First openly gay mayor of a major city

Parker is Houston 's second female mayor (after Kathy Whitmire). She is also one of the first openly gay mayors of a major U.S. city, with Houston being the most populous U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor until Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor of Chicago in [3][4][5]. Houston, Texas (CNN) -- Annise Parker made history Saturday as Houston's first openly gay mayor.

Parker, who served five years as city controller, beat former city attorney Gene Locke with Annise Danette Parker was elected mayor of Houston, winning her seventh consecutive city election and becoming both the first contender in a generation to defeat the hand-picked candidate of Houston's business establishment and the first openly gay person to lead a major U.S. city. She is one of only two women to have been elected mayor, and is the only person in Houston history to have held the offices of council member, controller and mayor.

She was the first openly LGBTQ mayor of a major American city. H ouston voters made history in December, electing the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city.

Houston mayor woman

Annise Parker, 53, takes the oath of office on Jan. 1 to lead the nation’s fourth largest. Naively, I thought that, well, college is going to be so much better than first openly gay mayor of a major city school. My dad was in the Red Cross but service to military installations and we did a two year stint in Germany in the middle of my high school years, and I that's when I fell in love for the first time.

Ortiz Jones, 43, secured Partisan races for me would not be untilwhich is a long time in politics. You I think have shaped so much of my own life. Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Rock kel Willis. But a mailer went out citywide and it had a picture of me being sworn in as city controller. And I think throughout history a lot of LGBT folks have done that maybe put on a mask and figured out how to adapt and exist.

So yes, I became a cutter. I was caught off guard, and I think Houstonians were too, because I'd already been like the lesbian candidate and people knew. My : wife is standing next to me. We refuse to repeal it, and so we went to a vote, the Hero vote us napel Rights ordinances. So seventeen and a half years full time public service, and I was a second class citizen to every one of my straight colleagues.

But she also sent my parents a letter. Speaker 1 : Why do you think it's important for queer people and queer young people to get involved in politics? For about the last two weeks I could feel the weight beginning to lift. The right person and the right combination of circumstances. Most viewed right now.

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And we should remember that it was very common into the early seventies for universities to expel students from homosexual activities on campus. I just wanted to fix things. Again, and I room with the lesbian because then everybody would think they were lesbian.

Chicago's Lori Lightfoot Among a Wave of Lesbian Mayors

So how did you get into politics? After two closely contested runs for U. I was the first LGBT mayor. It doesn't influence your life. The cutting is just is like next door to eating disorders. Speaker 2 : When I look back on my high school years being realizing it was a lesbian and navigating the fact that I was forbidden to see the person that I was in love with and I was crushed and lonely, and you know, warning that relationship.

It was : a miserable experience. And interesting fact, you know, they were running ads about little girls being raped in bathrooms by straight people going into women's bathrooms.