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

“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-
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JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM