TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
Nash@DallasVoice.com
and
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
These past 12 months have proven to be busy ones for Dallas Voice.
In March, we held our first-ever Readers Voice Awards party in the Rose Room at S4, inviting the community to come and celebrate the best of North Texas’ LGBTQ and allies community. (Be watching for us to announce the 2025 Readers Voice Awards Rock Star Party soon.)
Less than two months later, we celebrated Dallas Voice’s 40th anniversary — that’s a total of 2,080 issues of Dallas Voice that have hit the street, one every Friday, for the last four decades. And we are proud to say we have not missed a Friday yet!
We also expanded our staff this year, adding NBCU fellow Melissa Whitler to our roster, with another new addition coming soon. (Watch for our Jan. 3, 2025, issue to read the details.)
We also revamped our website in 2024 in an ongoing effort to bring you all the news you need in an easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate format.
But Dallas Voice hasn’t been the only one having a big year. From the highs and lows of the 2024 elections to monumental achievements by several of our LGBTQ organizations and community leaders, this has definitely been a year to remember.
Here are just a few of the top stories we’ve covered.
Political roller-coaster
Presidential election years are years filled with political stories, and while the presidential election didn’t come out the way most people in the LGBTQ community wanted, LGBTQ candidates in Texas and around the country did very well.
When President Joe Biden froze while discussing healthcare during a debate with Donald Trump, calls for him to withdraw his re-election bid grew. Within weeks, he was out, and Vice President Kamala Harris was in.
Gov. Tim Walz joined her on the ticket. The story of the teacher who doubled as a football coach and agreed to sponsor the gay-straight alliance won the hearts of the LGBTQ community.
In Dallas County, former Sheriff Lupe Valdez said she had been hearing from a number of her deputies that they weren’t happy with how things were going in the department. And Valdez said she missed her former position. So she mounted a primary campaign to run for her old office. Valdez lost the Democratic Primary to incumbent Sheriff Marian Brown who went on to win re-election.
Other LGBTQ candidates fared better.
Two of the original five members of the Texas LGBTQ Legislative Caucus left the state House, but the incoming Legislature and Caucus will have more LGBTQ members than ever.
Former state Rep. Celia Israel ran for mayor of Austin last year. She lost a close runoff in that race, so this year she mounted a successful campaign to become Travis County tax assessor. Her term begins in January.
When Colin Allred announced he would run for the Texas Senate rather than for re-election to his U.S. House seat, state Rep. Julie Johnson threw her hat in the congressional ring, along with 10 other Democratic candidates. Avoiding a runoff when there are four or five candidates is a feat, but to win more than 50 percent of the vote against 10 other challengers is unheard of. But Johnson achieved the near impossible and became the Democratic nominee to fill Allred’s seat.
In November, Johnson made history when she won with more than 60 percent of the vote: When she’s sworn into office in January, Johnson will become the first out LGBTQ U.S. representative elected not just from Texas but from all of the Southern states.
The other three founders of the LGBTQ Legislative Caucus — Jessica Gonzalez, Mary Gonzalez and Erin Zwiener — easily won re-election. Mary Gonzalez, the chair of the caucus, announced she would step down from that position in January, and Jessica Gonzalez from Dallas was elected to fill the position.
Another gay member of the Legislature from Dallas — Venton Jones — was reelected to a second term and was voted by his party to serve as Minority Whip. Zwiener was chosen to be one of his deputy whips in the next session.
Also returning are Ann Johnson and Jolanda Jones representing Houston districts, Christian Manuel representing Beaumont, and Josey Garcia from San Antonio. Newly-elected Lauren Simmons will represent the Houston district formerly held by Democrat Shawn Terry, who angered her party in 2023 when she voted with Republicans and against the best interest of LGBTQ Texans.
In Texas’ upper legislative house, Molly Cook won a special election to fill the seat left vacant when John Whitmire stepped down to run for — and win — mayor of Houston. Then in November Cook won election to her first full term in the Texas Senate, making her the first out LGBTQ member of the Texas Senate.
On the national stage, George Santos, the gay Republican from New York who was kicked out of Congress on a 311-114 vote in December 2023, pleaded guilty in August to aggravated identity theft and wire fraud charges stemming from fraudulent activity during his 2022 congressional campaign. In total, Santos faced 23 charges and will serve two to 22 years in prison and pay $373,000 in fines when sentenced.
