Victory Fund's Annise Parker - Metro Weekly - July 16 2020

Contents 

July 16, 2020 Volume 27 Issue 10 

11 

By André Hereford 

35 

SAIL ON PSALM 

Theater dynamo Psalmayene 24 keeps calm and carries on creating 

new work and hosting an online salon series at Studio. 

PATH TO VICTORY 

Annise Parker rose to become Houston’s first LGBTQ mayor. Now 

leading the Victory Fund, she’s helping others reach even higher. 

Interview by John Riley 

LIT UP 

The newly-rechristened Chicks return with a comeback album 

that showcases their greatest strengths. 

By Sean Maunier 

22 

OUT ON THE TOWN p.5 SPOTLIGHT: ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES p.9 

THE FEED: FUNDING HATE p.13 FAKE NEWS p.14 FRENCH CONNECTION p.15 

BREAKING BARRIERS p.16 SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES p.17 QUICK CHECK p.18 

HELPING HAND p.20 GALLERY: WHEN WE FIRST ARRIVED p.32 

TELEVISION: CURSED p.34 VINTAGE SCENE p.37 

LAST WORD p.39 

Washington, D.C.’s Best LGBTQ Magazine for 26 Years 

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Randy Shulman Art Director Todd Franson Online Editor at metroweekly.com Rhuaridh Marr Senior Editor John Riley 

Contributing Editors André Hereford, Doug Rule Senior Photographers Ward Morrison, Julian Vankim Contributing Illustrators David Amoroso, Scott G. Brooks 

Contributing Writers Sean Maunier, Kate Wingfield Webmaster David Uy Production Assistant Julian Vankim 

Sales & Marketing Publisher Randy Shulman National Advertising Representative Rivendell Media Co. 212-242-6863 Distribution Manager Dennis Havrilla 

Patron Saint Justin Flippen Cover Photography PridePortraits.org 

During the pandemic please send all mail to: Metro Weekly PO Box 11559 - Washington, D.C. 20008 • 202-638-6830 

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2 JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM 

3


Out On The Town 

SHAKESPEARE & AMERICA 

QUARANTINE CREATIONS 

WHICH YESTERDAY IS TOMORROW? 

CHERUB ANTIQUES GALLERY 

Compiled by Doug Rule 

DESIDERIUM 

Monumental Theatre Company has assembled a cast of actors 

and musicians for a staged reading of a new musical written by 

local actor/director Ricky Drummond, featuring music from 

the Oh Hellos, a Texas-rooted folk-rock collective led by siblings 

Maggie and Tyler Heath. Desiderium depicts the family 

members and friends struggling to express their grief and move 

forward after the death of a teenager. Caroline Dubberly directs 

a seven-member cast while Marika Countouris leads a whopping 

12-member band. The reading, livestreamed on the company’s 

Facebook page, will be followed by a talkback with the cast and 

creative team. Monday, July 20, at 8 p.m. Free. Visit www.monumentaltheatre.org. 

SHAKESPEARE & AMERICA 

Over the past few months Simon Godwin, artistic director 

of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and his creative crew 

have been hosting a weekly videocast that finds Godwin and 

dramaturg Drew Lichtenberg in conversation with various 

theatrical luminaries discussing the bard’s works. The last two 

Wednesdays in July bring “Shakespeare & Opera,” a discussion 

with operatic tenor Russell Thomas and Washington National 

Opera’s Francesca Zambello, exploring Shakespeare’s influence 

on creators working in an entire artistic genre other than literature 

(July 22), and “Shakespeare & Politics,” a discussion with 

Maureen Dowd, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times 

columnist, Harry Lennix of NBC’s The Blacklist, and author Tina 

Packer of Shakespeare & Company, examining how frighteningly 

contemporary and relevant Shakespeare’s depiction of politics 

can be (July 29). Each “Shakespeare Hour Live!” session starts 

at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for non-STC members. Visit www. 

shakespearetheatre.org. 

WANNABE 

Local actor J.J. Johnson had planned to make his debut as a 

playwright at this year’s Capital Fringe until the summer festival 

was canceled due to the pandemic. Instead, 4615 Theatre’s resident 

artist Reginald Richard will direct a free staged reading of 

Johnson’s coming-of-age comedy about a black dreamer whose 

aspirations are a lot bigger than his small, working-class Virginia 

hometown. Loosely adapted from Johnson’s real life and set 

in the 1980s and 1990s, Wannabe will be livestreamed with an 

eight-person cast led by Evin Howell. Thursday, July 23, at 8 

p.m. Free. Visit www.facebook.com/4615theatre. 

OLYMPIA 

Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) is the focus of this intimate, 

fly-on-the-wall documentary that portrays the celebrated “octogenarian 

motherfucker” in all her brutally honest glory. The 

Massachusetts-born actress recounts her life story, warts and 

all, from rebelling against her hidebound Greek mother to 

charting her own way as an actress, with detours along the way 

to unflinchingly address bouts with addiction and depression. 

Olympia also features tributes from notable colleagues including 

Laura Linney, Diane Ladd, Whoopi Goldberg, Lainie Kazan, and 

Ed Asner, as well as Tales of the City creator Armistead Maupin 

and her famed political cousin, former U.S. presidential candidate 

Michael Dukakis. Now streaming through independent 

theaters nationwide, including the JxJ virtual programming of 

the Edlavitch DCJCC. Tickets are $12 for a 72-hour watch period. 

Visit www.olympiathefilm.com. 

THE PINEAPPLE COLLECTIVE: RAISING THE BAR 

Founded five years ago to help foster a sense of community 

among women in D.C.’s budding food scene, the Pineapple 

Collaborative has since become a national entity operating in 

several markets and offering a range of products and publica- 


5

tions benefitting and spotlighting female foodies and entrepreneurs. 

Yet the organization’s bread and butter are the culinary 

events it organizes, from cooking classes to product tastings 

to panel discussions, designed as judgment-free, safe-space 

gatherings open to all but designed with women in mind. The 

group has been expanding its virtual presence, with the next 

offering a conversation and demonstration with Ashtin Berry, 

a New Orleans-based sommelier who has become nationally 

recognized as a diversity and equity activist and consultant in 

the hospitality industry. Berry will focus on upping the home 

bartender’s game while also dipping into the history and projecting 

the future of the spirits and beverage industry. Sponsored by 

Caviar, the food delivery app will offer attendees $15 in credit 

to be applied to a future order from any of the woman-run 

restaurants featured in the “Pineapple x Caviar’s Women- 

Powered Collection.” The roster includes 17 establishments in 

D.C., including Prescription Chicken, HipCityVeg, Purple Patch, 

Ethiopic, and Pizzeria Paradiso. Wednesday, July 22, at 8 p.m. 

Tickets are pay-what-you-can, with suggested pricing tiers of $5 

to $25 (plus Eventbrite fees). All proceeds go to panelist Berry, 

in recognition of lost income due to COVID-19. Visit www.pineapplecollaborative.com/events. 

EMMA BJÖRLING & PETRUS JOHANSSON 

Every Wednesday through September the American Folklife 

Center at the Library of Congress presents artists, in pre-recorded 

concerts from home, who represent a variety of music 

from folk cultures around the world. Among the offerings over 

the next two months are concerts focused on creole music 

from Louisiana, old time American fiddle music, music from 

the Balkan diaspora, African-American spirituals and freedom 

songs, and Black bluegrass. Next, however, are two musicians 

from Sweden, Emma Björling, a music teacher and choral 

arranger as well as one of the foremost singers of Swedish folksongs, 

and Petrus Johansson, a trained guitar and bass teacher 

and freelance jazz and rock guitarist. Wednesday, July 22, at 

noon. Free. Visit www.facebook.com/americanfolklifecenter for 

the premiere on the day of, or www.youtube.com/loc to watch 

all the concerts in the series. 

PBS SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2020 

This celebration of independent film and filmmakers features 

25 shorts grouped into five topical categories: culture, the 

environment, family, humanity, and race. This year’s films, 

selected and provided by 18 PBS member stations and producing 

partners, offers at least four with LGBTQ interest or appeal, 

including In This Family, Del Rosario’s 12-minute drama centered 

on a man who revisits 10-year-old recordings capturing 

his Filipino family’s reactions after a teacher outed him as gay; 

Sweetheart Dancers, Ben-Alex Dupris’s documentary focused 

on a Two-Spirit couple out to shake up Native-American culture 

by participating in the traditional “Sweetheart Dance” 

at powwows across the country; Joyride, a poignant drama 

by queer Nicaraguan-American multidisciplinary artist Edwin 

Alexis Gómez; and Knocking Down the Fences, Meg Shutzer’s 

documentary about AJ Andrews and her breakthrough prowess 

on the softball field. Viewers can vote for their favorite film to 

determine the #PBSFilmFest’s Most Popular awardee, while a 

panel of seven independent film industry executives will select 

the Juried Prize. All films screen individually, plus several multifilm 

screenings offered by category as Facebook Watch parties. 

Visit www.pbs.org/filmfestival. 

SNAPS FROM MY HOME: ONLINE EXHIBITION 

In 1990, artist David Hockney offered Snaps of My House, a collection 

of images of his Hollywood home captured using his very 

first digital camera. In homage to Hockney, Charlottesville’s 

Second Street Gallery presents an online photo exhibition that 

grew out of This Familiar Space, its previous online exhibition, 

still on view, featuring works by Stacey Evans. Evans along with 

Second Street’s Kristen Chiacchia curated Snaps From My Home 

by selecting among the many digital images submitted by a variety 

of artists taken in and around their own home along with 

their artistic statements about their relationship to home. Taken 

as a whole, the exhibition explores how the past few months 

of stay-at-home orders have affected artists and how they view 

their surroundings. Launches online Friday, July 17, at 5 p.m. On 

view through Aug. 21. Visit www.virtualssg.org. 

