Year
|
In Houston/Texas
|
Other
Events in United States |
1990
|
Church groups, families,
andfor the first timecorporate sponsors such as Budweiser,
in addition to gay organizations and businesses, make up the 75
entries in the Pride Parade. Honorary Grand Marshals U.S. Congressman
Craig Washington and Texas State Representative Debra Danburg give
visible evidence of the growing political strength of Houston's
gay community.
A new spate of violence against the community begins. On July 29,
Michael James Burzinski is abducted outside the nightclub Heaven
(where South Beach is now) by four youths from Aldine, Texas, and
shot in the back of the head.
The State of Texas Courts determine that Section 21.06, the infamous
"homosexual Conduct " statue, is unconstitutional as it
violates Texans' rights to privacy
Gay & Lesbian Yellow Pages, Inc. formed Houston-based Corporation
is the creation of its Publisher and CEO, Laura Villagran |
The American Psychological
Association stated that scientific evidence shows that reparative
therapy does not work and that it can do more harm than good.
The first national Lesbian/Gay Writers Conference is held in San
Francisco.
The Hate Crimes Statistic Act is signed into law by President George
Bush. It is the first U.S. bill to use the phrase "sexual orientation."
Polk County Jail in Florida discontinued the practice of forcing
gay inmates to wear pink bracelets to distinguish them from the
rest of the prisoners.
U.S. law prohibiting Gay and Lesbian Immigration revoked |
1991
|
Jack
Valinski, Carol Clark and Brian Keever co-found the Pride
Committee of Houston so that Pride could become a year-round project,
separate from the Caucus.
July 4. Paul
Broussard murdered, galvanizing the community.
August 30th Houston Post columnist, Juan R.
Palomo, is dismissed from his job. He had planned on revealing
his own sexual preference in a July 9th column decrying the lack
of public outrage over the slaying of Paul Broussard, but the
editors published a revised edition deleting the reference to
his own homosexuality. When he discussed the conflict with his
editors with the Houston Press, he was fired. Protests
were led by supporters of Palomos from the Latino community
and by Queer
Nation Houston, which had formed in January. Thirty colleagues
of his at the Post left their desks at deadline to pick up signs.
Within the week, he was rehired. Q-Patrol, an affinity group began
shortly after.
In response to the Broussard murder, the Houston
Police Department start Operation Vice Versa an undercover
sting operation in which officers posed as homosexuals. During
the 15 days of "Operation Vice Versa," five undercover
officers were attacked-sprayed with Mace and hit with a baseball
bat and a tree branch. One policeman was punched in the face by
a man who apologized after his arrest, saying he had thought the
officer was "a damn queer."
LiB, Lesbians in Business
formed, with Suzanne Anderson at the helm.
November 3. Phillip
W. Smith, 24, shot outside Heaven at about 1:30 a.m. He died
in Ben Taub Hospital about 3 a.m. of a gunshot wound to the chest.
Three nights later a Queer
Nation protest took place at the headquarters of the Houston
Police Department.
Queer Nation activism, November 8, another
protest, this time at City Hall.
Q-Patrol founded.
Founded in New Orleans in
1970, the Krewe
of Olympus moved to Houston in 1991 and held its first ball
the next year. Their chief aim is to present theatrical and educational
events that perpetuate and continue Mardi Gras traditions and
to raise money for community charities
State Representative Glen
Maxey wins the run-off election to become the first openly
gay official in the history of the state of Texas.
Texas Human Rights Foundation files a Friend of the Court Brief
in the Texas Court of Appeals against the Texas Penal Code Section
21.06, the state's notorious anti-sodomy statue, while the Texas
Attorney General pushes on with his appeal to have the law reinstated.
|
March 2. Transman
pioneer Lou
Sullivan dies from an AIDS-related illness |
1992
|
Lesbian/Gay Pride Week in Houston gains 501
(C)(3) status and takes on the new name PRIDE Committee of Houston,
Inc.It is set to operate as a year-round organization to plan,
organize, and manage events in celebration of Gay and Lesbian
Pride Week. As one of its first acts, the new board establishes
the Founder's Award, which it presents to Larry Bagneris, former
president of the Gay Political Caucus and, from its inception
until his move back to his native New Orleans, the driving force
behind the parade's form and structure. In keeping with the parade's
theme, Pride = Power, and its emphasis on the volunteerism
of the community, the Gay/Lesbian Switchboard of Houston (which
has served as a clearinghouse for information about the gay community,
its people, organizations and their events for the past decade)
is chosen Honorary Grand Marshal and leads more than 80 units,
including a group from Texas A&M University. State Representative
Debra Danburg, Congressional candidate Ben Reyes, City Councilwoman
Shelia Jackson Lee, and Harris Country Precinct 1 Constable Jack
Abercia appear at the post-parade rally, evidence of the increasing
acceptance of gays and the recognition of their political power.