In the U.S. Senate, Kristen Sinema, who is bi, decided not to run for reelection. Tammy Baldwin was targeted by Republicans as a possible turnover seat but was reelected by a narrow margin.
In the Delaware U.S. House race, Sarah McBride was elected to her first term in Congress, becoming that body’s first transgender member. Republicans welcomed her by banning her from public women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. She responded with grace, saying she was focusing on representing the citizens of Delaware not where she’ll go to the bathroom.
There are single occupant bathrooms throughout the capitol and a private bathroom in her office.
Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth is retiring at the end of this term. She’ll be replaced by moderate Republican Craig Goldman, who defeated a MAGA candidate in the primary.
And Rep. Jasmine Crockett made a name for herself this year far beyond her Oak Lawn and South Dallas district when she answered criticism from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t seem to care for Crockett’s wardrobe of business suits and preference to wear makeup. She described Greene as a “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body.” That landed her on all the late-night talk shows, a regular gig on MSNBC and a spot at the podium during the Democratic National Convention.
The one-liners continue to pour from Crockett, and we love her for that.
Housing the community
ASD remains the premiere agency providing affordable housing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Look for an announcement early in the new year about the organization’s latest project.
Residents began moving into Oak Lawn Place, Resource Center’s new affordable senior housing facility, in July.
The $31 million project has 79 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom units in a new, five-story building with a large outdoor terrace that overlooks a creek and, from the upper levels, allows for views of downtown Dallas.
Amenities include a lobby, community room, conference/dining room, kitchen, fitness room and a business center. The apartments are income-restricted to those earning between 30 percent and 60 percent of the area median family income.
Resource Center CEO Cece Cox put together a team that funded the project with $25 million in public money, $4 million from a capital campaign in 2020 led by Lynn McBee and Phil Clemmons and a $750,000 Affordable Housing Program grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas through Veritex Bank. And, she partnered with Volunteers of America and developer Matthews Southwest to design and build the project.
And AHF, best known for its HIV clinics, is creating new low-income housing for people with chronic health conditions including HIV at two locations in Dallas. Both are former motels — one on Northwest Highway at I-35 and the other an old Best Western near the High-5. The housing is being created by the Healthy Housing Foundation, which has purchased and renovated 18 properties in California, Florida, Georgia and New York as well as the two in Dallas.
Pride around North Texas
When Sherrell Cross took over as executive director of Dallas Pride, she likely knew there was turmoil roiling beneath the surface of the annual Pride festival and parade committee. But even amid allegations of embezzlement by the committee’s former treasurer and vague charges of mismanagement coming from former committee members and volunteers, Cross and her crew persevered and the 42nd annual Dallas Pride celebration took place June 1-2 in Fair Park, with Broadway legend Billy Porter joining local legends Betty Neal and Steven Pace as, respectively, honorary grand marshal and grand marshal
In November Dallas Pride officials announced that the festival and parade would be returning to Fair Park for 2025, just with a different date than the usual first weekend in June. Since World Pride will be happening in Washington, D.C., from May 23-June 8, Dallas Pride organizers chose to move our local celebration to the weekend of June 14-15, to avoid conflicts for those who want to celebrate in both cities.
Some of the smaller Pride events that usually take place each in the DFW suburbs each year struggled a bit in 2024. Princeton Pride had to be cancelled after the school district rescinded permission to use some of its facilities. And in Rowlett, the city council’s vote to disband the Rowlett DEI Committee left Pride organizers there scrambling. But the Community DEI Project, created to fill the void left by the city’s vote, stepped up to stage a Pride event there.
Other area Prides continued to grow.
The third annual Arlington Pride, held at Levitt Pavillion in downtown Arlington, featured a lineup of entertainers led by drag icon Alyssa Edwards with more than 10,000 people from 156 cities in 23 states and three countries attending the party.
Also during Pride Month, Dallas Southern Pride staged its annual Juneteenth Pride Party; the city of Farmers Branch issued its first proclamation honoring Pride; Virgin Hotels Dallas brought in Brooke Lyn Heights for a special Pride Month drag show; the Greg Dollgener Memorial AIDS Fund rocked S4 with Crystal Waters headlining MetroBall 17; Meow Wolf Grapevine hosted a Pride-themed Artist Talk; Dallas Arboretum once again hosted Pride in Bloom; The Dallas Opera held its first Pride Night, and the Dallas Arts District again lit up with the festivities of the Pride Block Party.