CHERUB ANTIQUES GALLERY CLOSING SALE 

COVID-19 will lay claim to another long standing member of 

D.C.’s LGBTQ business community when Bruce Marine closes 

his Georgetown gallery at the end of the month. For nearly 37 

years from its prime M Street storefront location, the Cherub 

Antiques Gallery has peddled many fine pieces of bar ware, 

sculpture, candelabra, art glass, and other decorative art primarily 

in the art nouveau and art deco styles, with an emphasis 

on works from the U.K. and Western Europe. Most of the 

remaining collection is viewable online, with all items on sale, 

reduced up to 50%. Open Thursday through Saturday afternoons 

and by scheduled appointment. Ends August 1. Located 

at 2918 M St. NW. Call 202-337-2224 or visit www.cherubantiquesgallery.com. 

WHICH YESTERDAY IS TOMORROW? 

Transformer, Logan Circle’s boutique art gallery, presents works 

by Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian that reimagine the 

Silk Road caravanserai (central courtyard) as a potential site for 

exchanging ideas and culture through a multi-sensory, site-specific 

installation. The exhibition will have a one-day-only reception, 

limited to a socially distanced few. The artists have created 

a small batch of masks featuring the exhibition’s design motifs 

to be distributed while supplies last. They will also be on hand 

to discuss their work and conception as well as to help participants 

pause and reconnect with the ancient senses, rituals, and 

mythologies represented. Open to mask-wearing visitors on an 

individual, one-by-one basis this Saturday, July 18, from 2 to 6 

p.m. Located at 1404 P St. NW. Call 202-483-1102 or visit www. 

transformerdc.org. 

QUARANTINE CREATIONS 

Local artists have set out to depict their personal experiences 

with life during a global pandemic in an exhibition of new works 

at the VCA Alexandria Animal Hospital. Presented by Del Ray 

Artisans through the artist collective’s Gallery Without Walls 

program, Quarantine Creations showcases works by the gallery’s 

member artists, including Linda S Lowery’s All Stocked Up, an 

oil painting featuring a wooden wine rack fully stocked with bottles 

of red wine, and Suzanne Tillman’s Flattening the Curve, a 

colorful abstract collage. The exhibit doubles as a benefit for the 

nonprofit gallery, with participating artists pledging to donate 

20 percent of sales. The exhibit is on full display online, or by 

scheduling an in-person visit to the hospital. Ends Oct. 24. VCA 

Alexandria Animal Hospital, 2660 Duke St. Call 703-751-2022 or 

visit www.DelRayArtisans.org. 

6 

JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM


7


Spotlight 

Frank Warren, Founder of PostSecret 

Artistic Differences 

Artomatic marks its 20th anniversary by becoming an all-virtual festival. 

OVER THE COURSE OF TWO DECADES, ARTOMATIC 

has become a signature event in D.C. The multi-week, 

multi-genre festival, held every few years, is celebrated 

for its unjuried, open-to-all, community-oriented approach. 

“Artomatic is a kind of conglomeration of everything: All 

kinds of artists, all kinds of art, all kinds of workshops, all kinds 

of performance,” says Natalie Graves Tucker, the festival’s 

executive director. She adds that the “true spirit of Artomatic 

is walking around and seeing all the different art, all the workshops.” 

And don’t forget all the live performances from yet more 

artists, ranging from musicians to magicians. 

All of that is on tap at Artomatic 2020 — well, except for the 

“walking around” part. This year’s 12th iteration of the festival 

— the first since 2017 — will also be the first all-virtual affair. 

It’s been further branded Artomatic 2.0 to mark the change and 

denote a shift from the festival’s first 20 years. (Tucker herself 

represents another, related shift: She was hired last October 

to become the first paid staff member at the formerly volunteer-run 

organization.) 

“Artomatic 2.0 will be an online event where each visual 

artist will have their own personal creative page that will 

have their bio, their Website links, their social media links, 

Click Here 

for More Info 

and five images [of their artworks], which they 

can sell through their own channels — whether 

Venmo, Cash app, or PayPal,” says Tucker. Because 

Artomatic doesn’t charge the typical commission 

that other art fairs and galleries do, artists receive the full value 

of every transaction. 

As it happens, those artists were the key reason Artomatic 

2.0 was put in motion over the spring. “We asked our community,‘What 

could we do to help?’ And we saw the artists were saying, 

‘We've lost income. We’ve had canceled exhibitions. We've 

lost gigs. So could you use your platform to help us in a virtual 

sense?’” This year’s roster features the usual diverse mix of visual 

artists working in glass, sculpture, fiber, paint, drawing, and 

mixed-media, and includes many Artomatic mainstays, among 

them Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Terry Rowe, Liz Lescault, and 

George Koch, the man who founded the event in 1999. 

In addition to the online visual art portfolios, the festival will be 

supplemented with workshops held on Zoom, and performances 

that will stream from participating artists’ social media pages. 

Tucker concedes she was unsure if they would find enough interested 

presenters and performers now that virtual interaction is 

hardly new and trendy, and when the virus itself is one of the only 

things anyone still calls “novel.” “You hear about Zoom overload, 

and that people are tired of being online,” she says. “But oh my 

gosh, we've been so overwhelmed with the responses!” 

The festival’s performance lineup includes actors with 

Guillotine Theatre, musician Yousef Shami, and performance 

artist Carrie Fertig. Meanwhile, many workshops focus on 

doling out practical advice, from “Marketing for Creatives,” 

to “Leveraging Social Media,” to “Pole Dancing” — the latter 

a swing through the basics of “this fun, dance movement” as 

taught by Colleen Jolly. 

The workshop series kicks off Monday, July 

20, with Frank Warren’s “A PostSecret Interactive 

Presentation,” a discussion that will explore the 

backstory to the popular project — including its launch at the 

2004 Artomatic. 

“We’re getting people who got their start at Artomatic,” 

Tucker emphasizes. “They’re coming back. It’s just so nostalgic.” 

—Doug Rule 

Artomatic 2.0: A Virtual Experience begins Monday, July 20, and runs through Aug. 20. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, 

with a suggested price of $20. Visit www.artomatic.org. 


9


Spotlight 

CLINTON BRANDHAGEN 

Sail On Psalm 

Theater dynamo Psalmayene 24 keeps calm and carries on creating new work 

and hosting an online salon series at Studio. 

THEATER ARTISTS AND AUDIENCES WILL RETURN 

to the brilliant dark eventually, but it’ll be a different 

world by then. Acclaimed playwright and director 

Psalmayene 24 is already busy imagining that post-pandemic 

future, as it relates to both his art and his life as an artist. “Now 

that the present has been so dramatically transformed, I'm 

looking at the future in a much different way,” says the Helen 

Hayes Award-nominated talent, whose spring production of 

Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over at Studio Theatre was suspended 

due to the COVID-19 lockdown. 

“I think we were only open for like a week and a half, and 

then we had to shut down,” he says. “And then I had another 

play that was running, Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation 

Myth at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. That was in the middle 

of its run. Had to close that. And then I was getting 

ready to open another show at Theater Alliance — 

a new musical that I'm writing called The Blackest 

Battle that was going to open in May.” 

The Blackest Battle — a musical that, according to the playwright, 

“explores so-called black-on-black violence through 

two warring hip-hop groups” — was postponed. But, as artists 

are wont to do, Psalmayene 24 saw an opportunity in the setback. 

He decided that Battle, set in the future, should reflect the 

life-changing effects of our strange here and now. “So it's more 

about looking ahead and trying to create a world that is somehow 

connected to this new reality, which is so starkly different 

than anything we could have ever imagined. In some ways, real 

Click Here 

for More Info 

life has written a rich and compelling backstory to the play that 

I'm going to write.” 

By real life, Psalmayene means not just the pandemic, but the 

almost equally transformative Black Lives Matter protest movement 

that’s sparked what he calls “a new awakening.” 

“A lot of people are all of a sudden realizing that Black people's 

lives have been in jeopardy in a very severe way in this 

country for a long time,” he says. “And for many of us, this is 

nothing new. So I'm really thinking about how my work now 

responds to the response of this moment, because my work has 

always been infused with a level of consciousness about the 

struggles and the obstacles that Black people have had to overcome 

and endure in this country.” 

Psalmayene brings these issues and more to the fore as 

host of Psalm’s Salons at Studio, a virtual venue 

that allows Studio Theatre’s Artist-in-Residence 

to connect with the audience, and with guests 

like actor Justin Weaks, Galvanize DC founders 

J.J. Johnson and Jefferson A. Russell, and Jjana Valentiner, 

executive producer of the Making Space to Breathe/Gathering 

to Grieve vigil. Joined by frequent collaborator DJ Nick tha 1da 

spinning original music, Psalmayene 24 bills the Salon as a space 

for artists to discuss their craft, for the community to share 

their experiences, and for audiences to kick back and enjoy the 

party. “The whole idea was to create this jubilant vibe,” he says, 

“and create an energy of celebration even in the midst of all this 

chaos.” —André Hereford 

Psalm’s Salon at Studio streams on Thursday, July 23 at 5 p.m., and on Thursday, August 20 at 5 p.m. 

Visit www.studiotheatre.org/psalm-salons. 


11


theFeed 

FACEBOOK 

Jeffress and Trump 

Funding Hate 

Trump administration provided millions in COVID relief loans 

to anti-gay groups. By Rhuaridh Marr 

ANTI-LGBTQ ORGANIZATIONS AND RELIGIOUS 

entities have pocketed millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded 

relief funds intended to help support small 

businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of the 

U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection 

Program (PPP) shows payments totaling hundreds of thousands 

of dollars — and even into the millions of dollars — for 

anti-LGBTQ hate groups and at least $1,4 billion for the 

Roman Catholic Church. 

The payments were intended to “provide a direct incentive 

for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll,” with 

the loans forgiven if employers used the funds to keep employees 

on payroll. But data released by the Trump administration — 

which initially tried to withhold information on recipients who 

received more than $150,000 — shows anti-LGBTQ churches 

and faith-based organizations receiving taxpayer-funded relief, 

the Associated Press reports. 

