Well done, Ms. Parker and the city of Houston! via david ortez @ flickr
Houston, Texas made history on Saturday by electing city comptroller Annise Parker to be mayor. Parker ran on the always-popular crime reduction platform, and was a solid, above-the-mudslinging-fray campaigner. But that’s not why she made history. What the victory signified was that Houston had elected a lesbian to be the the face of city politics, making it the largest city in America to hand a mayoral victory to an openly gay or lesbian politician. Cities such as Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon have already taken that step, but Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, with a population of 2.2 million people. And it is located in a state that is generally a solid Republican voting block, one that had an anti-sodomy law on the books until the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in 2003.
So it did come as a bit of a surprise to me that this city elected Parker. Then I stopped and thought, and realized that the supposedly liberal state of California repealed gay marriage, and my home state of New York, full of godless sodomites in the minds of some, just shot down a gay marriage amendment earlier this month. Iowa has gay marriage; New York does not. Iowa also gave Obama his first victory of the primary season almost two years ago. So what Parker’s victory signifies to me, more than anything else, is that the us vs. them mentality that this country has regarding gay rights — on both sides of the debate — is gradually losing whatever substantive arguments it once had. This is not to say that I’m expecting Texas to suddenly grant full, unfettered civil rights to the LGBTQ community by the end of next year, but Parker’s victory gives me hope that the march of progress can take root in any part of the country.
Yes, Texas has a strong conservative tradition which has recently had an upsurge of support.
But, I’d like to point out that we also have a strong liberal tradition into which Ms. Parker’s victory fits nicely. Ann Richards, and Barbara Jordan are minor dieties to many people here, and LBJ got many positive things accomplished, for all of his personal and political failings.
I know the story of Ms. Parker, First Lesbian Mayor of Houston is important, but we can give her more political power by drawing the connections between Texas populism and liberalism.
@bellacoker: You make a really great point, one that I wish I knew more about so I could have incorporated it into the post, so thank you for your comment! I suppose my overall commentary was more on how popular perception of a state’s politics do not always manifest in how they handle LGBTQ issues. And Ms. Parker is a powerful symbol of that — though, she is a politician and a woman and someone who is more than just a symbol.
@s.o.a.l.g:
Oh, yeah. State politics are always weird.
You should look up Kinky Friedman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EthpMjYLjVk
Mr. Friedman is a case unto himself. My dad lived for a while in Minnesota and considers it one of his home states, and MN has some political shizz of its own!
Gotta love the Kinkster.
It is so strange, though, that Iowa and Houston are doing things that New York and New Jersey can’t seem to do.
As a former Houstonite I agree that, while the city has major problems, Republicanism is not really one of them. It is a huge, incredibly diverse, totally international, cosmopolitan place with one of the most tolerant ethos I have ever encountered. Houston aside, Texan politics in general are a lot more Western than Southern, with that kind of live and let live style of almost libertarian style conservatism. Texas takes ALL kinds. But Annise Parker’s election would be cause for celebration anywhere.
I think the other thing to consider is that some of the states that we on the coasts tend to consider quite conservative aren’t necessarily so. I’m from Illinois, with extremely close proximity to Iowa (ask me about my summers spent sandbagging to protect the house from being flooded by the Mississippi!) and Iowa has always, always struck me as being fairly moderate, all things considered. Minnesota is where I went to college, and despite the presence of its share of upstate whackadoodles, it’s definitely not that conservative of a state in total. I could keep going.
A problem, as I see it, is something you mentioned in your post, Sarah: a lot of us see states as either blue or red monoliths, and they aren’t. Not even the reddest flyover state in the country is a scarlet monolith.
@Ratinski: Exactly! It’s just one more dividing tool, to assume states that aren’t superficially similar to yours must be a monolith of conflicting values. T’aint that way, my friends.
Wonderful points, Sarah and everyone else. I’m going to try to keep in mind the fact that regions and states are not political monoliths in the future. It’s important, and I’m guilty of falling into an “us vs. them” mentality all too often.
Why do people keep comparing Anna Parker’s victory to New York and California banning gay marriage?
I’m not sure if NY or CA has any gay elected officials but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. This is apples and oranges. A person who is not in favor of gay marriage might not have any problem having a gay mayor as long as they get the job done right. Many people view gay marriage as trying to completely change the game up and throw out tradition that is why they are not in favor of it.
So there are many people in Houston and the world over who wouldn’t mind having a gay mayor, they just don’t want them to get married.
Plenty of people who hold prejudice views against blacks voted for Obama, they just looked past his race to see someone who could get the job done. Is that progress, I guess. The people in Iowa and Minnesota are no more liberal or conservative than the people of NY and CA. If it’s one thing The Twilight Zone has taught me is that “People are alike everywhere.”
As an out bi woman and lifetime political activist I am thrilled. Socalled “liberal” politics in socalled “sophisticated” areas are rife with a particularly backstabbing kind of hypocrisy: e.g. NY & CA and the like – no need to hold those areas up as paradigms of political enlightenment.
Now we will see how the girl does in office….
DirtyLaundry:
That’s the same lesson I learned from driving an 18-wheeler, but with more traffic.