Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson

Celebrity News

Allen Roskoff returns after Christine Quinn’s exit

No one was happier than Allen Roskoff when Christine Quinn was replaced as council speaker by Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Roskoff, the gay rights activist and president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, was an arch-foe of Quinn, whom he considered “much too conservative and in bed with the developers.”

Mark-Viverito and her fellow City Council members are honoring Roskoff — along with the first openly gay NBA player, Jason Collins, and Cynthia Nixon’s wife Christine Marinoni — June 18 at an LGBT Pride Celebration at Cooper Union.

“I was shut out of City Hall for eight years,” Roskoff told me. “Here I am being honored for my work on the same stage where Abraham Lincoln spoke.”