By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

Community members gathered in the Hoover-Leppen Theater in the Center on Halsted Oct. 18 for the fourth annual candlelight vigil commemorating GLBTs who have been victims of violence.

Numerous T-shirts decorated by clients of Horizons Youth program were hung from clotheslines in the lobby. Each was inscribed with words and memorabilia that related their thoughts about and experiences with violence.

Participants, each given a purple ribbon, entered the darkened theater, partially lit by candles set upon the stage, and saw cardboard silhouettes representing fatalities from assault and abuse.

Laura Velasquez, manager of the Center’s Anti-Violence Project, began the evening by relating how everyone in the GLBT community, whether directly or indirectly, is affected by violence.

“If you’ve ever hesitated to hold your partner’s hand in public, you are a victim of violence. If you are afraid to come out to all or part of your community, you are a victim of violence. If you’ve ever been afraid to speak your mind, you are a victim of violence,” Velasquez said.

The GLBT community shares an unfortunate attribute with straights, she said—a reluctance to talk about violence.

“Tonight, as we come together in solidarity, let’s bring violence out of the closet by remembering all who have been impacted by it,” Velasquez said.

Lisa Gilmore, a therapist for AVP, discussed a new survey that said 32 percent of gay and bisexual men are victims of intimate partner abuse.

“There is still violence within our community,” Gilmore said. “We need to use our pride as individuals and as a community to combat violence.”

Officer Cynthia Brown, domestic violence liaison officer for the 23rd Police District, said, “There’s this myth, amongst our community, that it’s mutual combating” when abuse erupts in a same-sex relationship. The reality, she said, is that the issue boils down to imbalances of control and power and that domestic violence is prevalent in all walks of society.

“It goes along (with) every race, every gender, every socio-economic class. Nobody’s immune to domestic violence,” Brown added.

Jae Jin Pak, of Community Counseling Center of Chicago’s Quetzal Center, a rape crisis agency, spoke about sexual assault and said that it happens far more frequently than society acknowledges.

“One in three women (and) one in 10 men experience sexual assault and sexual abuse in their lifetime—in all communities. …In every community, this is an issue,” he said.

The vigil closed with the reading of names of GLBTs who have been victims of violence.