The notoriously anti-LGBTQ American Family Association, 

which regularly decries LGBTQ-supportive businesses and 

includes the anti-gay outrage group One Million Moms, received 

a loan worth up to $2 million. (The list does not provide exact 

amounts, but rather ranges of values.) 

In the past year alone, One Million Moms has urged boycotts 

over gay representation in DuckTales, Marvel’s The Eternals, and 

Toy Story 4. 

Televangelist Robert Jeffress, who sits on Donald Trump’s 

Evangelical Advisory Board, received a loan of between $2 million 

and $5 million for his Dallas-based megachurch, LGBTQ 

Nation reports. 

Earlier this year, Jeffress called same-sex marriages “counterfeit,” 

has described gay people as “filthy” and “miserable,” and 

once told a lesbian teen who was considering suicide to undergo 

conversion therapy. 

Another organization to receive funding is Liberty Counsel, 

headed by anti-LGBTQ Matt Staver, which provides legal counsel 

and support to anti-LGBTQ individuals and lawsuits, and 

challenges pro-LGBTQ legislation. 

The group, which once claimed that the Q in LGBTQ referred 


13

theFeed 

to pedophiles, was approved for a loan worth up to $1 million. 

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary was the Catholic Church, 

which continues to reject LGBTQ identities and families, receiving 

at least 3,500 loans totaling at least $1.4 billion and possibly 

up to $3.5 billion, AP found. 

While most Catholics support LGBTQ equality, Church leaders 

are more focused on firing gay teachers, refusing to allow 

same-sex couples to adopt, calling Pride Month “harmful” for 

children, and urging people to attend church during the COVID- 

19 pandemic because of an “attack” on human sexuality. 

The Associated Press noted that at least $200 million in loans 

were approved for archdioceses that have spent “hundreds of 

millions of dollars” paying victims of abuse or for bankruptcy 

proceedings as a result of sexual abuse cover-ups. 

GAGE SKIDMORE 

McEnany 

Fake News 

Trump’s press secretary praises his ‘great record’ with LGBTQ community 

while ignoring trans military ban. By Rhuaridh Marr 

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KAYLEIGH 

McEnany responded to a question about Donald 

Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military 

by praising his “great record” with the LGBTQ community. 

McEnany was asked on Monday about the ban — which 

Trump announced on Twitter three years ago this month — and 

whether the president would reconsider the policy after 116 

members of Congress wrote a letter last week urging him to 

allow trans people to serve openly in the military. 

The press secretary responded by pivoting to the Trump 

administration’s much vaunted plan to decriminalize homosexuality 

globally. 

“I haven’t talked to him about that specific policy, but this 

president is proud that in 2019 we launched a global initiative 

to end the criminalization of homosexuality throughout the 

world,” McEnany responded. 

“He has a great record when it comes to the LGBT community,” 

she continued. “The Trump administration eased a ban on 

blood donations from gay and bisexual men and he launched a 

plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.” 

McEnany was then challenged with the fact that the public 

supports open transgender military service, as well as the 

Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the Civil Rights Act protections 

trans people against employment discrimination. 

“I have no updates for you,” McEnany responded, before adding, 

“But several of the events that you cited, like the Supreme 

Court ruling, I would refer you back to Justice Kavanaugh, who 

said, ‘We are judges, we’re not members of Congress. Instead 

of a hard earned victory won through the democratic process, 

today’s victory is brought about by judicial dictates.’ So we’ll 

always stand on the side of correct statutory interpretation.” 

McEnany’s assertion of Trump’s “great record” with LGBTQ 

people flies in the face of the Trump administration’s actions 

since he took office in 2017. 

GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project, which monitors 

anti-LGBTQ actions by the president’s administration, has reg- 


theFeed 

istered 153 attacks on LGBTQ people in the 1,271 days of Trump’s 

presidency. 

That includes the administration stripping discrimination 

protections for transgender people from the Affordable Care Act 

during a global pandemic, as well as pushing ahead with plans to 

allow shelters to deny access to trans people. 

His administration has also defended an Idaho law that bars 

trans female athletes from competing in women’s sports, argued 

that foster care agencies should be allowed to discriminate against 

same-sex couples, and hired a White House liaison who called 

America a “homo-empire” ruled by a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.” 

And that’s only in the last month. 

The Trump administration has also argued that it should be 

legal to fire LGBTQ employees, rescinded Obama-era guidance 

protecting transgender students, attempted to forcibly discharge 

HIV-positive members of the military, and fought to revoke the 

citizenship of a gay couple’s child. 

Plus, Trump has nominated numerous anti-LGBTQ judges, 

hired anti-LGBTQ figures to his cabinet (including his vice president), 

and surrounded himself with anti-LGBTQ advisers. 

His administration’s actions have been so blatantly anti- 

LGBTQ that in November last year, the bipartisan U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights declared that Trump had “blatantly 

and deliberately” targeted LGBTQ people during his presidency. 

One member of the commission stated that Trump was “undoing 

decades of civil and human rights progress.” 

McEnany also has a history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including 

using her previous role as a political commentator to attack 

LGBTQ people. 

She argued that the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing 

marriage equality nationwide was a threat to religious liberty, 

said that allowing trans people to use bathrooms and other facilities 

matching their gender identity would lead to an increase in 

voyeurism and assaults against women, and claimed that Vice 

President Mike Pence “loves all people” after his anti-LGBTQ 

record was raised. 

At the time of her hiring as Press Secretary earlier this year, 

GLAAD President & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement 

that McEnany had spent her career attacking LGBTQ people. 

“Whether it be her opposition to marriage equality or her 

attacks on transgender people, McEnany has shown that she 

knows how to, and even enjoys, using the media to spread dangerous, 

anti-LGBTQ messages to wide audiences,” Ellis said. 

“Unfortunately, in her new role as Press Secretary, she will 

have the power to continue doing so, but now with the White 

House name attached to hers.” 

JENNA JACOBS 

French Connection 

Gay couple attacked by mob say police told them 

not to kiss in public. By Rhuaridh Marr 

A 

FRENCH GAY COUPLE ALLEGE THAT THEY WERE 

told by police not to kiss in public after being attacked by 

a group of people outside of a bar. The men, identified by 

France Info as Eric and Nicolas, were drinking in the bar of the 

restaurant where Eric works in Ajaccio, on the French island of 

Corsica. When the men shared a kiss around 3 a.m. while standing 

at the bar, another customer started to cause a scene. 

“I felt a hand on my shoulder,” Eric said, in a translation by 

LGBTQ Nation. “I turned around and I found myself face-to-face 

with a guy who was around 20-years-old, who said, ‘Aren’t you 

guys ashamed to kiss here?’ I pushed his hand off my shoulder, 

and his voice got angrier.” 

The man reportedly started to insult the couple, but other bar 

patrons intervened. Eric said that an older man “told me not to 

say anything, that they were just jerks.” However, the arguing 

allegedly led to one of the bar’s managers approaching the couple 

and suggesting that they were at fault for the abuse because 

of the kiss. 

Eric and Nicolas left the bar, but claimed that they were pursued 

into the street by several other people who started to attack 


15

theFeed 

the couple, with Nicolas saying it was “impossible to remember 

exactly what happened, it was so fast.” 

“We didn’t even have enough time to turn around before they 

started punching,” Eric said. “I had had two beers, so I was sober 

enough, but I was seeing red. Really.” 

He continued: “I fell, I got back up again, I got a punch in, I 

got punched some more, then I fell down again.” 

Eric said he was left bloodied and with a sore jaw after being 

punched in the face, and that the force of the punch meant he 

“couldn’t chew for four days.” He also said that he knew one of 

his alleged attackers, claiming he had worked with both the man 

and his brother. 

“We were not friends, just colleagues, he worked in the dining 

room, me at the bar,” Eric said. “He knew I was gay, everyone 

knows that. But there had never been any problem. Until that 

night.” 

He continued: “That someone close to me, even distant, does 

not try to calm his friend, but rather enters the fight, it pisses 

me off.” 

The attack eventually stopped when some of the bar’s other 

customers came outside to investigate the noise, which caused 

the attackers to flee the scene. Eric and Nicolas said they went 

to a nearby police station to report the attack, but that the first 

officer they spoke to echoed the bar manager by telling them not 

to kiss in public. 

“One of the policemen who received us told us the same thing 

as the bar manager,” Eric said. “That we didn’t have to do that. 

To kiss in public.” 

However, they were eventually heard by other officers, who 

recommended that the men submit to a medical exam and file a 

formal complaint. They later filed a complaint of willful violence 

and homophobic slurs. 

Corsican LGBTQ organization ARCU issued a statement on 

social media decrying the attack and praising the courage of the 

couple for going public about the attack. 

ARCU said it was part of a pattern of homophobic attacks by 

youth on the island, after a gay tourist was assaulted by a group 

of teenagers in Ajaccio last year. Police allegedly closed the tourist’s 

complaint “without further action.” 

The organization urged elected officials to condemn the 

attack, and to raise awareness of homophobia on the island. 

ARCU said that without strong condemnation and raised 

awareness about anti-gay attacks, “victims weakened by the 

trauma of assault” would be discouraged form reporting incidents 

to authorities. 

“We have the right to love whoever we want in Corsica, 

without having to fear for our lives, our health, our families, our 

images, our reputations,” ARCU wrote. “Without being afraid of 

judgment or having to justify ourselves.” 

They added: “We have the right, just like everyone else, to 

show a simple gesture of love without being assaulted.” 

After ARCU’s post, Ajaccio Mayor Laurent Marcangeli issued 

a statement saying he “strongly condemns this unbearable 

aggression” and that he stands alongside victims of homophobic 

violence. He added that Ajaccio “will continue to fight any form 

of discrimination.” 

