In 1977, the Texas State Bar Association invited country singer Anita Bryant to perform at a meeting in Houston, Texas. In response to Bryant's outspoken anti-gay views and her Save Our Children campaign, thousands of members of the Houston LGBT community and their supporters marched through the city to the venue in protest on June 16, 1977. The protests have been called "Houston's Stonewall" and set into motion the major push for LGBT rights in Houston.
Houston's LGBT community has existed since probably the beginning of the city, but did not take off in full swing until the 1960s. Montrose became the city's gayborhood, evolving into a center of gay culture. By 1968, 26 gay bars were located in Montrose. [1]
Like for much of the United States, the 1969 Stonewall riots did not forward LGBT rights in Houston as much as they did in New York City, in part because Houston at the time was mostly considered a Bible Belt city. In 1970, a chapter of the Gay Liberation Front formed at the University of Houston but disbanded in 1973; another group called Integrity formed the same year. Political groups were also formed; the Gay Political Coalition formed in 1973 and advocated for anti-gay legislation to be repealed and protections to be installed. This was followed in 1975 by the Gay Political Caucus (GPC), which had much of the same goals. [1]
One other event spurred movement within the LGBT Houston community. Harris County Comptroller of the Treasury Gary van Ooteghem attended a county commissioner's court meeting to support gay and lesbian rights in response to Leonard Matlovich's struggle in the United States Army. In the meeting, van Ooteghem publicly came out as gay, although his employer Harris County Treasurer Harsell Gray told van Ooteghem beforehand that he was not allowed to participate in politics. Van Ooteghem was dismissed from his position, an event that was widely publicized and led to van Ooteghem being elected the GPC's first president. Additionally, police raids on gay bars were common at this time. In 1976, police shot and killed Gary Wayne Stock, a bartender at the gay bar Inside/Outside, stating Stock had run a red light and was shot in self-defense. [1] In the planning for the Anita Bryant demonstration every leader in the community participated. Designers created logos and fliers, Fred Paez and Ray Hill negotiated with the Houston Police Department for a non-confrontational and orderly event. Hill was assigned to co-ordinate the marshals and liaison with the police during the march and demonstration.
The Hyatt Hotel in downtown Houston was chosen for the Texas State Bar Association's meeting on June 16, 1977. The TSBA invited country singer Anita Bryant to perform and speak at the meeting. Bryant was also an outspoken opponent of gay rights and had led a campaign called Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance that protected gay people. The TSBA distributed 28,500 pamphlets advertising Bryant's appearance. Many members of the LGBT community denounced the invitation, and it was quickly rescinded. However, shortly after a second invitation was sent to Bryant, inviting her only to sing; the TSBA cited a mistake that resulted in the second invitation being delivered. [1] With the LGBT community not politically sound enough to prevent her from attending, Bryant was scheduled to appear at the meeting. [2]
On the day of the meeting on June 16, 1977, Reverend Joe West held an anti-gay meeting at Houston City Hall. [3] at 8:00 pm, about 3,000 protesters, consisting of members of the LGBT community and their allies, gathered in the Depository Bar parking lot in Montrose at the corners of Bagby and McGowen Streets. [4] Members of the crowd wore black armbands with pink triangles. They then peacefully [3] marched past the Hyatt Hotel to the Houston Public Library (HPL). There, then-publisher of The Advocate David B. Goodstein, actress Liz Torres, and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church Reverend Troy Perry addressed the crowd. [3] [1] By the time the crowd reached the HPL, numbers had grown to between 8,000 and 10,000 protesters. 10 attorneys in attendance walked out of the TSBA meeting and joined the crowd, themselves wearing armbands. [1] The protest then turned into a candlelight vigil. [5] Police in riot gear were stationed at the protest site. [5] Inside the Hyatt Hotel, Bryant's performance received a standing ovation. [1]
Former GPC president Larry Bagneris called the demonstration "the first major political act that we, as gay people, took on in Houston." [1] A minister at Houston's Gay Pride Parade in 1978 said, "It took Anita Bryant to bring this many of our brothers and sisters out of their closets." [6] Gay activist Ray Hill stated, "Houston's gay and lesbian community actually became a community. Before Anita, gay community meant where the bars were; after Anita, gay community meant people." [5]
More LGBT members subsequently became active in politics, and elected officials began searching for their input. In 1978, an event called Town Meeting I was held, during which Houston gays and lesbians met to discuss political and social issues they faced. By 1980, the community had gained an unprecedented amount of recognition, and gay ally Kathy Whitmire won the race for City Controller on a GPC endorsement. [1]
The march itself eventually became the Houston Gay Pride Parade. [7] It was also covered in Bruce Remington's 1983 thesis, "Twelve Fighting Years: Homosexuals in Houston, 1969-1981," which is one of the few existing pieces of literature about the early Houston LGBT community. [2]
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States of America. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered a watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1978.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1977.
