Stonewall founder Christy Kinsler dies

 
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
Christy Kinsler, a co-founder and the first president of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, has died. She founded Stonewall in 1997 with a small group that had been active in the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition.
Although most early Stonewall members were already active in politics, Kinsler told Dallas Voice at the time the structure of an organized group was needed.
Stonewall chapters began forming around the country during and after the 1996 presidential election, when President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of
Marriage Act and used his signature as a campaign issue to neutralize opponent Bob Dole, who was a sponsor of the bill in the U.S. Senate.
By 1999, when the 2000 presidential campaign was underway, both Bill Bradley and Al Gore, who were campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president were courting the LGBT vote.
“We’ve hit the big time,” Kinsler told then-Dallas Voice editor Dennis Vercher. “We’ve been included in the Democratic Party for some time, but now we’re a big draw for the presidential candidates.”
Kinsler was not one to mince words and spoke strongly for LGBT causes. In 1999, speaking of Rep. Pete Sessions, she said, “He’s a yes-man for the religious right. He votes against anything involving gay issues, and he does so gleefully.”
Before Stonewall’s founding, Kinsler was co-chair, with Steve Atkinson, of the LGPC, created to fill the gap in political activism when the Dallas Gay Alliance switched its focus to the burgeoning AIDS epidemic.
When Dallas Gay Alliance was founded, it was mostly a political organization. But in the early 1980s, the AIDS crisis hit. DGA created the Foundation for Human Understanding, which included a food pantry that started at Crossroads Market and the AIDS Resource Center, which provided information to the community.
“LGPC broke off to focus on political matters,” activist Louise Young said.
Young, who called Kinsler “a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat,” explained a situation that led Kinsler, along with Gary Fitzsimmons, Bill Fry and Michael Milliken, to form Stonewall.
LGPC was non-partisan, Young said. In 1996, the organization endorsed Lucy Cain in the Republican primary and incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in the Democratic primary for the 30th U.S. House district race. Both won their primaries, and it was LGPC custom that when a candidate won the primary, the endorsement carried through to the election. When both won, LGPC issued a co-endorsement.
Young called that a “grievous error” and said Johnson was furious.
“Christy knew there needed to be a purely Democratic club,” Young said.
In the 2000s, LGPC rejoined DGLA and became DGLA-PAC, which remains nonpartisan in its endorsements.
Activists who worked with Kinsler this week said that working with her was always a pleasure. Jesse Garcia, a former Stonewall Dallas president who moved to Washington, D.C., to work in the Obama administration, noted, “Christy Kinsler made volunteering with the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas into a family occasion.”
Garcia said he’d accompany Kinsler and other Stonewall founders to Dallas Democratic Party headquarters near Fair Park where they’d work stuffing envelopes, entering data and making signs while Kinsler and others would share stories about the modern gay rights movement.
Kinsler worked for the phone company and was an active member of the Communications Workers of America, which is where she gained organizing skills.
“She was a dedicated labor activist who proved her worth along the picket lines and advocacy for workers’ rights,” Garcia said. “Union workers who trusted Christy became LGBT allies and supported our equality. She taught me about intersectionality, which I then used to help build bridges between the LGBT and Latino communities.”
He said he learned local LGBT history that has never appeared in textbooks from Kinsler.
He said he learned “how women in the LGBT community, who were ostracized from gay bars, didn’t abandon gay men during the height of the AIDS crisis. Lesbians stepped in and became caregivers to many who were dying alone. She lost her own brother to the disease.”
Kinsler’s brother, John Michael Kinsler, died in 1996 after a 10-year battle with AIDS. After caring for him through his final illness, Christy Kinsler joined the Resource Center board and the board of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas, now known as Equality Texas.
Dianne Hardy Garcia, who was executive director at LGRL when Kinsler was on the board, said, “Christy was such a tremendous asset to the LGRL board of directors. She was passionate about HIV issues, ending LGBTQ discrimination and fighting for equality for all. She had great insights into how to work with public officials on a personal level.
“The thing I enjoyed most about Christy was her positive presence,” Hardy Garcia continued. “She was always optimistic about the possibility of making change for the better, and she did that during times where it could be tough to be so hopeful. She was always willing to lend a hand whenever she could, and she was quick to laugh at the many absurdities we faced while working in the Texas Lege. Needless to say, we laughed a lot. And Christy had the best laugh.”
Hardy Garcia said she will be “forever grateful for the tremendous contributions” Kinsler made to the LGBT community, adding, “She made Dallas, and Texas, a better place.”
“The local LGBT, Democratic and Labor movements lost a pioneer and champion today,” said Dallas City Councilman Omar Narvaez, who served as president of Stonewall for several years. “She was known to many as Mama Stonewall. I was lucky to be able to seek advice from her, to call her up anytime to chat and had the honor to be a small part of the legacy she did not know she was creating.”
Before Stonewall existed, Kinsler understood the LGBT community would have more power working from within the Democratic Party. She saw that influence the first year after the organization formed as political candidates came to her group’s meetings looking for support.
When she told Dallas Voice in 1998 that the group’s member stood at 50 and “we’re looking to increase that, but we’re not into big numbers. That’s not a big deal,” she couldn’t have imagined that within a few years, Stonewall Dallas would grow to become the largest Democratic club in Texas.
For her dedicated work throughout the 1990s, she was rewarded by being named grand marshal of the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade in 2000.
A funeral service was held at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Oak Lawn Avenue on Thursday, Sept. 28.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 29, 2017.