Word: gayes
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Just one week ago, Charles Pugh was poised to become not only Detroit's first openly gay elected official, but its city council president when voters here go to the polls Tuesday. But the flashy former television reporter has an unpleasant new distinction: Pugh recently acknowledged that his three-story home near downtown Detroit has been foreclosed, raising serious questions about his business acumen at a time when this city is on the brink of financial collapse...
...conference on homophobia, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, a revered institution here. Local newspapers picked up the story, publicly confirming Pugh's homosexuality - something his friends and colleagues already knew. "I am a respectable member of this community. And I happen to be gay," he told the Free Press at the time. Earlier this year, he decided to be more than a chronicler of other people. "You can't be an activist and a journalist," Pugh told TIME one recent morning, sitting in the living room of his home, which is filled with giraffe sculptures...
...website to improve citizens' engagement with elected officials. "You walk through neighborhoods and people say, 'I've never seen the people I elect around here,' " Pugh observes. And so he's offered to have dinner at least once a week with a different Detroit family. (See pictures of the gay rights movement...
...some respects, Pugh has already made his mark on Detroit. Pugh's rise in this majority-black city moderates some of the popular perception that African Americans are more homophobic than the general U.S. population. On the campaign trail, Pugh rarely discusses what it means to be gay, although some of his critics have made an issue of his sexuality - particularly his unabashed preference for younger men. (Pugh notes that his last partner was a 23-year-old entrepreneur, and says, "No one complains when an older man dates a younger woman...
...been careful not to delve into issues like gay marriage, partly because it typically doesn't figure into a city councilor's portfolio. Still, he recalls one influential Detroit pastor saying, "We like you, but you pose a problem for the clergy: homosexuality is a sin in our book." Yet hardly any ministers have publicly denounced his candidacy. "People have whispered things about Charles Pugh's homosexuality that they wouldn't dare say in public, partly because they don't want to be singled out," says Gaddis...