Having spent over a year of my high school years in Houston (a family move required by work) and learning the local culture I can only say I am pleasantly surprised by this victory.
Annise Parker made history yesterday by being elected Houston’s first openly gay mayor, seizing 53.6 percent of the vote in the city’s hotly contested election.
http://www.boston.com/news/nat…
I knew Houston to have a core of deep red state ideas but also as a city of transplanted residents from other parts of the country. While the population was far more accepting than other parts of Texas, when I first read about this election a couple of weeks ago, I remember thinking”no chance” in the current environment.
The election battle leading up to yesterday’s balloting was marked by fierce campaigning and antigay rhetoric.
Parker is a lesbian who has never made a secret or an issue of her sexual orientation. But that orientation became the focus of the race after antigay activists and conservative religious groups endorsed the 61-year-old Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker’s “homosexual behavior.”
Very happy to have been wrong.
Of the more than 152,000 residents who turned out to cast ballots in the fourth-largest US city yesterday, 81,652 chose Parker – some 11,000 votes more than were placed for Locke.
The dark side of this significant victory is that opposition to Parker included the city’s Black ministers. This highlights a political conundrum that damages both the prospects for extending African-American political leadership as well as gay rights.
Ministers in several Black churches in Massachusetts opposed equal marriage during the legislative fight, yet African-American elected officials supported it.
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p>I tend to take such opposition as being based in religious issues as opposed to race or ethnic factors. The Catholic Chuch and its priests opposed equal marriage yet elected officials (State Senator Marian Walsh comes to mind immediately) who are Catholic supported and voted in favor. I didn’t take the Catholic church’s opposition to be Irish-American based but just the inability of religious leaders of any color to open their minds to the concept.
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p>Just an opinion not based on a hard look or solid documentation.
…the inclusion stance is easier. We just simply say we favor rights and progress for ALL Americans – period. Any constituency, even historically loyal ones, can go pound sand.
…what’s a bigot to do?
as opposed to the right gay women.
Historically speaking, the woman by virtue of her gender has one more strike against her than the man does.
it’s been my impression that people who do not like gay people are less ready to accept gay men than gay women.