JOSIE CLOUGH FOR SPORTS ILLUSTRATED 

Sampaio 

Breaking Barriers 

Valentina Sampaio is Sports Illustrated’s first openly trans 

swimsuit issue model. By Rhuaridh Marr 

VALENTINA SAMPAIO HAS BECOME THE FIRST 

openly transgender model to feature in Sports 

Illustrated‘s annual swimsuit issue. The Brazilian 

model makes history with her appearance in the July 21 issue, 

which features Sampaio modeling two different swimsuits — 

a one-piece by Haus of Pink Lemonaid and a bikini by Triangl 

— CNN reports. 

Sampaio, 23, has also penned an essay for Sports Illustrated, 

saying she is “excited and honored” to be included in the issue. 

She also discussed the historic nature of her selection, as well as 

16 JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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her humble origins in Brazil. 

“I was born trans in a remote, humble fishing village in northern 

Brazil,” she wrote. “Brazil is a beautiful country, but it also 

hosts the highest number of violent crimes and murders against 

the trans community in the world — three times that of the U.S.” 

She continued: “Being trans usually means facing closed 

doors to peoples’ hearts and minds. We face snickers, insults, 

fearful reactions and physical violations just for existing. 

“Our options for growing up in a loving and accepting family, 

having a fruitful experience at school or finding dignified work 

are unimaginably limited and challenging. 

“I recognize that I am one of the fortunate ones, and my 

intention is to honor that as best I can.” 

Sampaio thanked Sports Illustrated for “seeing and respecting 

me as I truly am” and “understanding that more than anything, 

I am human.” 

It’s not the first time Sampaio has made history for trans 

representation in the modeling industry. Last year she became 

the first openly trans model to be hired by Victoria’s Secret, and 

in 2017 she became the first openly trans model to feature on the 

cover of Vogue Paris. 

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated 

Swimsuit’s head of talent Anthony Ramos said it was joining 

institutions “from the Girl Scouts of the USA to Miss Universe in 

recognizing the simple fact that trans women are women.” 

““Talented women like Valentina Sampaio deserve to be 

spotlighted and given equal opportunities,” he said. 

“Her work in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit is a significant step 

forward as the modeling industry continues its evolution on traditional 

standards of inclusion.” 

In a post on its Instagram account sharing news of Sampaio’s 

presence in this year’s issue, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit said 

they would shut down those who posted hateful comments 

about the model. 

“Our Instagram channel is a platform for inspiration, inclusivity 

and support,” they wrote. “SI Swimsuit will not tolerate 

any hateful or offensive comments. Those who violate these 

terms will be deleted, blocked & reported.” 

GOFUNDME 

Menendez 

Suspicious Circumstances 

Murdered Virginia man’s friend claims he may have been target 

of anti-gay hate crime. By John Riley 

THE FRIEND OF A NORTHERN VIRGINIA MAN WHO 

was killed last week claims he may have been targeted 

due to his sexual orientation. Police found the body of 

24-year-old Jose Escobar Menendez, of Winchester, on the 

roadway along Emerald Point Terrace, near Winding Road, in 

Sterling, Virginia, around 3:30 a.m. last Wednesday. 

Authorities have not yet revealed the cause of death in 

the case. 

“This remains a very active investigation, and at this time the 

motive is unclear,” Kraig Troxell, a spokesman for the Loudoun 

County Sheriff’s Office, told the Loudoun Times-Mirror. “There 

is no indication there is a threat to the community.” 

No information on a possible suspect has been released by 

police at this time. 

But a woman, going by the Twitter name @lesliecobenas, 

who describes herself as Menendez’s friend, says he was gay and 

that she fears he may have been the victim of a hate crime. 

In a now-deleted tweet, she claimed that Menendez’s body 

was in “very bad shape,” but declined to say how he died. 

“We know it was a homicide, but no one has any idea what 

his whereabouts were that night or with whom,” she said in the 

deleted tweet. 

“He was murdered & we believe it was due to his sexuality…. 

We think he met up with someone off of a dating app.” 

The woman told the Times-Mirror in an interview that 

Menendez was an “amazing friend.” 

“He was so sweet — always happy and cheerful,” she said. 

“He was always that person to hype you up. He just wanted 

everyone to have a good time.” 

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Menendez’s funeral 


17

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costs, and had raised more than $12,000 as of Monday evening. 

The organizer of the page, Ricky Alvarenga, says he is a cousin 

of Menendez and has asked for respect and privacy for the family. 

“We are as a family completely devastated and broken and 

the last thing that we would ever expect was to have to be making 

accommodations for this tragedy,” he wrote. 

“[This] is the reason I am fundraising to help out the most 

that we can during the time that was already devastating for 

us. Please, we appreciate any help and from the bottom of our 

hearts, thank you so much. #JusticeForJose.” 

MARCELLO CASAL JR. FOR AGÊNCIA BRASIL 

Quick Check 

OraQuick 

DC Department of Health launches home-based 

HIV testing kit program. By John Riley 

THE D.C. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH HAS LAUNCHED 

a program for D.C. residents to obtain free, at-home HIV 

test kits.The OraQuick rapid HIV test allows a person to 

self-swab their mouth and get a result in 20 minutes. 

Residents can visit GetCheckedDC.org to get information 

about a test and order one, which will then be mailed to their 

D.C. address. 

The District was one of the first jurisdictions in the country 

to recommend everyone ages 13 to 84 get tested for HIV at least 

once a year. 

In 2016, Mayor Muriel Bowser released the 90/90/90/50 

Plan to End the HIV Epidemic in the District. 

That plan aims to get 90% of people with HIV to know their 

status, 90% of people with HIV to be on treatment, 90% of those 

on treatment to achieve viral suppression, and to reduce the 

number of new HIV diagnoses by 50%. 

The District has already made progress toward achieving 

the first goal, with 87% of District residents with HIV knowing 

their status. 

The home testing kit should provide a new, more easily 

accessible way for people to get tested. 

“Mayor Bowser has set the goal of ending the HIV epidemic 

in the District of Columbia,” Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the director 

of the D.C. Department of Health. 

“While we are asking people to stay at home during the coronavirus 

pandemic, they can know their HIV status by taking this 

convenient test. 

“D.C. is breaking down barriers and affording equitable 

access to HIV testing through this initiative…. [We] encourage 

all D.C. residents to know your status and know the options for 

prevention and treatment.” 

The Department of Health is also offering itself as a resource 

to residents, regardless of the test result. 

For those who test negative, the department can provide 

them with additional HIV prevention methods, including linking 

individuals with pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a daily 



19

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pill proven to reduce rates of infection among those who take it. 

For those who test positive, D.C. has a number of doctors and 

medical providers who can link patients with high-quality medical 

care, including antiretroviral medication — which will lead to 

successful viral suppression, thus nearly eliminating the rate of 

transmission — as well as counseling and other support services. 

Those with HIV are encouraged to schedule an appointment 

with a medical provider or call the D.C. Health and Wellness 

Center at 202-741-7692. 

The Health and Wellness Center will be able to start people 

who test positive on antiretrovirals on the first day they are seen. 

GetCheckedDC.org will be updated on a regular basis to 

include a list of HIV, STD, and hepatitis testing sites. 

Residents can also find information on sexual health for all 

ages on www.sexualbeing.org, and for young people and their 

parents on www.sexisdc.org. 

JOHN RILEY 

John Fanning and the late Ron Simmons at the 2017 BHT Grant Ceremony 

Helping Hand 

BHT Foundation will open its upcoming 2020 

grant cycle on July 15. By John Riley 

THE BHT FOUNDATION, THE LOCAL NONPROFIT 

that provides financial support to local community organizations 

that serve the LGBTQ and HIV communities, 

will open its upcoming 2020 grant cycle on July 15. 

The foundation annual bestows grants of varying amounts to 

local nonprofits from D.C. and Baltimore that have annual budgets 

under $500,000 based on need. 

Applications will then be vetted, taking into account any 

ongoing initiatives, the results of any grant money previously 

given, and how the organization’s overall mission serves the 

LGBTQ and HIV communities. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BHT Foundation suspended 

its regular grant cycle and announced an abbreviated 

application window for this year’s grantees, who will be honored 

at a ceremony, yet to be announced, sometime in mid-October. 

The deadline for applying is Aug. 31. 

Additionally, the BHT Foundation’s board of directors recently 

approved four emergency grants totaling $10,000 to assist 

specific civil rights organizations, in light of demonstrations 

held throughout the country to protest police brutality, systemic 

racism, and racial profiling, especially after the officer-involved 

death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd. 

Nina Love, the president of BHT Foundation, previously told 

Metro Weekly that the foundation would be deliberately centering 

organizations that focus on racial and social justice. 

That means that special weight will be given to qualified 

organizations that specialize in civil rights issues or serve historically 

marginalized and under-served populations. 

To assist potential applicants, BHT will host two grant informational 

workshops on how to go about applying for money 

from the BHT foundation. 

The first workshop, focusing on a general overview of the 

process, will be held on Tuesday, July 21, from 7-9 p.m. 

The second, focusing on grant writing and best practices, will 

be held on July 28, from 7-9 p.m. 

Those wishing to attend the virtual workshops are asked to 

sign up on BHT Foundation’s Eventbrite page. 

For more information about the BHT Foundation, or to apply for a 

grant, visit the organization’s website at www.bhtfoundation.org. 



21

PATH TO 

VICTORY 

Annise Parker rose to become Houston’s first LGBTQ mayor. Now leading 

the Victory Fund, she’s helping others reach even higher. 

Interview by John Riley 

Portrait by PridePortraits.org 

22 


“I’m not old enough for Stonewall, but I’m not 

that much past it,” says Annise Parker. “I was a fly 

on the wall for virtually every significant LGBTQ 

event in Texas in the ’70s and ’80s.” 

Activism has been a hallmark of Parker’s life, ever since the president and 

CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund and Victory Institute attended her first political 

organizing event — the Texas Gay Conference — during her sophomore year at 

Rice University in 1975. A founding member of Rice University’s LGBTQ student 

group in 1979, Parker would later work for several LGBTQ organizations, 

including the Houston Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, the Lesbian/Gay Rights 

Lobby of Texas, the Lesbian/Gay Democrats of Texas, and briefly, as a Victory 

Fund board member shortly after the organization’s founding in 1994. 

