Houston Elects Openly Gay Mayor Annise Parker
Finally Texans got it right. Houston the nations fourth largest city has elected Annise Parker as their next Mayor in a run off race with Gene Locke. Hopefully this will wake the rest of the state up that Texans are moving away from the Rick Perry George Bush bubba politics.
Electing Parker says a lot for Houstonians who looked past the last minute anti-gay hate mongering that was headed by black pastors.
- But the ugliest attacks came from a group of black pastors who spoke out against Ms. Parker for what they called her gay agenda and two separate anti-gay advocates who send out fliers in the mail calling attention to her support from gay groups and to her relationship with her longtime partner. (They have been together 19 years and have two adopted children.)
- Mr. Locke denied having anything to do with the attacks, but two members of his finance committee gave $40,000 to help finance one of the mailings.
HOUSTON — Houston became the largest city in the country to elect an openly gay mayor Saturday night, as voters gave a solid victory to the city controller, Annise Parker.
Cheers erupted at Ms. Parker’s campaign party as her opponent, Gene Locke, a former city attorney, conceded defeat after it became clear he could not overcome her lead of 53 percent to 47 percent.
Throughout the campaign, Ms. Parker tried to avoid making an issue of her sexual orientation and emphasized her experience in overseeing the city’s finances. But she began her career as an advocate for gay rights in the 1980s, and it was lost on no one in Houston, a city of 2.2 million people, that her election would mark a milestone for gay men and lesbians around the country.
Several smaller cities in other regions have chosen openly gay mayors, among them Providence, R.I., Portland, Ore., and Cambridge, Mass. But Ms. Parker’s success came in a conservative state where voters have outlawed gay marriage and a city where a referendum on granting benefits to same-sex partners of city employees was soundly defeated.
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