Covering LGBTQ+ issues, including an Ann Landers column lauded as ‘a beacon of light in a dark world’

Eppie Lederer, the longtime Sun-Times advice columnist who wrote under the name Ann Landers, was praised and condemned for her response to a 1961 letter, in which she urged the writer to show compassion to his gay friend. (Sun-Times files)

Night-shift reporters do what the desk tells them to. And this night, late in 1991, a sneering little bully of an assistant city editor I thought of as “Quartz” ordered me to get myself over to the Town Hall police station.

“The cops are having a meeting with the LGBTQ+ community,” he said, not really using that last term but a common slur we don’t have to repeat today.