The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was founded in New York City on December 21, 1969, almost six months after the Stonewall riots, by dissident members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). In contrast to the Liberation Front, the Activists Alliance solely and specifically served to gay and lesbian rights, declared themself politically neutral and wanted to work within the political system.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of a number of gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots.
The gay liberation movement is a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends, and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1960s.
Save Our Children, Inc. was a political coalition formed in 1977 in Miami, Florida in the United States to overturn a recently legislated county ordinance that banned discrimination in areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation. The coalition was publicly headed by celebrity singer Anita Bryant, who claimed the ordinance discriminated against her right to teach her children biblical morality. It was a well-organized campaign that initiated a bitter political fight between gay activists and Christian fundamentalists. When the repeal of the ordinance went to a vote, it attracted the largest response of any special election in Dade County's history, passing by 70%. In response to this vote, a group of gay and lesbian community members formed Pride South Florida, now known as Pride Fort Lauderdale, an organization whose mission was to fight for the rights of the gay and lesbian community in South Florida.
Atlanta Pride, also colloquially called the Atlanta Gay Pride Festival, is a week-long annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) pride festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1971, it is one of the oldest and largest pride festivals in the United States. According to the Atlanta Pride Committee, as of 2017, attendance had continually grown to around 300,000. Originally a pride held in June, Atlanta Pride has been held in October every year since 2008, typically on a weekend closest to National Coming Out Day.
Queer Liberaction (QL) is a Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas-based grassroots organization advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. The group was founded in November 2008 following the international attention surrounding California's Proposition 8, which changed that state's Constitution to deny marriage rights to any LGBT couples who are not defined as "a man and a woman", passed by a slight majority. The organization is a proponent of same-sex marriage rights for LGBT couples, considering civil unions and domestic partnerships as less than full equality.
The Rainbow Lounge raid occurred in the early morning hours of June 28, 2009, at the Rainbow Lounge, a newly opened gay bar in Fort Worth, Texas. The raid was carried out by members of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) and the Fort Worth Police Department. Several customers were arrested for public intoxication and one customer, Chad Gibson, received a severe head and brain injury while in custody. The police also claimed the customers made sexual advances and contact with them. Other customers were detained and later released without arrest.
The Houston GLBT Community Center was a community center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies in the Houston metropolitan area and southeast Texas. Its last location was in the Dow School building in the Sixth Ward of Houston.
The Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus is the South's oldest civil rights organization dedicated solely to the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. It was founded in 1975, and is the largest LGBTQ political organization in the city of Houston and Harris County. It is known locally simply as "The Caucus." The Caucus is nonpartisan and endorses candidates on the basis of their support for LGBTQ rights, regardless of political party or candidate's sexual orientation.
Mary's, originally called Mary's, Naturally and sometimes referred to as Mary's Lounge, was an iconic gay bar located in the Montrose neighborhood in Houston, Texas, in the United States. The bar opened in 1968, and by the time of its permanent closing in November 2009, it was the oldest gay bar in Houston and one of the oldest in Texas. In addition to being one of the most popular and well-known gay bars in Montrose, Mary's was a hub for gay political activism. In 2011, OutSmart said that the bar "anchored" Houston's gay community in Montrose during its nearly forty-year history.
Houston has a large and diverse LGBT population and is home to the 4th largest gay pride parade in the nation. Houston has the largest LGBT population of any city in the state of Texas.
The Gay Liberation Monument is a monument featuring the sculpture Gay Liberation by American artist George Segal, located in Christopher Park along Christopher Street in the West Village section of Manhattan, New York. The monument was completed in 1980 and was notably the first piece of public art dedicated to gay rights and displaying solidarity for LGBT individuals, while simultaneously commemorating the ongoing struggles of the community. Located at the northern end of the park, the art installation commemorates the Stonewall riots; the monument was dedicated on June 23, 1992, and is part of the Stonewall National Monument. The sculpture itself features two pairs of life-like, life-size individuals made of bronze and painted white; the monument depicts a standing couple and a seated couple.
New York City has one of the largest LGBTQ populations in the world and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBT Americans in New York City constitute by significant margins the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.
Just Marion & Lynn's, stylized "Just" Marion & Lynn's, was a gay bar that was opened in 1973 by Marion Pantzer and Lynn Hornaday in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, Texas, United States. It was one of the first lesbian-oriented bars to open in Houston. The bar closed in 1987, one year after Pantzer was murdered.
Ray Hill was an American activist for LGBT rights and for police, law enforcement and prisoner issues. An ex-convict, he was also the subject of multiple documentary films.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in the United States.