September. First Annual Houston Transgender
Unity Banquet began as a way for the different Trans Groups
to find a cohesive place to unify and to rid the community of
divisiveness.
LHI, the Lesbian
Health Initiative began in 1992, reaching out to all LGBT
women.
The National Gay Task Force leads demonstrations at the Republican
National Convention in Houston, Texas, where Pat Buchanan has
declared a culture war on gay and lesbian people.
October. While based in Austin,
the publication Texas
Triangle served all of Texas, lasting until around late 2004.
|
Keith
Meinhold becomes the first member of the armed forces to return
to active service following dismissal for homosexuality.
The first transgender activist group, Transgender Nation, founded
as an offshoot of Queer Nation's San Francisco chapter
January 3, 1992 Transgender Pioneer Reed Erickson dies in Mexico
Roy Simmons the second professional football player to voluntarily
come out
Sculptor George Segal's four statue work, collectively titled Gay
Liberation Monument, unveiled in Christopher Park, NYC, near
the site of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. |
1993
|
Houston is the site
of a national conference of Southern Baptists, which makes homosexuality
a central theme and pledges to defeat politicians who support or
tolerate homosexuality. Five city officials attend the parade or
other Pride events, but Mayor Bob Lanier does not accept the invitation
to join in.
PFLAG Houston is named first Organizational Grand Marshal to the
Pride Parade
A Texas Court of Appeals affirms the invalidity of Section 21.06,
the second such decision that will be appealed yet once again by
proponents to the Texas Supreme Court.
In Williamson County, Texas commissioners reversed a decision to
deny Apple Computer tax breaks for a new facility in the county
because of its policy of extending benefits to employees' same-sex
domestic partners. Several of the commissioners, however, continued
to express condemnation of "the gay lifestyle." |
Don't
Ask, Don't Tell enacted
Roberta Achtenberg becomes the first openly openly gay person to
be confirmed by the United States Senate for a major political post,
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Brandon Teena born Teena Renae Brandon lived as a transsexual man.
He was raped and eventually murdered in Richardson County, Nebraska
in one of the most infamous American hate crimes of the 1990s
Minnesota first state to have trans discrimination protection laws
National Public Radio in the US announced it would offer domestic
partner medical and dental benefits to employees in same-sex relationships.
The policy also included unmarried heterosexual couples.
Retired Episcopal bishop E.
Otis Charles, 67, who had been bishop of Utah from 1971-1986,
publicly comes out
The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a former CIA
employee who was fired for acknowledging he was gay |
1994
|
Feb 15. Publisher Greg Jeu
started Outsmart
Magazine, a monthly classy endeavor, covering the news, culture
and social aspects of the community.
September. The Houston
Area Bears were formed, a social and service organization.
After the death due to AIDS
of business and activist Jay Hollyfield, the Hollyfield Foundation
was endowed by his estate
|
A hearing on discrimination
against transgendered people took place in San Francisco before
the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. It resulted in a paper
on transsexual discrimination and unanimous passage by the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors of an amendment to add gender identity to the
list of those protected from discrimination. |
1995
|
In recognition of
Pride festivities, the Houston City Council approves the hanging
of pink triangle banners along both sides of Westheimer through
The Montrose.
First annual Houston Splash Black Gay Pride Event held |
The Employment Non-Discrimination
Act was re-introduced in Congress. H.R.C. demanded that transsexuals
not be included in the legislation.
First FTM conference takes place in San Francisco
Students at East High School in Salt Lake City denied permission
to form a Gay Straight Alliance. Students cited the Equal Access
Act which requires that school districts either allow all extracurricular
clubs or none at all. In 1996 the school board responded by voting
4 to 3 to ban every extracurricular club (The Salt Lake City district
relented in 2000, agreeing to allow all clubs.) |
1996
|
Candace Gingrich, the outspoken lesbian half-sister
of Speaker of the House and gay rights foe Newt Gingrich, is named
Grand Marshal of the Houston Pride Parade. The choice thrusts
a national spotlight on Houston's parade and adds Houston's voice
to the growing national demand that there be an end to civilly
sanctioned discrimination.
Marvin
Davis, a.k.a. Lady Victoria Lust, one of the community's biggest
AIDS fundraisers and founder of the Lady Victoria Lust Holiday
Fund, dies suddenly of a Pulmonary Aneurysm.
QFest
begins in 1996, when a group of maverick arts organizations collaborated
and created The First Annual Houston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival,
better known as The HGLFF.
|
The Employment Nondiscrimination
Act (EDNA) fails to pass in the U.S. Senate by just one vote.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passes in the U.S. Senate by
a wide margin, giving states the right to acknowledge or reject
same sex unions from other states.
