also returned after being cancelled in 2020.

Leadership changes took place in 2021 as well. Hired in August 2020, Cream City Foundation President and CEO Gary Balcerzak resigned in March of 2021. Amy Orta, the LGBTQ Community Center’s executive director since October 2018, left her office shortly after the Center’s move back to Court Street. Kevin Turner has been named Interim Executive Director.

To wrap up the year on an up note, Milwaukee again earned a perfect 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. So, whether you’re hearing that Frank Sinatra classic “It Was a Very Good Year” in your head or not, 2021 proved to be something of a roller coaster ride. It’s certainly time for some optimistic New Year’s resolutions.

Meanwhile, 2022, an election year, is upon us. With the fight for reproductive rights in full swing, abrogating LGBTQ rights are certainly next on the right-wing agenda … so buckle up, it’s going to be another bumpy year.

Paul Masterson is an LGBTQ activist and writer and has served on the boards of the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center, Milwaukee Pride, GAMMA and other organizations.