A natural introvert and self-described loner who was raised in a conservative 

Republican household, nothing in Parker’s upbringing indicated that she would 

one day become one of the nation’s most prominent LGBTQ figures. But her 

parents and grandparents taught her the importance of civic engagement from a 

young age, a lesson she later incorporated into her own activism, much of which 

took place after regular work hours. 

“I was an oil company employee by day, activist by night,” she says. “I was 

spending 40 hours a week at work, and 10 to 20 hours a week as an actively gay 

volunteer. Throughout the ’80s, I was arguably the most visible lesbian activist 

in Houston.” 

In 1991, Parker ran for a Houston City Council seat, in hopes of providing 

political representation for the city’s LGBTQ community. Outraised financially 

and outmaneuvered strategically, she suffered one of her worst political defeats. 

Four years later, she ran for special election to an at-large seat, finishing third 

among 19 candidates. The early losses taught her valuable lessons about campaign 

organizing, messaging, the importance of fundraising, and creating political 

alliances — all of which she utilized in a successful bid for an at-large seat on 

the Council in 1997. 

Parker would be elected by the citizens of Houston eight more times, serving 

as an at-large councilmember, the city controller, and ultimately, its mayor for 

three terms. When she assumed the mayoralty of the country’s fourth-largest 

city in January of 2010, she also became the first out LGBTQ mayor of a major 

American city. 

In January 2018, Parker, who lives in Houston with her wife of 30 years, 

Kathy Hubbard, assumed the helm of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a political action 

committee that seeks to get LGBTQ people elected to public office, and Victory 

Institute, its educational nonprofit arm, which provides training and specialized 

programs to potential political office-seekers and support to LGBTQ officeholders 

to better ensure their success. 

Parker’s oversight of the Victory Fund has come amid a surge in the number 

of LGBTQ individuals seeking political office, as well as an increase in the 

number of LGBTQ elected officials. In the United States, that number currently 

stands at 855, covering officeholders from both major political parties as well as 

nonpartisan elected leaders in local, legislative, and statewide offices in 47 of 50 

states and the District of Columbia. 

“There are almost 900 openly LGBTQ candidates who are running across 

America this year,” she says. “Victory [Fund] has engaged, at least at a minimal 

level, with about half of them. And we’ll probably end up endorsing about 300 of 

them as the most viable candidates.” 

24 


While the Victory Fund doesn’t concern itself with the specifics 

of policy positions or partisan politics — instead leaving that 

up to individual candidates — Parker does note that President 

Donald Trump has served as a motivating factor for many 

LGBTQ people, particularly those who are Democrats, to pursue 

public office. But she largely eschews political handicapping and 

punditry in favor of an eagle-eyed focus on the organization’s 

larger goal of growing the number of LGBTQ officeholders. 

“Our elected officials represent 0.17 percent of all elected positions,” 

she says. “So if we’re supposed to represent 4.5 percent 

of the population, we’d have to elect more than 22,000 officials 

across the country just to be at parity. That's a long way to go. 

“Our goal is to have representation in every state house, and 

then, ultimately, in every State Senate in America, and to grow 

that to that critical mass, which, in our definition, is about three 

officials,” she adds. “It makes a difference when we send one. 

It slows down the bad bills and changes the discussion. But it 

doesn’t really change the outcomes of bills. But three seems to 

be a magic number. Your allies can join you, and you can act in 

concert to advocate for certain causes. 

“We’re also focusing a lot this year on state Senate races, 

because redistricting is coming up. There are a lot of places 

where the state Senate is just like the U.S. Senate, where they 

have a filibuster rule. You get one person in, and they actually 

can stop the bad stuff.” 

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start with your childhood. 

ANNISE PARKER: I grew up in Houston. I'm a Houstonian. 

And both my parents were born in Houston. And even though 

Houston’s a big, sprawling city, I grew up out in the rural outskirts 

of Houston. And so I had the best of both worlds. I had 

the opportunity to be near a big, vibrant city. But I grew up near 

cows and horse pastures. 

MW: How many siblings do you have? 

PARKER: I have one one sibling, who’s 15 months younger. 

MW: What were your parents like? 

PARKER: One of the blessings in my life is that both my mother 

and my grandmother were college graduates. Both my grandmother 

and my mother worked outside the home. So I was 

raised to be independent with the expectation that I would be 

able to support myself. I was born in 1956. So for a child of the 

fifties, that was an unusual expectation. 

MW: What were you like as a child? 

PARKER: I am an introvert. I was painfully shy. Very, very serious. 

And like most introverts, I was a loner. I was happiest when 

I was by myself, whether that was roaming around in the woods 

and pastures, or curled up with a book. 

When I was in the sixth grade, so that would have been about 

12, my family moved to Mississippi. Then we went to South 

Carolina and ultimately moved, for my Dad's job, to an army 

base in Germany. I went to three middle schools and three high 

schools. 

I graduated high school in Charleston, South Carolina, my 

second time through Charleston, and I came back to Houston to 

go to Rice University in Houston. I was a National Merit Scholar 

— I knew I could go anywhere. I wanted to go to Rice. I wanted 

to come back home. 

MW: What did you study? 

PARKER: I had a triple major in the social sciences: I finished 

degree work in psychology, sociology, and anthropology. 

MW: Did you have any interest in politics back then? 

PARKER: I never wanted to go into politics myself, because, 

remember, I was shy and introverted, and that was not my 

thing, but my parents were faithful voters. I have early memories 

of standing in line with my folks to vote back when it was a 

really big deal, when the voting machines were impressive. You 

walked in, and pulled this big red handle and the curtains closed 

behind you, and the fact that they would stand in line waiting to 

vote — it impressed me. My parents were active community volunteers, 

as were my grandparents. And so I was expected when 

I was growing up to be part of community activities or volunteer. 

So I went to college. I was out. Actually, I came out when 

I was in high school in Germany. I was determined to be publicly 

out. So during my freshman orientation at Rice, I told my 

orientation group that I was lesbian and I was out throughout 

my college career. I attended my first LGBTQ political organizing 

event in 1975. It was still the very early days of the LGBTQ 

rights movement. And the funny little difference doing political 

organizing for the LGBTQ community then and now, is that we 

couldn’t communicate with each other. We were all on little 

islands. We shared telephone contact lists like they were made 

of platinum. And there were so many people who were so deeply, 

deeply closeted that you guarded your list of other gay people 

with your life. It was a very different way of organizing. And 

there weren't a lot of us. 

I was part of the lesbian group on campus that started in 1976. 

I didn't start it, but there were a dozen of us who were involved 

in it. And I’m one of the founding members of my university's 

LGBTQ student group, started in 1979, the year after I graduated. 

And for several years, I was the point of entry. They would 

publish — on campus, the beginning of each semster — an ad in 

a school paper that, if you're gay and you want to be connected 

to the LGBTQ student group, here's the number you call. And it 

was my home phone number. It didn't have my name on it, but it 

was my own phone number. So, you know, I'd get the idiot prank 

calls for a while. 

MW: You learned political engagement from your parents when 

you were younger. Did they ever talk about their political beliefs? 

“I showed [my mom] the video of me on the national 

news. And she looked at me, and said, ‘You look very 

pretty on TV.’ I WAS TALKING ABOUT BEING OPENLY 

GAY AND FIGHTING BIGOTS IN HOUSTON. BUT SHE 

JUST TOLD ME I LOOKED NICE ON TV.” 


25

“My volunteer coordinator was a trans woman. Members 

of the Log Cabin Republicans [said] they couldn’t support 

me if I insisted on having her visible. I TOLD THEM THAT 

I WAS SORRY TO HEAR THAT, AND MAYBE WE WOULD 

HAVE A CONVERSATION AFTER I WON.” 

PARKER: Oh, they were all — my parents and my grandparents 

— they were all conservative Republicans. This is at a time when 

the state of Texas was conservative Democrats. They were contrarian. 

So they were all Republicans. I remember that. I do have 

an earlier memory, too, that absolutely made an impression. And 

that was when Kennedy was shot in Texas. I guess I was in the 

second grade, and my parents — who were absolute Goldwater 

supporters and very conservative — were horrified that something 

like this had happened in Texas. 

I remember the TV set being on, the old black and white TV 

at home, and it was all about the shooting and Kennedy lying in 

state. And just miles of people coming through to view the casket. 

The whole world stopped, and my parents, who had nothing 

nice to say about Kennedy, were horrified and appalled at the 

shooting. But we weren't a family that talked a lot about politics. 

It was like a civic duty. They were informed and they were 

engaged. My dad's parents volunteered for political campaigns 

in later years, but my parents didn't. 

MW: You mentioned coming out in high school. What was the initial 

reaction of your family? 

PARKER: I was about twelve, I guess, when I put a name to it. 

And at 15, we were living in an Army base in Germany. And I 

entered a relationship with a girl — I was 15, she was 16. Her 

parents walked in on us one day. And we were prevented from 

seeing each other. 

My dad was in the Red Cross. He served in the military, but 

we were very close to military installations. And we were living 

on officer's row. Her dad was a sergeant. So they didn't travel 

in the same circles, they didn't know each other. We were prevented 

from seeing each other. But my parents didn't know. I 

was absolutely miserable. I started doing a lot of really stupid 

things. But I also started attending a Sunday school class with 

her on base so that we could see each other. And then her family 

relocated back to the States a year before mine did. So that was 

the end of that relationship. 

It wasn't until I was in college, my senior year in college, that 

I got a letter from my mom, and inside the letter from my mom 

was an eight-page letter from my current girlfriend's mother. 

And it started off: "Mrs. Parker, last year, at Rice, your daughter 

and my daughter had a big love affair. And I tried to end it. They 

won't stop it. You need to do something about it.” And she went 

on for eight pages. My mom just put it in an envelope and sent it 

to me. She didn't want to talk about it. So did my parents know? 

