Attorney/activist played a key role in the early days of many LGBT organizations
ANGLIN FOR AN AWARD | Friends praised Mike Anglin’s legal expertise and commitment to the LGBT community, saying that he is ‘long overdue’ the recognition he received in being named the 2014 Kuchling Award winner. Anglin was close friends with Ray Kuchling (inset photo), after whom the award is named. (Photo of Mike Anglin courtesy of Paul Kubek)
By Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
Black Tie Dinner officials announced Thursday, July 24, that attorney and longtime activist Mike Anglin is the 2014 recipient of the Kuchling Humanitarian Award. Anglin’s friends said this week that the honor is long overdue.
The announcement was made during the annual Sneak Peek Party at Park Place Motorcars in Dallas, underwritten by Morgan Stanley.
“I am so pleased” that Anglin was chosen to receive the award this year, said Dick Weaver, a close friend of Anglin’s and another longtime activist in Dallas’ LGBT community.
“Mike Anglin is absolutely one of those people who never sought attention for the things he did. He was always content to stay sort of in the background. So most people don’t realize the degree to which he was involved” in the fight for LGBT rights, Weaver said. “That’s the beauty of Mike, and that’s why I am so pleased he is receiving this award.”
Anglin is a decorated military veteran, having served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972. He graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1976 then moved to Dallas to began his career as an attorney.
Anglin served eight years on the board of directors for the organization that was first called the Dallas Gay Political Caucus, then became the Dallas Gay Alliance and is now known as the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance. He was the first chair of the organization’s Social Justice Committee and was among those who, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, worked to stop harassment of LGBT people in Oak Lawn by Dallas police officers.
He also chaired the Dallas Bar Association’s “Goals for Dallas — QC13” committee, which also directly confronted Dallas police regarding officers’ unfair treatment of the LGBT community.
Anglin was an original board member of the Texas Human Rights Foundation, serving as vice president for nine years. His tenure on the board encompassed the years during which the organization was involved in Baker v. Wade, the first lawsuit challenging Texas’ sodomy law. Anglin was co-liaison between THRF and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund as the case made its way through the justice system to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Anglin was a founding board member of both Dallas Black Tie Dinner, serving on that board for nine years, and of Razzle Dazzle Dallas. He incorporated both of those organizations as well as the Turtle Creek Chorale and served as legal counsel to the original board of the Foundation for Human Understanding, now known as Resource Center. Most recently, Anglin was a founding board member of and incorporated the Dallas LGBT community history project called The Dallas Way.
Anglin has said that the accomplishment most important to him was being a constant friend of and legal advisor to other giants in the history of the Dallas LGBT community, including Bill Nelson, Terry Tebedo, John Thomas, Ray Kuchling, Don Baker, Dick Peeples, William Waybourn, Weaver and Lee Taft.
Weaver, praising Anglin’s “brilliant mind,” said his friend of more than 30 years was, in those tumultuous early years “always the voice of reason. His wisdom and his guidance were never to be questioned.”
Louise Young, herself a former Kuchling Award winner, said she, too, has known Anglin since the late 1970s when they both were board members for the then-DGPC.
“I have always had so much respect for Mike, for his legal knowledge and legal expertise. His contributions [in terms of legal advice and expertise] were so very important to us in those early years,” Young said. “I can’t stress enough how important it was for us to have such an outstanding legal mind so closely associated” with the LGBT organizations and community.
Young said that even though it happened 32 years ago, she still vividly remembers Anglin standing up in a DGLA meeting after Judge Jerry Buchmeyer ruled, in Baker v. Wade, that the Texas sodomy law was unconstitutional, and reading from Buchmeyer’s decision.
“I can see that so clearly,” Young said. “I remember how Mike stood there and said, ‘Everyone needs to really pay attention to Judge Buchmeyer’s words.’ Then he paused, and he said, ‘It’s wonderful.’ Everyone was one the edge of their seats as he read that decision to us, and that memory has always stayed with me.
“Mike so richly deserves the Kuchling Humanitarian Award, and Vivienne [Armstrong, her wife] and I are just so thrilled that he has won it,” Young added. “He most certainly deserves not only this award but, more importantly, the gratitude of our entire community.”
Anglin said this week that he is “deeply touched” to have been chosen as the 2014 Kuchling Award winner, adding that “the fact the award carries the name of my old friend Ray Kuchling makes it all the more meaningful and cherished.”
Noting that he and Kuchling were among the founding board members for Black Tie Dinner, Anglin said, “We were not only good friends, but also colleagues and comrades in the bold undertaking to launch and build the lasting tradition that is the Black Tie Dinner. I served on the board for the first nine years, and I will never forget the thrill of seeing the event evolve and expand into what it is today.”
Anglin said that in the 32-year history of Black Tie Dinner, he has missed “no more than three” of the dinners. Saying that John Thomas is “rightfully recognized as the leading founder” of the annual fundraiser, he and Kuchling thought of themselves as Thomas’ “first lieutenants in recruiting and organizing a proactive, highly competent board from the very beginning and advising and supporting John in bringing his vision of this incredible event into being.
“What a blessing it is to us all that John and Ray, although no longer with us, are still so widely remembered and beloved as part of the continuing celebration that is the Dallas Black Tie Dinner,” Anglin said.
Ken Morris, co-chair of the 2014 Black Tie Dinner, said that Anglin “very clearly represents the service and commitment to the LGBT community that the Kuchling Award recognizes. So many of us have been inspired to volunteer and become involved in the community because of his example.
When you look down the long list of former Kuchling Award recipients and realize just how many of these people have made our community what it is today, we are humbled and honored that Mike joins this distinguished group for his many selfless contributions,” Morris said.
The 2014 Black Tie Dinner, presented by Turtle Creek Solutions, will be held Nov. 15. Sponsorships and general table sales are available online at BlackTie.org.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 25, 2014.