Longtime activist Rick Garcia, who helped strengthen the gay community’s voice and successfully pushed for local gay rights, died Monday from heart failure, friends said. He was 69.
“There’s just no question in my mind that without Rick doing what he did at the time, we would not have passed legislation that included basic anti-discriminatory gay rights in the city, county and state,” said Art Johnston, a fellow activist who owns the north Halsted Street bar Sidetrack.
Before legislation that included gay rights passed in Chicago in 1988, it faced headwinds from City Council members who were Catholic.
“The response we got almost all the time was, ‘I can’t vote for this because I’m Catholic,'”recalled Johnston, noting the Catholic church’s stance against homosexuality. “And Rick was a devout Catholic who’d done a lot of work with Catholic organizations, and his idea was to reach out to the nuns who’d taught the aldermen when they were in school, and the nuns would counter their arguments and say, ‘I’m Catholic, too, and you can vote for it.’
“Sister Donna Quinn was the main nun who helped on this, she ran Chicago Catholic Women, and they were, in their own way, radical do-gooders,” Johnston said.
Mr. Garcia teamed up with Johnston and activists Laurie Dittman and Jon-Henri Damski to form the so-called Gang of Four that helped push the Chicago ordinance, which had been stalled for years, over the finish line during the administration of the late Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
In 1992 Mr. Garcia was a principal founder of the Illinois Federation for Human Rights, which was renamed Equality Illinois in 2000, and remains a leading force on LGBTQ+ issues.
Similar legislation was passed in Cook County in 1993 and at the state level in 2005.
Mr. Garcia was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 1999.
In a statement issued by Equality Illinois after his death, CEO Channyn Lynne Parker said: “As a transgender woman of color now entrusted to lead this organization, I am proud to walk in the footsteps of a man of color who fought for trans lives and trans rights long before such advocacy was widely embraced. I owe him a profound debt of gratitude and a continued commitment to carry that work forward with integrity. His legacy will not be forgotten.”
Mr. Garcia was born Sept. 15, 1956, and grew up in St. Louis, where he came out as gay and found his voice as a gay rights advocate.
He lived in Washington, D.C., and New York City before moving to Chicago in 1986, initially planning to visit, but staying once he became entrenched in the gay community’s fight for equal rights.
“Rick was a force in making gays an electoral bloc that was courted,” Johnston said.
Mr. Garcia, always impeccably dressed and a concise speaker, became the first person many news reporters would call for a quote on gay issues.
He spoke his mind, loved a good fight and had an in-your-face style that rubbed some, even within the gay community, the wrong way, but no one could argue with the results, friends said.
“He was really clearly the most important gay activist in the late ’80s and ’90s,” Johnston said.
“He was a person who was just unafraid to go after the powers in charge and challenge the status quo on the left and the right,” said Tracy Baim, co-founder of the Windy City Times, a newspaper that bills itself as the voice of the city’s gay, lesbian, bi, trans and queer community.
“Rick’s connection to the Catholic church really made a difference when a lot of opposition was coming from a religious point of view,” she said.
Mr. Garcia was also a leader in lobbying for gay marriage in Illinois, which became law in 2013 under former Gov. Pat Quinn.
“He didn’t grow up around any shrinking violets,” said his brother, David Garcia. “He was dogged, and we were all very very proud of him. I bragged on him like no one.”
Mr. Garcia was also a leader in sharing viewpoints of the gay community with the Catholic church and its leadership.
Last year after the ascension of Chicago-bred Pope Leo XIV, he told the Chicago Sun-Times: The question is “will he be like Francis and talk about the inherent dignity of people who are gay, lesbian and trans? Or will he be focused on gay people’s genitals and what they do with them?”
Mr. Garcia, who attended St. Louis University, told the Chicago Reader in 1996 about a seminal moment that occurred during his college days when he attended a speech by a Catholic priest at St. Louis city hall who spoke of the sins of homosexuality.
In response, Mr. Garcia harangued the priest before realizing the exchange was being recorded by television cameras. It ended up on the local news.
His initial response was to panic, because he didn’t think his family knew he was gay, let alone the nuns he worked with at a Catholic Worker house in St. Louis.
But his family responded reassuringly, and, equally as important, was the embrace he received from the nuns, who were “unbelievably supportive,” he said.
“Then I really knew that this was the work I wanted to do, and that I should really do more of it. And I became a gay activist,” Mr. Garcia told the Reader.
Mr. Garcia lived in a condo in Edgewater. His longtime partner, Ernie Hunsperger, died in 2020.
“He was wickedly funny, he loved dancing, and he was a gourmet cook,” said his friend Tobi Williams, a former director of special events for Cook County.
“Despite being a gourmet, he loved bad gas station food,” she said with a laugh. “It’s what he’d eat as he traveled the state advocating for gay rights — sushi, nachos, hot dogs, anything.”
A viewing is scheduled for Jan. 24 at 1 p.m. at St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church, 4220 N. Sheridan Road, followed by a funeral Mass at 2 p.m.
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