Yes. Did they want to address it? No. And I wasn't in any hurry 

to address it, either. 

MW: When did they finally get at least comfortable with addressing 

the idea? 

PARKER: It was a long time. In the mid-eighties I became the 

president of the Houston Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. And 

my parents, at that point, were stationed in Italy. So I'd see them 

twice a year for a few days. I could keep secrets, I guess. 

I remember picking my mom up from the airport — I don't 

remember what year it was. She had stopped to visit friends in 

Charleston before she got to Houston. And she said, “Oh, so-andso 

in Charleston says she saw you on a national news show.” And 

I almost drove off the road, I was so startled. Yeah. Like, what 

was I thinking? I thought, “Oh, she'd never see this in Italy.” I 

could be on the nightly news, the 6 o'clock news. 

And so I took her home and I showed her the video I'd made 

of me being on the national news. And she looked at me, and 

said, “You look very pretty on TV.” I mean, I was talking about 

being openly gay and fighting bigots in Houston. But she just told 

me I looked nice on TV. We didn't actually talk about it until I 

was well into my 30s. The woman I was with, my wife today, 

[we] had been living together for a year, and my 90-year-old 

grandparents moved in with us so we could take care of them. 

And that was the catalyst for all sorts of family conversations, 

because we just had to recognize that if they were going to 

be living with us, that we shared a bedroom. We shared all of 

these things, and the whole family needed to understand that 

we would take care of them, but that we would be doing it as a 

couple. It wasn't my roommate, and let's just get those things out 

of the way. And we did. 

MW: You and your wife have been together for almost 30 years. 

What has family life been like? 

PARKER: It’s been an interesting journey. We'd been together 

a year and my ninety-year-old grandparents moved in with us. 

And we took care of them. My grandfather died. My grandmother 

is in a nursing home. We took in a 16-year-old street 

kid who came to live with us. We never formally adopted him, 

but he’s our son and he’s 44 years old now. And so, we built the 

family organically. We adopted two girls, a seven-year-old and 

a twelve-year-old, from the State of Texas Children's Services, 

out of foster care. And then later, our third daughter, a 15-yearold, 

joined us. And so we've been through the informal fostering 

process and the formal adoption process. It’s fortunate for me 

that I had a lot of schedule flexibility, and my wife has been 

self-employed throughout our time together. So we were the 

homeroom moms. We were the ones who came to all the school 

productions, and showed up at the activities. We were blessed 

to be able to do that. 

MW: You worked in the oil industry prior to entering politics. How 

did you make that transition? 

PARKER: Well, I was an active community volunteer. And at that 

point, I was no longer a fly on the wall. I was leading LGBTQ 

organizations in the mid-eighties and on. But it never occurred 

to me, why not run myself, because it was not my personality. 

But in 1991, I was recruited to run for a city council seat to represent 

the LGBTQ community. There was a major redistricting 

battle going on. We were to redistrict the city council and var- 

26 


COURTESY OF VICTORY FUND 

ious communities of interest were putting forward candidates, 

and I was recruited to be the candidate for the LGBTQ community. 

I wasn't really ready to run, wasn’t a good candidate, lost 

the race, got absolutely shellacked. I crawled into a fetal position 

for a while after losing. 

I’d much rather be helping out other candidates, which I'd 

been doing for many years by that point, than running myself. 

But in 1995, this time on my own, I decided I wanted to run 

in a special election, a six-week campaign [for City Council]. I 

finished third out of 19 candidates. The first and second place 

finishers had both already been elected to other things. And one 

was a Democrat and one was a Republican, even though this was 

a nonpartisan race. So they had name I.D. They had networks. 

They knew how to do fundraising. I finished third. And what I 

realized was that I knew more about the city than they did. I was 

a better candidate than they were, but that I needed to do certain 

things to be successful if I was going to do it again. And so the 

next time I ran, two years later, I won my seat on the Houston 

City Council, the first of nine consecutive races. 

The most important thing I had to do was figure out — in the 

first two races, every time my name was printed, it said, "Annise 

Parker, gay activist," and occasionally, "Annise Parker, lesbian 

activist, running for Houston City Council.” And I couldn't ever 

get past the perception, that everybody, if they got their information 

from the media, every time they saw it thought I was a 

single-issue candidate. I had to learn how to raise money. I had 

to upgrade my campaign team. And I had to master my own narrative 

about who I was. And in order to do that, I had to change 

the media coverage. 

We had two newspapers and three TV stations back then. 

I made a portfolio of the coverage from those two races and I 

made appointments with the editorial boards or the editor of 

each of those entities, and I took the portfolio in. And that race 

where there were 19 candidates and I said to the newspaper, 

“Look, here’s your listing of everyone in this race. And here's 

what we do for a living. You actually put what every one of 

their occupations is. Me? You say I'm a lesbian activist, or a gay 

activist. I've worked for Mosbacher Energy Company for, at his 

point, 18 years. I don't see anywhere on here where you refer to 

anybody else by what they do as volunteers, or by their sexual 

orientation. I’d be perfectly happy, whichever way you decide to 

do it, just be fair.” 

I kept having those conversations over and over again. And 

the third time I ran — you know, I could say I'm persuasive, but 

I think the world changed, too — they stopped. The newspapers 

would figure out a way to make reference to my sexual orienta- 

“DONALD TRUMP HAS BEEN THE BEST RECRUITER FOR 

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE 

BALLOT YOU COULD POSSIBLY HOPE FOR. They may 

have been inspired because they’re so appalled by him and 

his policies. But the ones who win are the ones who offer a 

plan that voters can identify with.” 


27

COURTESY OF VICTORY FUND 

tion, but it would always be after the jump. With all due respect, 

nobody reads after the jump. So if they could get you into it that 

far, you don't care anymore, you're already hooked. So the coverage 

changed. And I raised enough money in that race to go up on 

TV, control my own message in a way that I had never been able 

to do before. And that's how I was able to be successful. 

MW: Did your opponents make an issue of your sexuality? 

PARKER: Every piece of literature I put out had some reference 

to the resume — "past president, Houston Gay and Lesbian 

Political Caucus” — with the word gay and lesbian in every piece 

of literature I put out. But also “employee, Mosbacher Energy 

Company,” and, by that point, I was president of the largest civic 

association in Houston. 

It meant people stopped talking about my sexual orientation. 

My opponents couldn't talk about it because, “You know, she's a 

lesbian.” “Well, duh. It says so right on her own literature.” So it 

changed the conversation. There were actually six other people 

in that race, and it became more like, “Well, it’s not a problem 

to me that she's a lesbian, it shouldn't matter to anybody.” They 

had to figure out some way to bring it up without looking like 

complete asses doing it. 

The weekend of the runoff election, I was against a Republican 

businessman who had all the Downtown backing, and I had all 

but two of the minority-elected officials in the region who were 

with me because I had helped them with their campaigns over 

the years. He put out an attack piece, only to black households, 

and it was one of those comparison pieces: he was the family 

man, I was single. He belonged to his church, I had no known 

religious beliefs. This contrast, to say, basically, that I was a lesbian. 

And only to black households. I still got 75 percent of the 

black vote. 

I’d already gathered the support of the leadership. But also, 

because of my work on housing issues and neighborhood issues 

as a volunteer, I had a network. My best volunteers in that race 

were senior citizens. I was a United Way volunteer in senior 

services, and I’d had lunch at every senior center in Houston. 

I sat there and played dominoes with those little old ladies. So 

they were with me. It was a nine-month campaign built upon a 

network and a resume built over 20 years. 

MW: After you were elected to the Houston City Council, you eventually 

became controller and then mayor. What was the nature of 

your political battles during those years? 

PARKER: City government is the most functional level of government, 

because it has to be. It’s about getting trash picked up. It’s 

about filling potholes. It’s about making sure that basic services 

are performed. I would submit that during my entire 18 years in 

full-time public life and three positions, that if you just followed 

the votes that were cast in city hall, it was impossible to tell how 

people lined up politically. There were philosophical divides 

and there were certain things like birth control in city clinics, or 

afterschool programs where there was never a pure Republican 

or Democratic divide, but where you could see conservative and 

more progressive divisions. 

But I realized I had spent so long as an activist and as a 

spokesperson for the community, that I had to very consciously, 

when I assumed office, change my role and change my mindset 

— that I wasn't going to be a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community. 

I was going to be open, but I wasn’t the spokesperson. 

My job was to represent my constituents. 

I did engage whenever LGBTQ issues came up, like moving 

our Pride Parade from a daytime parade to a nighttime parade. 

We had to rewrite city ordinances to do it. Once the community 

made the decision to do what they wanted to do and came to me, 

then it was my responsibility to make it happen. 

28 


“PETE BUTTIGIEG WAS A GAME CHANGER. 

I’m certain that there are people who didn't support 

Pete Buttigieg because he’s openly gay. But the party 

apparatus was completely available to him. 

The next time someone runs from our community, 

that will be the expectation.” 

MW: What LGBTQ-specific issues did you engage with? 

PARKER: Four times in my adult life, three times while I was in 

public office as an out lesbian, the citizens of Houston voted that 

we didn’t have equal civil rights. The first time was in the ’80s 

while I was still a leader in the movement. The city passed a nondiscrimination 

in city employment ordinance. It was repealed by 

the voters. Then we had a statewide marriage referendum that 

was passed by all voters in Texas, until, thankfully, the Supreme 

Court ruled on marriage. Then we had a preemptive referendum 

to prevent the city from ever offering domestic partner benefits, 

which passed. And then the fourth time was when in my last 

term in office, we passed the HERO ordinance, a nondiscrimination 

ordinance, that was repealed by the voters. 

It was painful. It was hurtful. There's a YouTube video out 

there, still, of the concession speech I made on behalf of all of 

those who asked to protect the HERO ordinance. And you can 

see how angry and hurt I am. But I have seen the changes. I've 

seen that difference from when I started in the ’70s working on 

these issues, to today. It's not perfect, it's not done. We can still 

be undermined. But it is so different. And I've seen the progress 

and I understand that as long as you can see incremental change, 

and that it does get better, you have to stay in the fight. If you just 

give up, nothing changes. 

