Tag Archives: Texas

Openly lesbian Houston comptroller Annise Parker, 52, has announced that she will run for mayor. If successful, Parker will become the first openly gay mayor of a top ten U.S. city. Parker is considered one of the early frontrunners to replace Houston Mayor Bill White, who’s term limited and plans to run as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in 2010. …

The Texas Attorney General has blocked the divorce of the first gay couple to test state laws on the issue. Attorney General Greg Abbott said that since Texas law prohibits same-sex marriages and civil unions, the men could not be divorced in Texas since their union is not recognized to exist in Texas. The men, who have asked that their …

A gay couple in Dallas may create precedent-setting law with their petition to divorce. A gay Dallas man who married his husband in 2006 when they lived in Massachusetts has filed what is believed to be Texas’ first same-sex divorce petition. The petition, filed Wednesday, Jan. 21 in Dallas County’s 302nd District Court, sets up a legal fight over whether …

A man in Texas was arrested for child molestation after a 9-year old girl wrote a letter to Santa asking for it to stop. The 9-year-old’s plea to Santa, written as a school assignment, launched the investigation and led to the first charge of continuous sexual abuse last week. On Tuesday, Cantu was accused of abusing the girl’s older sister, …

And we thought the power of Facebook could only be used for good. Mollygood reports: Apparently this anti-Obama Facebook phenomenon is really getting out of control and, luckily, some ignorant crazies are being forced to pay the consequences. Meet Buck Burnette, a football player for the University of Texas and blatant racist. Shortly after the election, his status read: “all …

A Dallas gay strip joint has caused a ruckus by banning drag queens and transgendered women from its busy Tuesday nights. Fueled by cheap drink prices and nearly naked, toned men dancing for tips, Tuesday night bar-hopping on Fitzhugh Avenue is becoming a staple in the Dallas LGBT community. So much so that locals have even given the event a …

Anybody surprised?

Saying that the saliva of HIV positive persons should not be considered a “lethal weapon”, Lambda Legal has lodged a protest against last week’s sentencing of a Texas man to 35 years in prison for spitting at a police officer. A gay-rights group is protesting a 35-year prison sentence given to an HIV-positive man who was convicted of spitting on …

A 42 year-old HIV-positive Texas man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for spitting into the eyes and mouth of the Dallas policeman arresting him for public intoxication in 2006. “He turns and spits,” Officer Waller said. “He hits me in the eye and mouth. Then he told me he has AIDS. I immediately began looking for something …

The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund is announcing that their endorsee Rosemary Lehmberg has won the Democratic runoff for District Attorney of Travis County, Texas. With no Republican opponent in the fall election, Lehmberg is now the presumptive winner of the post. Lehmberg has worked in the Travis County district attorney’s office for 31 years and has said that she …

In Lawrence Vs. Texas, the landmark 2003 case that overturned sodomy laws nationwide, Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal argued that gays have no right to privacy to “engage in extramarital sexual relations.” Last month Rosenthal resigned in disgrace after emails he’d attempted to delete showed that he is an adulterer and a racist. Rosenthal is being sued for “official misconduct” …

Hillary just cannot catch a break. A Dallas police officer died Friday when his motorcycle struck a pillar on the Houston Street viaduct as he was escorting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to a rally in Oak Cliff. The motorcade was heading south on the viaduct when the officer apparently lost control of his bike about 9:20 a.m. “He just lost …

A University of Texas lecturer is in the third day of a hunger strike to protest the school’s lack of same-sex domestic partners benefits. Uri Horesh, 37, is subsisting on water and vitamins until his demands are met. “The fact that the university is conducting itself in this manner makes me feel like I’m a persona non grata here, a …

Equality Forum reports that a whopping 466 of Fortune 500 companies now offer protection to their gay employees. Highest ranked of the holdouts is #2 Exxon Mobil, but you have to go all the way down to #95, Liberty Mutual, to find the next company still witholding protection. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Texas leads the list of states with the most non-compliant …

Gay blogs are buzzing with outrage today over an Arlington, Texas church’s cancellation of the funeral of a gay man. The High Point Church cancelled the service, planned for Wednesday, after viewing memorial photos of the deceased hugging and kissing male friends. Towleroad reports: [Reverend Gary] Simons defended his decision to renege on the offer to his congregation on Sunday, …

“I believe I’m Elijah, called by God to be a prophet. I believe with all my heart that I was doing the right thing.” – Terry Mark Mangum, 26, (left) arrested for the murder of 46-year old Southwest Airlines flight attendant Kenneth Cummings, Jr. (right), whose charred remains were found in a shallow grave on the Texas ranch of Mangum’s …

Openly gay Dallas mayoral candidate Ed Oakley lost today in that city’s runoff election, defeated by retired businessman Tom Leppert. Surprising poll workers, today’s runoff seems to have had higher turnout than last month’s general election. Oakley, who is CFO of a company that owns several Dallas gay bars, called Leppert late today to concede and congratulate him on his …

In another “third strike” case, a Texas man who videotaped sexual encounters with 131 young men has been sentenced to life in prison for attempting to seduce a 15 year old boy. The man is HIV positive and allegedly never told any of his partners, most of whom with he had bareback sex. The attempted statutory rape charge was the …