First City GLBT Liaison Honored With Award
CHICAGO (CBS) - The city's first mayoral liaison to the GLBT community was honored with an award over the weekend.
Katherine "Kit" Duffy, 64, was the recipient of the Jon-Henri Award on Sunday for her contributions to Chicago's gay and lesbian community. She received the award Sunday at the Gerber-Hart Library, 1127 W. Granville Ave.
Duffy was born in Hagestrown, Maryland, and moved to Chicago in 1964.
She was appointed the first mayoral liaison to the GLBT community by Mayor Harold Washington in February 1984, according to Gay Chicago Magazine.
While in the post, Duffy convened a summit meeting between city department heads and gay and lesbian community leaders. She also organized a gay rights rally in Lincoln Park, at which Washington spoke, the magazine reported.
In 1985, Duffy convened Mayor Washington's first Committee on Gay and Lesbian Issues, which is now known as the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. She also headed up the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the magazine reported.
Duffy left city government after Mayor Washington died on Nov. 25, 1987, but continued her activism and went on to help secure the passage of the Chicago Human Rights Ordinance in 1988, the magazine reported. The ordinance bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
In the column, Duffy recalled receiving calls from a gay teenager with a gun to his head, and a gay firefighter who was shunned by his co-workers and left unable to do his job, while working as the mayor's liaison.
"Twenty-seven years ago, years of progress for GLBTs, growing openness and acceptance, many more resources for kids and yet … so many are still in despair, their humanity and identities are still demeaned on a daily basis, and they are still dying," she wrote.
She wrote that with "little hope" for teaching adults to discourage their children from anti-gay bullying, a safe environment should be developed for GLBT students, "one which builds in them the confidence and skills they will need to have a chance for the happy and fulfilled lives to which they are entitled."
She encouraged Chicago Public Schools officials to revisit the idea of the Pride Campus, a planned GLBT-friendly campus of the Greater Lawndale-Little Village School for Social Justice. Plans for the school were called off two years ago.
The award Duffy received honors another local GLBT activist, Jon-Henri Damski, who called Duffy his favorite "co-conspirator" in gay rights activism, Gay Chicago Magazine reported.
Damski was also an essayist, poet and newspaper columnist who chronicled the life, culture and struggles of the gay community in New Town, an old name for the East Lakeview and Boystown neighborhoods. Damski wrote from the 1970s until his untimely death from cancer in 1997.
To commemorate Damski, the award with his name was created by Lori Cannon of the HIV/AIDS service organization Vital Bridges. The first award was issued in 1998.
