The AIDS Crisis and the Gay Rights Backlash in Houston (1991)

Finding tonight, politics and AIDS. The 10-year-old AIDS crisis has left many gay political leaders puzzled about their agenda for the 1990s. Betty Ann Bowser, a public station KUHT Houston reports. Today, members of the gay community like Candles to remember the 3,000 people who have died from AIDS in Houston. The crosses tell the story of how AIDS has taken the lives of gay political activists, people like Michael McAdory, who organized the AIDS Foundation, Bruce Cook, who set up a soup kitchen for AIDS sufferers, people who gave the gay community its political momentum. 10 years ago, they lit candles to pray for gay and lesbian rights. Then, it was not unusual for 25,000 people to turn out for gay pride week. Houston had one of the most politically powerful gay communities in the nation, just one step behind San Francisco, activist Brian Keever remembers. It was wonderful. It really was. I had just moved here and I said, oh my goodness, I found it. This is it. This is utopia and I was just really impressed with the amount of clout that the city had and they allowed the gay community to have that much clout in the fourth-largest city in the nation.

In 1981, a young city controller named Catherine Whitmire was running for mayor. She asked for and received support in the gay community. Back then, Attorney John Paul Barnich was an admirer. The Cathy Whitmire's opponent was openly anti-gay and that rallied the gay community around her, all the gay community supported Cathy Whitmire and is credited by some with her initial victory. She thanked the gay community by appearing in a number of gay bars, thanking the people for having supported her. That same year, the first cases of rare cancers in gay men were reported by the Centers for Disease Control. What was killing them didn't even have a name yet. Throughout the early 80s, the gay community flourished in Houston. So much so that in 1984, the City Council passed legislation for bidding discrimination against homosexuals in city employment.

The measures came at a time when an increasing number of political leaders in the gay community were dying of AIDS and fear of the disease was widespread. Anger over passage of the anti-discrimination legislation brought out another kind of marcher, the Ku Klux Klan. There were also calls for repeal. But we let Houston become a hotbed of homosexuality that threatens our public health and children enough is enough. A referendum was held in January of 1985. The gay job rights measures were rejected by voters overwhelmingly in the largest voter turnout ever on any single issue in Houston. The referendum was a disaster for the gay community. I think it turned the community at large against the gay community and therefore against the AIDS issue.

And I heard it reflected by one state legislator who said, you know, good, we've got a disease that kills gays and junkies. And I think a lot of people took that attitude that these people got the disease because they deserve to have it.