MW: Do you think a candidate would still be viable today if they ran 

on an overtly anti-LGBTQ platform in Houston? 

PARKER: I don't think so. The most noted anti-LGBTQ bigot 

in Houston since the ’80s is Dr. Stephen Hotze. He still funds 

lawsuits. He's a right-wing nut job, but he's still out there. He 

endorses candidates. And when I ran for mayor the first time, my 

opponent actually solicited and received his endorsement. And 

the outcry was so negative that he ended up having to repudiate 

it. There are members of city council who have voted wrong on 

LGBTQ issues every time they come up, but they’re never going 

to stand up and say they do it because they hate gay people. They 

don't even do the “hate the sin, love the sinner” conversation 

anymore. They figure out some other rationale for doing it. 

The HERO ordinance went down on bathroom issues, pure 

and simple. And in fact, the biggest opponents weren’t shy about 

that. They came to city council when we passed the ordinance, 

and stood in the council chamber and essentially said, “If you'll 

just take the trans issues out, if you take gender identity out and 

just say sexual orientation, we will leave it alone.” I didn’t necessarily 

believe them, but they actually did that. 

MW: There’s a train of thought, outlined by the Dallas Principles, 

that to achieve LGBTQ equality we can’t leave any part of the 

community behind. 

PARKER: And I have always believed that. And in fact, when I 

won a council seat in '97, when my best volunteers were little old 

ladies, my volunteer coordinator was a trans woman. And I had 

members of the Log Cabin Republicans tell me that they couldn’t 

support me if I insisted on having her as visible and public in 

that campaign. And I told them that I was sorry to hear that, and 

maybe we would have a conversation after I won. I have believed 

in full inclusion and have worked for that. 

MW: I am struck by the leadership roles that mayors and city council 

members have had to assume amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

From your own experience, if you had confronted something like 

this, how would you have protected Houstonians from COVID? 

PARKER: There’s a lot of things I could complain about with the 

current mayor, but I could only hope that I would have been as 

strong and as decisive as he and our county judge have been in 

COVID-19. They have — particularly the county judge, but the 

mayor, as well — stepped up over and over again, made really 

hard decisions, focused always on public safety and not gotten 

enough credit for it, particularly in a state like Texas, or Florida, 

Arizona, places where the government at the governor's level 

has made appallingly bad decisions. Local governments have had 

to pick up the pieces and, for the most part, local governments 

have been courageous and decisive. 

MW: What sort of tools does a mayor have at their disposal, particularly 

when, say, the governor or the president doesn't step in? 

PARKER: It depends on the state. I used to try to commiserate 

with my colleague mayors in the Northeast that receive a lot of 

their funding from the state. If they control the pursestrings, 

they can jerk you around. But cities in Texas are home rule cities 

and they have an independent taxing authority and taxing base, 

and virtually complete authority in an emergency, unless and 

except when the governor overrides it. 

But mayors across the country have the ability to make public 

safety decisions and have been exercising it. They can do mask 

mandates. They can always shut down outdoor activities. They 

enforce whatever ordinances there are. Houston is a little more 

difficult because we're the only major city in America that has no 

zoning and we're also where the most lightly-regulated cities in 

America from a business standpoint. The tools are fewer. But mayors 

all across the country are stepping up and using their power. 

MW: Where do you think the federal response went wrong? 

PARKER: Starting at the White House. I think that the Trump 

administration started dismantling the CDC and the pandemic 

response units within it early on, and then tried to play games. 

Unfortunately, if you work for an agency like the CDC, you may 

know what you've done and you may know what's wrong, but 

you also want your job and you want your pension, and if the 

president tells you to sit down and shut up, that’s what you do. 

MW: Some political scientists point out that we’re seeing a lot more 

candidates for a city council and local office either attaching them- 


29

selves to the president or running against him. And it’s destroying 

that sense of “all politics is local.” 

PARKER: And that is certainly not what we teach them at Victory. 

Now, Donald Trump has been the best recruiter for Democratic 

candidates at every level of the ballot you could possibly hope 

for. They may have been inspired because they’re so appalled by 

him and his policies. But the ones who win are the ones who find 

the appropriate sort of local issues and offer a plan that voters 

can identify with. 

In nonpartisan years, it’s a very different feel, but this is a very 

partisan year. If you're running as a Democrat, you’re expected 

to be anti-Trump. And if you’re running as a Republican, I 

think you have to kiss up. But because of decades of partisan 

gerrymandering, we don't have very many seats at the federal 

level, congressional seats, for example, that are in play. You can 

play along the margins, but because of the way we redistricted, 

there's not a lot a candidate can do, which is [why] it's big news 

when we flip a seat red to blue or blue to red. 

MW: Is it harder nowadays to find LGBTQ Republicans who can 

meet those criteria? It seems there are fewer out Republicans 

attempting to run, and that more LGBTQ people are identifying 

with the Democratic Party in this current environment. 

PARKER: Well, way more than 80 percent of our LGBTQ elected 

officials are Democrats. It’s an interesting fact. If you go to our 

website “Out for America,” where you can sort by party affiliation, 

there are more trans elected officials than there are openly 

LGBTQ Republican elected officials in America. And nearly all 

of our self-identified Republicans are elected in nonpartisan 

down-ballot races. Because as you mentioned, it is so difficult 

to get through Republican primaries. It was bad before Trump, 

but they have become absolutely toxic for LGBTQ candidates. So 

they're not running. Or they're not running openly. 

We work hard to endorse Republicans. Our standards as an 

organization are that you have to be openly LGBT. Candidates 

have to believe in some level of a right to privacy, which includes 

the right to abortion. Some of our candidates only believe 

in it after rape and incest, all the way 

to others who support the full Planned 

Parenthood position. And they have to be 

fully trans-inclusive. We have declined to 

endorse some who do not believe that gender identity is their 

issue to care about. 

It’s difficult for a lot of Republicans because we are prochoice. 

We ask them in their hearts, “Can you find a place here 

where you can define yourself in a way that we can support 

you?” But that is a hurdle in terms of seeking our endorsement. 

We train them, whether or not they can ever sign our pledge and 

be an endorsed candidate. And we’ll do our best to sustain them 

because we believe that our democracy is better when we're in 

both parties and we're represented everywhere. 

MW: What do you think accounts for the increase in the number of 

transgender candidates running for office? 

PARKER: Well, I would say success breeds success. And it’s 

because the more we win, and the more we talk about the ones 

who win, the more they feel like they might have a chance. But 

the other factor is that the trans community has been under 

such attack by the right. You know, they still attack the gay and 

lesbian community. But really, a lot of the worst bills have been 

anti-trans bills. And the Trump administration is virulently 

anti-trans. And so if you have any self-respect and you're under 

attack, you're going to stand up for yourself. 

MW: We’re also seeing a number of LGBTQ people of color being 

successful in their races this cycle. 

Click to Learn More About 

The Victory Fund 

PARKER: We were among the first people to get behind [congressional 

candidates] Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones, as well 

as [New York State Senate candidate] Jabari Brisport, whose 

race still hasn't been called, but we think he'll be there, too. It is 

important to us that the candidates that we support are reflective 

of America. And interestingly, we have data going back quite a 

few years, in terms of who we’ve endorsed. Just in the last few 

years and since we've been publishing our “Out for America” 

report and stats on our endorsed candidates, the LGBTQ people 

who run — not just the ones who we support — are three times 

as diverse as the general pool of candidates. 

Victory has specific programs to increase the number of candidates 

of color which are available on the Institute’s website. 

We work hard to increase that number. From the standpoint of 

Pete Buttigieg running for president, and everybody said, “Oh 

well, he's doing really well in Iowa and New Hampshire, but 

black people in the South will never vote for someone who’s 

openly gay.” I'm here to tell you that’s not true, but what will 

make even more of a difference is that if we have more and more 

open candidates of color, officials of color at the highest levels, 

including Mondaire and Ritchie and advocates who will get out 

and dispel that myth. 

MW: Obviously, it's not an elected position, but will we see an out 

LGBTQ person in a presidential cabinet, as opposed to a “cabinet-level 

position”? 

PARKER: We absolutely expect in a Biden administration there 

will be. And we fully expected that, had there been a Clinton 

administration, there would have been as well. There's no doubt 

in our minds. 

MW: What do you think is the next frontier in LGBTQ politics? 

PARKER: Pete Buttigieg was a game changer in a lot of ways. 

He wasn't the first LGBTQ candidate for president. That was 

Fred Karger, who ran eight years ago in Obama's re-elect as a 

Republican. But he was more of an insurgent candidate and the 

party did everything they could to keep him out. 

What was fascinating to watch in the Pete Buttigieg campaign 

— and we ultimately endorsed 

him, but we made him wait for it for six 

months, and he had to prove himself — is 

that he was treated like any other candidate 

by the party in the primary. Sure, I’m certain that there are 

people who would never have supported him and didn't support 

him because he’s openly gay. But in terms of the party apparatus, 

it was completely available to him. And the next time someone 

runs from our community, that will be the expectation. And we’ll 

eventually get there on the Republican side as well. 

One of our goals at Victory is to make sure that there is a 

deep pool, a bench, of candidates. Right now, we have two U.S. 

senators, two governors, two attorneys general, a handful of 

statewide elected officials. That’s not a deep enough bench to be 

presidential material, to be vice presidential candidates. So what 

is the next big milestone? To have a bench of 20 or 30 people, big 

city mayors, statewide elected officials with a national profile, 

who can really step up. 

Pete did an amazing job. He’s actually got great political skills 

and was a phenomenal candidate. But he had to work really hard 

to go from a mayor of a mid-sized city with a kind of hard name 

to pronounce to a presidential contender. And so, one of our 

goals is to make sure that the next one to make that leap doesn’t 

have to work quite as hard. 

