Joe Posch, proprietor of Hugh and local bon vivant, believes mayor-elect Mike Duggan's mention of gay Detroiters in his victory speech Tuesday night was more than a throwaway political shout-out. It was an unprecedented (for Detroit) recognition of the city's LGBT residents.
Posch cites a long-standing coolness toward gays from Detroit leaders in the years that followed the city's 1979 passage of an anti-discrimination ordinance.
Detroit Free Press: Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s infamously ignorant comments about gay people during his first term reverberated in the gay community far beyond Detroit’s borders, as did the African-American clergy’s vocal get-out-the-vote support for Michigan’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2004. And even the election of an openly gay City Council president didn’t broaden the discussion, as Charles Pugh spent most of his term publicly distancing himself from perceptions that he might be too strong an advocate for the gay community.
Toss into the mix, the eight years Barbara-Rose Collins served on City Council from 2001-2009 after her Congressional tenure was marred by (among other things) a finding that she fired a gay employee out of fear he had AIDS and local pundits, like Rochelle Riley who suggested in 2004 that the Democratic Party could lose African-American voters over issues like gay marriage, and it's no wonder Duggan's words caught the attention of gay Detroiters.
As Posch notes, this seems to be yet another situation where Detroit's leaders have been, compared to Detroit residents, behind the curve on an issue.
As a result, outsiders have long believed Detroit to be openly hostile toward gays and lesbians. But the thousands of GLBT people living in the city — by birth and by choice — generally find Detroit to be a welcoming and neighborly place. Yet, gay visibility and discussions of the GLBT role in revitalizing the city have remained virtually nonexistent.
