Being gay in North Texas: From beatings, shaming and condemnation to unity and pride
Several gay rights advocates shared their historical observations of the challenges the LGBTQ+ community has faced in North Texas, during an interview with me earlier this year.
Lifelong Fort Worth resident Tony Coronado, president of Tarrant County Pride, recalled the difficulty of growing up gay. He said a large percentage of gay youth contemplated suicide. To escape ridicule, beatings and family rejections, gay people closeted their sexual preference. It was a life of constant looking over your shoulder, fear of discovery, and swift punishment. If a gay youth came out to his parents, the child risked beatings, banishment or forced counseling to convert to a straight life.
During the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, considered at the time to be a “gay disease,” Coronado said, the illness exposed gay people. The infected were ridiculed and in some cases abandoned by family. To offset the isolation, gay people formed chosen families with other gay people and supportive straight people. The COVID pandemic triggered repressed fears and anger from the AIDS outbreak. The government’s mobilization to COVID contrasted to its slow response to the AIDS epidemic.
Lisalee Egbert, UTA assistant professor of American Sign Language, shared that when her brother contracted AIDS, he moved out of their family home and went to New York for treatment. She found that although he was Catholic, the people who seemed to hate him the most were other Catholics.
Jorene Taylor Swift, pastor of Fort Worth’s Celebration Community Church, which welcomed the LGBTQ+ community, said a congregation member told of his attempt to come out at 15 years old. When he shared with his minister his sexuality, the cleric warned he was destined for hell.
Swift told of female and male gay people going out together to give the impression of two heterosexual couples. Lesbians joined baseball teams to participate in a socially acceptable activity to meet other lesbians and to enjoy publicly the company of gay friends. She observed that although internationally renowned pianist Harvey Lavan “Van” Cliburn Jr. wasn’t very open about his sexuality to save his mother Rildia Bee embarrassment, his life partner Thomas L. Smith read his eulogy and was listed in his obituary as surviving friend.
In the 1960s and 1970s, gay bars, such as Billy Ray’s, flourished in Fort Worth as ports to acceptance, enjoyment and entertainment. However, Fort Worth police patrolled the bars’ parking lots, recording license plate numbers, identifying owners and then outing them.
Kathy Jack, inclusion ambassador for the LGBTQ+ for the Dallas Mavericks, recalled going to the Conference Room bar in Dallas in the 1970s. When the door person saw police approaching, she illuminated a red light signal. Patrons stopped dancing or escaped through the bathroom windows, skinning legs. Once inside, the police turned on the lights and ordered everyone to stand against the walls. The cops shined flashlights into frightened eyes, searching for signs of intoxication to arrest the gay people.
On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court overturned in Lawrence v Texas the state’s sodomy laws, making same-sex activity legal in the United States. Still, homophobic practices lingered in Fort Worth. One of the most egregious examples of police harassment was the Rainbow Lounge raid on June 28, 2009, the date of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City. Gotham gay people resisted police oppression with violent clashes, demonstrations, and political action, sparking the gay liberation movement.
In Fort Worth, Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and city police conducted a purported bar check, which escalated to five people arrested for public intoxication and a head injury to Chad Gibson and torn rotator cuff to George Armstrong. After public protests, investigations, and legal actions, the state fired two TABC agents and their supervisor, and the city suspended three officers for one to three days. In 2011, the state paid Gibson $210,000 and Armstrong $15,000. The city settled with Gibson for $400,000 and Armstrong $40,000.
Positive outcomes included the appointment by Chief Jeffrey Halstead of a police liaison to the gay community, revised bar check policies, diversity training to city staff, and expansion of the city’s nondiscrimination policy to include gender identity and gender expression.
On Saturday, the Fort Worth gay community celebrated the 41st annual Pride March with a rally at the Water Gardens and a march downtown. This year’s theme was “Silence to Solidarity.” The Fort Worth LGBTQ+ community dumped the shaming, hiding, and hell-bound condemnations for a life of healthy self-acceptance in bold rainbow unity.
Author Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Worth, national and international Latino history.