Learn more about The Victory Fund by calling 202-VICTORY 

(842-8679) or visiting www.victoryfund.org. 

30 



31

Gallery 

When We First Arrived 

EARLIER THIS YEAR, WHITMAN-WALKER OPENED 

its new cultural center on 14th Street NW with an art exhibition 

aimed at generating attention all its own, through 

its focus on the thousands of asylum-seeking children who have 

been separated from their families and are being detained in 

holding pens by the U.S. government. The Corner at Whitman- 

Walker re-opens for the first time since March for a limited-time 

showing of When We First Arrived, to shed more light on this 

ongoing humanitarian and public policy crisis. 

Curated by the Corner’s executive director Ruth Noack, 

the exhibit showcases over 100 artworks created by leading 

visual artists responding directly to testimonies from some of 

the detained children and organized in close collaboration with 

DYKWTCA — an art initiative whose name is an acronym for 

Do You Know Where The Children Are? Sales of the donated 

works of art will benefit the Safe Passage Project, Terra Firma, 

Innovation Law Lab, and Team Brownsville. Limited daytime 

hours from now to Sunday, July 19. Located at 1701 14th St. NW. 

Free entry, but donations welcome. Call 202-745-7000 or visit 

www.whitman-walker.org. 



33

Television 

Iron Lady 

Cursed remixes Arthurian legend into an overwrought origin story 

for the Lady of the Lake. By André Hereford 

THE PRODUCERS OF NETFLIX’S NEW FANTASY SERIES CURSED HAVE 

packed scores of characters, creatures, and factions from the eponymous source 

novel, written by Tom Wheeler and illustrated by Frank Miller, into a vivid, if 

overcrowded adaptation. Miller, the legendary artist behind Sin City, and Wheeler, 

best known for ABC’s ancient Rome mini-series Empire, are also showrunning the 

thoughtful reimagining of Arthurian tales about sorcerers, kings, and warriors. This 

version follows a young lady warrior — teen sorceress Nimue (Katherine Langford) — 

who is dispatched on a mission to deliver the mythical sword of power to the wizard 

Merlin (Gustaf Skarsgård). 

Daring and resourceful, Nimue often summons the means or magic to save herself 

from much distress, and Langford, co-star of Love, Simon and Knives Out, swings the 

mighty sword with conviction. But she doesn’t really breathe fire into the character, 

whose mission is reiterated and repeated every episode, while her 

tragic destiny remains just vaguely implied. Clearly, Nimue is meant 

to play a momentous role in a worsening conflict between mankind 

and her enchanted kind, the Fey folk. Cursed (HHHHH) meanders 

towards that turning point along a bumpy road of backstories and turnarounds, flashbacks, 

tangents, and withheld secrets. 

So often, characters in possession of pivotal information stop just a sentence shy of saying 

the one thing it might be most helpful to say. A few go to their graves keeping secrets 

that, in turn, keep Nimue constantly in the dark, a frustrating mode of telling her story. It’s 

up to the strong visuals to carry much of the interest in building the world around her, a 

land of verdant woods and rippling streams, demon bears and enchanted blades. Miller 

fans will be pleased to see striking scarlet sprays of blood and violence in the sparse but 

Click Here to 

Watch the Trailer 

Cursed is available for streaming on Netflix. Visit www.netflix.com. 

generally well-staged fight scenes. 

The show doesn’t lack for villains, with 

Nimue and friends desperately resisting 

the Red Paladin, a brutal, crusading army 

of monks hellbent on extinguishing all 

Fey-kind. However, it’s a young girl desperate 

to join the Red Paladin, only to 

be repeatedly rejected, who makes for 

the show’s most compelling villain. Sister 

Iris is delivered in a perfectly evil turn by 

Emily Coates, who captures the frightening 

zealotry of one who would sell her 

soul to gain the favor of powerful men 

who don’t respect or care about her. But 

Iris is just a trickle of quicksilver in this 

rambling stream. 

The performances of the expansive 

cast are hit-and-miss, and one or two so 

overacted as to be unintentionally comical. 

On the intentional side, Skarsgård (son 

of Stellan, brother of Alexander and Bill) 

has fun as the weaselly wizard Merlin, and 

Shalom Brune-Franklin 

brings fierce heart to her 

role as Nimue’s closest 

ally, Igraine, the show’s 

one major queer character. Cursed positions 

a young rogue named Arthur as 

Nimue’s true closest ally, but as played by 

Devon Terrell (Obama in the 2016 drama 

Barry), both Arthur’s journey and the central 

romance feel forced — much like the 

heroine’s odyssey of quests, escapes, and 

chases in myriad far-flung directions. 


Music 

ROBIN HARPER 

Lit Up 

The newly-rechristened Chicks return with a comeback album 

that showcases their greatest strengths. By Sean Maunier 

WHEN YOU’RE THE CHICKS, DON’T HAVE THE OPTION OF DOING 

the right thing without everyone noticing. When the associations with the 

antebellum southern states became too glaring to ignore, they dropped the 

“Dixie” from their name about as quietly as possible when even your most innocuous 

gestures get blown up through a megaphone and become immediately polarizing. After 

all, this is a band that for almost two decades has worn Natalie Maines’ comments on 

the Iraq War that alienated huge swathes of the then-Dixie Chicks’ fanbase overnight, 

an event still referred to as “the incident.” Digging in their heels rather than backtracking 

to salvage the situation may have lost them some fans for good, but it cemented 

their reputation as artists who would rather stick true to who they are than water 

themselves down. 

Gaslighter (HHHHH), their first album since 2008’s Not Ready to Make Nice, is altogether 

a more buoyant, upbeat record than its predecessor, although the stomping poprock 

boldness remains. Producer Jack Antonoff’s fingerprints are all over the album, 

lending the songwriting a larger-than-life power pop punch. That 

said, however, their signature vocal harmonies are as captivating 

as ever and Emily Strayer’s banjo and the occasional flourish of 

fiddle or steel guitar brings warmth to the project. 

While the trio has more or less put country behind them, the title track is a prime 

example of the genre’s great tradition of wronged women out for justice and vengeance. 

The target of its indictment is left vague, although Maines’ recent divorce allows us to 

make some educated guesses. Later in the album, almost as a coda to “Gaslighter,” 

“Tights on my Boat” is addressed to a cheating partner, full of sharp lyrics like “I hope 

Click Here to Watch the 

Video for “Gaslighter” 

Gaslighter will be available to stream and download on July 17th. 

you die peacefully in your sleep/Just kidding 

I hope it hurts like you hurt me.” We 

may not know exactly what Maines means 

when she sings, “You’re gonna get what 

you got coming to ya,” but it’s hard not to 

root for her anyway. 

As much fun as they’re having on this 

album, The Chicks are keen to remind 

fans that they are still willing to stake out 

a stand on the things that matter to them. 

“March, March,” the only pointedly political 

song on the album, is a stirring tribute 

to social justice movements that swells 

and soars and easily stands up with the 

title track as one of the most catchy songs 

on the album. 

After “Tights on my Boat,” the album 

takes a turn, winding towards its end on 

a slower, more pensive note. “Julianna 

Come Down” is an empowerment anthem 

with some on-the-nose lines that give 

voice to the difficulty and loneliness of 

putting on a brave face and performing 

for the world. As the 

album ends on a vulnerable, 

confessional 

note with “Set Me 

Free,” we are reminded that as much raw 

talent as The Chicks have, what truly sets 

them apart is knowing who they are and 

what they bring, and refusing to deviate 

from it even for a second. 


35


VintageScene 

17th Street in 1997: Trumpets, Cobalt, and JR.’s - Photographs by Randy Shulman 

To see more photos from this event online, click on the photos below. 


37

VintageScene 

Omega’s Grand Opening in 1997 - Photographs by Randy Shulman 

To see more photos from this event online, click on the photos below. 


LastWord. 

People say the queerest things 

“I could high five God, but I wasn’t living to the fullest 

I was sad. I was depressed. ” 

—RICKY MARTIN, in an interview with Proud Radio on Apple Music, discussing the impact of his rise to fame while remaining in the closet. 

“There came a moment that I said, ‘We need to stop. We need to stop the tour’...I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t do this. I need to go home. 

I need silence. I need to cry. I need to be angry. I need to forgive myself for allowing myself to reach this level, to get to where I’m at.’ 

And I took some time and I took a sabbatical.” 

“Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script. 

But the studio just kept watering it down & watering it down. ” 

—Filmmaker JAMES GUNN, in a tweet claiming that he wrote the character of Velma as gay in the 2002 film Scooby-Doo. 

The character was altered to make her sexuality “ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) 

& finally having a boyfriend (the sequel),” Gunn said. 

For me, 

“ 

what this bill really means is protecting 

black trans women, 

who are the most vulnerable of the communities we’re trying to protect here. ” 

—COLORADO STATE REP. BRIANNA TITONE (D), speaking at a signing ceremony for four pieces of LGBTQ-inclusive legislation, 

including a ban on so-called gay and trans panic defenses, and a change to make it easier for trans minors to correct the gender markers 

on their state documents. “We really went from a place where discrimination was legalized in the 1990s to where we are today, 

where Colorado is a leader,” said Gov. Jared Polis (D), who is gay. 

“We don’t allow attacks against people 

based on sexual orientation or gender identity 

and are updating our policies to ban the promotion of conversion therapy services. ” 

—TARA HOPKINS, Instagram’s public policy director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, speaking to BBC News. 

Instagram will remove all content on the social media platform that promotes anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy, 

after previously banning adverts that promote the debunked practice. 

"Young people need to be able to see themselves 

in the people they look up to. ” 

—MARTHA MCCABE, retired Canadian Olympic swimmer, coming out as lesbian in an interview with CBC. 

"I want to be an example to young female swimmers and help ones who are struggling with this, 

so they can see it's normal," she said. 


39

Victory Fund's Annise Parker - Metro Weekly - July 16 2020

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