Chi. G&L Hall of Fame Selects Inductees

Activists, artists, and others will be among this year's inductees to the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

Eleven individuals and four organizations will be in the hall's 21st class of inductees, with the ceremony set for November 9 at the Chicago History Museum. The event will be free and open to the public.

Individual inductees include Greg Cameron, an arts administrator; Grant Lynn Ford, founding publisher of GayLife magazine and a retired Metropolitan Community Church pastor; Robert Garofalo, MD, an expert on the health issues of LGBT youths and young people with HIV; Ted Grady, a caterer and activist with several groups; Marcia Hill, a leader in LGBT sports who helped bring the Gay Games to Chicago in 2006; writer Owen Keehnen; and bookseller Brett Shingledecker.

There are also four posthumous inductees: Paul Adams, an early AIDS activist who also campaigned against antigay violence; Antonia "Tata" Flores, founder of Chicago's Dykes on Bikes group and volunteer for numerous causes; Tony Jackson, a pioneer in early-20th-century popular music who wrote the song "Pretty Baby" and lived an openly gay life when that was rare; and Jon Simmons, a city government liaison to LGBT Chicagoans under three mayors.

Organizational inductees are Good Shepherd Parish Metropolitan Community Church, the first Midwestern congregation of that gay-oriented denomination; Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles, an umbrella association for several gay instrumental music groups; and, as Friends of the Community, the law firm of Jenner and Block, which has represented numerous LGBT people and organizations, and the Night Ministry, which provides emergency housing to homeless youths, many of whom are LGBT.

The hall of fame is believed to be the nation's only such institution with government sponsorship, although city funds have been restricted this year due to budget problems. "We are grateful that individual Chicagoans have stepped forward to assist us, through Friends of the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, in maintaining a needed and historically significant institution," said Gary Chichester, cochair of the Hall of Fame Committee and of the Friends organization, in a press release. The Friends group has been holding several fund-raising events; a celebrity auction is scheduled for Tuesday at Sidetrack bar. Find information here.