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CONFRONTING ITSELF: THE AIDS CRISIS AND THE LGBT COMMUNITY IN HOUSTON _______________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ______________ By John D. Goins May, 2014 © Copyright by John D. Goins May, 2014 ii CONFRONTING ITSELF: THE AIDS CRISIS AND THE LGBT MOVEMENT IN HOUSTON _______________ An Abstract of a Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________ By John D. Goins May, 2014 iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the development of Houston’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community from the earliest political organizing in the 1950s through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Relying on archival materials, newspapers, and oral histories it tells their story and reveals that despite a detrimental social and political environment it managed to create and initiate a response to AIDS that not only served its own members but also contributed to national efforts in fighting the disease. By the 1950s, perhaps the earliest gay activists in Houston began to push the limits of their secret existence. They first sought the right to socialize safely in a local bar without police harassment. Their organizational efforts were hindered from within by the elements of diversity and barriers supported by class, race, and gender. Many were also reluctant to be publically identified as homosexual based on the hostile socio-political climate of the day. Only after the radical gay liberation movement expanded in the early 1970s did organizations become more visible in Houston. These factors were compounded in the mid-1980s by a strong conservative backlash that threatened their hard-fought gains. Even to this day, Houston has no law protecting the rights of its citizens against discrimination based on their sexual orientation. In an examination of the AIDS years in Houston, however, a vital lasting legacy becomes apparent. The city’s AIDS movement, comprised of organizations and groups created by the LGBT community, remained the framework and foundation iv for confronting the disease long after the threat had moved beyond its own members. Houston’s level of LGBT social organization and movement activism reveal that less studied communities in cities outside the nation’s older and larger coastal metropolises provide rich contributions to our understanding of these movements nationally. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One 25 “From the GLF to the GPC: The Shift in Gay and Lesbian Activism in 1970s Houston” Chapter Two 68 “AIDS in Houston, 1981-1984: The Initial Response” Chapter Three 112 “Politics, AIDS, and the New Right Backlash of 1985” Chapter Four 149 “1985-1986: Discovery, Definition, and Next Steps” Chapter Five 177 “1987-1990: Toward a Manageable Chronic Disease” Conclusion____________________________________________________________215 Appendix 223 Bibliography 229 vi “Confronting Itself: The AIDS Crisis and LGBT Community in Houston” Introduction According to a survey published in 1979 by the Advocate, a long established gay and lesbian publication, respondents revealed that in their city: 95 percent were registered to vote 49.3 percent belonged to a local gay organization 30 percent belonged to a national gay organization 73.9 percent had made a financial donation to a political campaign in the last 2 years 86.9 percent had contributed to a gay cause 80 percent knew someone who had experienced repression, discrimination, or police harassment 20 percent had directly experienced the above1 On September 9, 1975, gay men and lesbians in the same city had officially incorporated their own political caucus. Its first rally, on October 21, attracted 500 supporters and seven political candidates. In the early years the group established itself in the community by mailing out surveys and soliciting candidates to seek the caucus endorsement. Its success became apparent in the first year when out of the twenty-eight candidates the caucus had endorsed, nineteen had won.2 Three years later, some 3,000 of the same city’s gays and their supporters protested the appearance of Anita Bryant where she would sing country and patriotic songs at the state bar association annual dinner. Bryant had waged a nation-wide anti-gay campaign beginning with the successful prevention of job 1 Barbara McIntosh, “On Homosexuals…Book to Incorporate Opinions, Beliefs of Houston Gay Community,” The Houston Post, 12 February 1979. 2 Rick Barrs, “Gays Gain Political Clout in Houston,” The Houston Post, 25 June 1978, A1. 1 discrimination protection for homosexuals in Dade County, Florida.3 The gay activists marched peacefully by candlelight through downtown and ended with a rally in front of the city’s public library. By 1985, the Anita Bryant march held less meaning for many of the activists. Being sick or knowing others who were made that protest seem less important than the problem of AIDS. Instead, the political caucus became embroiled in an anti-gay backlash from the right concerning a recent anti-discrimination bill the city council had passed. The bill would have protected the rights of lesbians and gay men from potential hiring discrimination with respect to city jobs. The opponents of the law wasted no time placing the AIDS health crisis into the political conflict and claimed that the gay cancer was one more reason to fight against the advancement of gay rights. Then, in 1987, this city, based on numbers of cases, became the fourth highest impacted metropolitan area nationwide.4 Between July 1988 and July 1993, the city experienced 8,530 new AIDS cases.5 While this narrative could have pertained to any sizable U.S. city, the current tendency of LGBT historiography to focus on the major cities of the east and west coasts would cause most readers to assume that these events occurred in New York 3 Craig Rimmerman, From Identity to Politics: The Lesbian and Gay Movements in the United States (Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 2002), 127-129. 4 “More money needed for AIDS victims, doctors tell state panel,” The Houston Post, 10 February 1988 17. 5 Table 2. AIDS cases reported July 1988 through June 1998, by Metropolitan Area of Residence, HIVAIDS Surveillance Supplemental Report, Volume 5, Number 2, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/statistics_1998_HIV_Surveillance_Report_vol_5_no2.pdf, (accessed February 19, 2014). 2 or San Francisco, anywhere besides Houston, Texas. These examples attest to the fact that Houston was home to the same level of social organization and movement activism that has been studied in the nation’s older and larger coastal cities. Houston’s LGBT community, despite a detrimental social and political environment, managed to create and initiate a response that not only served its own but contributed nationally as well. It established a foundation and framework that still exists today. Pre-AIDS, Houston’s LGBT community, although able to claim a strong politically active component, remained divided on many issues and the greatest majority of its members were still hidden by a cloak of secrecy. Even within the Houston Gay Political Caucus (GPC), arguably the most developed of any organization within the community, factions were visible along the lines of gender, race, class, differing degrees of being out, and religion, conflicts not unlike those present in other cities at the time.6 Instead of these political realities, a cursory glance would present a bar oriented community seemingly content with celebrating the newly acquired freedoms won by its Stonewall inspired activist elements. Focusing only on bars misses the importance of AIDS in defining Houston’s gay community. By 1985, the AIDS crisis directly affected 100 percent of Houston’s LGBT community. The epidemic altered life as it had been and changed the very meaning 6 Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretive History (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 184; John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 92-94; Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 2004), 385-386. 3 of what it meant to be a member of the LGBT community. While scholars have studied LGBT history and the aspects of its social and political development, no one has explored for in-depth meaning of the AIDS crisis on the LGBT community. In this dissertation, I attempt to remedy this problem in the literature. I also endeavor to complicate what we already know by placing my study in a region previously ignored in LGBT studies. Compared to the North, East, and West, far fewer studies have been published on the South. I argue that while New York and San Francisco have typically been utilized to tell the story of LGBT activism and the response to AIDS in the United States, a community study of the city of Houston, located in another region, the South, may lead to a better understanding of how the majority of LGBT communities developed through the 1980s, and responded to the AIDS crisis as it affected their own. Furthermore, this project embellishes a discussion of the status of Houston as a Southern city. Its primarily liberal inner city voting constituency, its highly diversified demographics, and its stature as an international petrochemical epicenter seem to demonstrate a capacity to embrace change, and make this label challengeable. By the end of the 1970s, the strength, size, and influence of the city’s LGBT political organization and its successful grassroots AIDS response fortify this line of reasoning.