A group of LGBTQ community leaders are meeting with Mayor Adams on Thursday to “move on” from weeks of rancor over his appointment of three men with histories of anti-gay views, according to a person who’s expected to attend the sit-down.
Allen Roskoff, a longtime gay rights activist in the city and founder of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, told the Daily News that he and others in attendance at the afternoon meeting at City Hall will voice their “disenchantment” with Adams’ decision to hire Fernando Cabrera, Erick Salgado and Gilford Monrose.
“But we have an obligation to move on,” Roskoff said. “We’re going to continue to hold him accountable and work with him, but we’re moving on. We want to get things done.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks at the National Action Network’s (NAN) headquarters in Manhattan, New York on Jan. 17, 2022. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/)
Roskoff declined to say who else will join the meet, and noted that other activists may feel differently.
Still, he said he got the sense from speaking with other participants that there’s support for lowering the temperature a bit.
“We have two options: To say, ‘We’re not moving, go f—k yourself,’ or, ‘We disagree, we think it’s horrendous, but we have to move on,” he said.
Adams’ meeting with the LGBTQ leaders will take place behind closed doors, but the mayor’s aides said they will provide a readout of the discussion afterward.
Activist Allen Roskoff speak at a press conference on March 17, 2015. (Anthony DelMundo/)
The meet comes after LGBTQ activists and lawmakers have spent weeks calling on Adams to rescind the appointments of Cabrera, Salgado and Monrose, all three of whom are Christian pastors with documented histories of anti-gay rhetoric and views.
Cabrera, who has been tapped by Adams as a senior faith adviser, traveled to Uganda in 2014 and praised its government’s extreme anti-gay and anti-abortion laws, proclaiming that Christians had taken “their rightful place” in the country.
At the time, Uganda had adopted legislation that made homosexuality a crime punishable by years of imprisonment.
Monrose, meantime, was appointed to lead Adams’ Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, the same entity that Cabrera will work in. The Brooklyn pastor has also espoused anti-gay views, including deeming homosexuality “a lifestyle that I don’t agree with.”
Salgado, a onetime mayoral candidate endorsed by anti-gay marriage groups, was picked by Adams to serve as an assistant commissioner in the mayor’s immigrant affairs office.
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