President Clinton announced his signing of a bill outlawing homosexual
marriages, but said it should not be used as an excuse for discrimination,
violence or intimidation against gays and lesbians.
Transgendered activists demonstrated outside the annual meeting
of the American Psychiatric Association to protest the labeling
of transgendered people as mentally ill
Cobb County Georgia commissioners voted 3-2 to repeal an anti-gay
resolution it had passed in 1993 which declared homosexuality incompatible
with community standards. It was in response to a decision by Olympic
officials decision that because of the resolution the Olympic torch
would not pass through Cobb county. |
1997
|
After 20 years of
a parade under the intense Texas sun, the Pride Committee works
outside the box, and under its aptly chosen theme, Glowing
with Pride, it introduces the nation's first nighttime Pride
parade. More than 100 entriesover half of the floats illuminated
with all forms of lightingshine brightly in the night, and
a jubilant crowd of 70,000, its goodwill even extending to the group
of about 40 protesters from Heritage Baptist Church in Mount Enterprise,
Texas, and Grace Baptist Church in Houston. The contrast couldn't
have been greater: the protesters behind barricades set up by the
Houston Police Department, the gays in the middle of the street,
Glowing With Pride.
San Antonios first Pride Parade |
The US Senate dealt
a double defeat to gay-rights activists, voting to reject same-sex
marriage in federal law and killing a separate bill that would have
barred job discrimination against gays
An episode of Ellen titled "Roommates" aired. It was given
an adult content warning because of a kiss between Ellen and another
woman
National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce amends its mission statement
to include Transgendered people |
1998
|
January 2. Annise
Parker was sworn in on City Council as the first openly gay
or lesbian elected official in the city of Houston.
Shortly after taking office Mayor Lee Brown makes good on a campaign
promise to issue an executive order reversing the referendum of
1985 and issues executive order 1-8 banning discrimination against
gay city employees. Councilman Rob Todd filed an injunction against
it which held it up in the courts for a number of years.
May. A Gay
& Lesbian Community Center has had a rocky history in
Houston (see
MAC) and restarted in May by leasing a building at 403 Hawthorne,
and relocating in early 2003 to 3400 Montrose, and when that building
was condemned, to the Dow School at 1900 Kane. Financial pressures
led to its final closing around March of 2012.
November. Han-Net was the
first internet presence that connected Houston GLBT activists,
run by Brandon Wolf, and having up to 250 members at one point.
Ran from 1998 to 2003.
Tyrone Garner and John Lawrence are arrested while having consensual
sex in their Harris County apartment complex, after a false report
of an armed intruder was given to police, setting the stage for
a constitutional challenge to Section 21.06
In Austin, Charles Edward Lowery successfully uses the "Gay
Panic" self-defense claim to avoid being convicted of the
brutal murder of deaf and mute gay man Pablo
Zuniga saying that Pablo made unwanted passes at him and then
told him to drop his pants and give him his wallet.
|
On the night of October
6-October 7, 1998 Matthew
Wayne Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming was fatally
attacked near Laramie, Wyoming. The savage beating was due to his
homosexuality.
Stonewall Democrats founded by Barney Frank, a gay Democratic member
of the US. House of Representatives
Bi
Pride Flag was unveiled at the BiCafe's first Anniversary Party
on Dec. 5th 1998
PFLAG voted to include transgendered people
in their mission statement
|
1999
|
January. Houston
Stonewall Young Democrats formed.
A record-breaking crowd of 100,000 watches
as the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer glows with the
light reflected off a disco ball measuring 8 1 / 2 feet across.
An idea envisioned by Lee Harrington, the disco ball is made possible
by funding from Jim Mattress Mac McIngvale who rides
in the parade on a float with diva Martha Wash.
GCAM (Gulf Coast
Archives and Museum of GLBT History, Inc.) founded in October.
The Houston Transgender community
and its supporters began observing the Transgender
Day of Remebrance in November of 1999 through the efforts
of Vanessa Edwards Foster. It was held on the steps of City Hall
with a candlelight vigil and reading of the previous years victims.
Later the event was moved indoors to the Holocaust Museum of Houston,
which was a fitting location because transgendered people were
among the first grouops singled out by the Nazis.The event quickly
overwhelmed the available space at the Museum and has since been
held on the University of Houston Campus.
|
Stonewall Inn added
to the registry of Historical Landmarks
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force drops its endorsement of
ENDA, because the legislation does not include Gender Identity.
Hillary Swank receives an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena
in Boys
Don't Cry
National Transgender Advocacy Coalition founded
California adopts a domestic
partnership law |
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