If you can’t get fired up about the Industrial Boulevard renaming controversy in Dallas, how about this one from San Antonio? On Thursday, the SA City Council is expected to approve changing the name of Gay Street to Second Baptist Way. Ouch!
“City officials are going out of their way to stress that the renaming of Gay Street has nothing to do with the current usage of the word ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘homosexual,'” according to this report.
Speaking of the Dallas street renaming debacle, no word on whether LGBT groups will support renaming Ross Avenue for Cesar Chavez. If you’ll remember, Stonewall Democrats and other groups backed a proposal to rename Industrial Boulevard after Chavez, but that didn’t quite work out. I believe Jim Schutze at The Observer pretty well summed up why in his column last week.
“Can we speak frankly to each other? Sure. I think we can. Why would the name César Chávez un-market the area? Or just not market the area?” Schutze wrote. “Because it’s Mexican. We can admit that to each other, right?”
From an LGBT standpoint, one possible benefit of all this is that it likely will hurt Councilman Dave Neumann among Hispanic voters in his district next year. Neumann was one of the main forces who opposed renaming Industrial after Chavez. And who will Neumann face in next year’s District 3 race? Why, Ed Oakley, of course.
