Houston...We Have Progress

In the last year, minorities have made strides on the national scene. In 2008, we saw the first African American man elected the President of the United States. This past summer, we saw the first Latin American appointed to the United States Supreme Court. And now the latest domino in a recent trend and a slowly growing trend fell in Houston as an openly gay candidate, Annise Parker, was elected the next mayor. She moved up the polls and received enough votes back in November to place herself in the runoff election.

With the win for such a candidate, Houston becomes the largest U.S. city ever to elect an openly gay mayor. She becomes someone for the gay community to look at and aspire to become. It is now not as unlikely for someone's sexual orientation to prevent them for holding an elected office. Parker had to overcome not just the fact that she was in a tough race, but also the anti-gay rhetoric directed at her. Instead of focus being on her qualifications, Parker being a lesbian drew more focus. Anti-gay activists and conservative religious supported her main opponent and even sent letters and such out condemning Parker's orientation. Not surprisingly, gay and lesbian political organizations gathered in Texas and beyond Texas' borders to rally for her and her campaign. Respectfully, her opponent didn't embrace much of the anti-gay rhetoric and being a black man faced his own challenges and would have been only the second black mayor of Houston. Ironically, both candidates were Democrats and most of the conservative support for Parker's opponent was solely in response to her being a lesbian.

Parker, the mayor-elect, isn't the only gay mayor in the United States. Cities like Portland, OR; Providence, RI; and Cambridge, MA. Among its demographics, Houston is the fourth largest U.S. city and about 60,000 of its 2.2 million residents are either gay or lesbian.

This is just another step in the progress that America continues to make from generation. Those who grew up in the wake of World War II or those who grew up around the turn of the century would probably not have predicted such results. A black President, a Latina Supreme Court Justice, and a gay mayor in the country's 4th largest city. This week Houston showed that they have progress.