Here in Big D, city officials handed out their annual Pride Awards in June and raised the custom-designed City of Dallas Pride Flag over city hall and other facilities, and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett hosted a “Y’all Means All” Pride party.
Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Wings continued their tradition of welcoming the LGBTQ community for Pride Night festivities in 2024, and in Frisco, FC Dallas hosted its own “Y’all Means All” party.
Everybody knows Pride in Texas is way too big to be confined to just one month, with festivities stretching into the fall.
Pride in Dallas staged its third annual parade down Cedar Springs Road in September, with state Rep. Venton Jones as grand marshal. Then in November, Donnesh Amrollah, inaugural executive director for Pride in Dallas, announced that he was stepping down from that position, and that Vincent DeLuna was taking over the position.
Also in September, Texas Latino Pride celebrated its 10th anniversary.
In October, Pride Frisco’s 2024 Pride Fest filled Toyota Stadium with music, dancing, vendors and more.
Also in October, North Texas Pride Foundation held its annual Come As You Are festival at the Art Center of Plano, following up in December with a $1,500 donation to DEI Community Project.
Targets on transgender backs
Going back as least as far as 2016 when the North Caroline Legislature passed the first “bathroom bill” banning trans women from gender-specific public restrooms, the country’s transgender residents have been the right wing’s favorite target. In recent years, trans youth have born the brunt of the attack in the GOP’s ongoing culture wars, and no one has been a bigger or more brazen anti-trans warrior than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
While their efforts to effectively ban drag shows failed, Texas Republicans in the state Legislature managed during the 2023 legislative session to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth under the age of 18.
Not satisfied to just keep Texas’ trans minors from accessing appropriate health care here in their home state, Paxton ramped up efforts this year to interfere with such care nationwide.
He has demanded private healthcare information from clinics in Georgia and in Washington state and, in recent months, has filed suit against two Texas doctors and one doctor from another state for providing care to trans youth. This comes, of course, a year after Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott attempted to turn physicians treating trans youth and parents of trans children into criminals by declaring that providing or facilitation gender-affirming care to be child abuse. Fortunately, the courts have so far short-circuited those efforts.
And in what appears to be not just another way to harm transgender Texans but also to possibly interfere with free and fair elections by keeping trans people from having accurate state-issued IDs, the director Texas Department of Public Safety Drivers License Division in August issued an internal memo telling employees to ignore court ordered name changes and gender marker changes. The move came in the wake of a request some months earlier from Paxton for a list of everyone in Texas who had requested a name and gender-marker change.
Since that instruction when out, Texas DPS Director Freeman Martin has asked Paxton’s office for a legal opinion on whether DPS can retroactively change back the IDs of anyone who has had their name and gender-marker changed.
LGBTQ students under attack
In February, less than four months after the Sherman Independent School District Superintendent in North Texas forced the Sherman High School theater class to cancel its planned production of Oklahoma! because trans male student Max Hightower had been cast in the role of Ali Hakim, Owasso High School, Okla., sophomore Nex Benedict, 16, died on Feb. 8, a day after being beaten up by female classmates in a bathroom at the school.
Speaking of Max Hightower and Sherman High School: After the Sherman ISD Superintendent Tyson Bennett stepped in in October 2023 to cancel a planned production of Oklahoma! because Hightower had been cast in a male role, the Board of Trustees voted in late 2023 to reinstate the production of Oklahoma! — with the original cast including Max Hightower as Ali Hakim. The students presented the play in January.
In early March, a lesbian couple came forward with allegations that faculty and staff at a Sherman middle school had failed to take action after other students harassed and even physically assaulted their transgender child. On March 8 trustees voted to suspend Bennett with pay as the investigation into the controversy continued, and then on May 1, trustees approved a “voluntary separation agreement” with Bennett.
About a week later, Max Hightower and his parents, Philip and Amy Hightower, traveled to New York City where Philip and Amy were honored along with their son as the 2024 Defenders of the Year by the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, an arm of the Dramatists Guild of America. Max graduated from Sherman High School on May 24.
While the Sherman ISD board of trustees investigated Tyson Bennett’s actions there, and within weeks of Nex Benedict’s death, Keller ISD officials on Feb. 23 abruptly notified parents that Timber Creek High School’s planned production of the play The Laramie Project, which chronicles events in Laramie, Wyo., following the anti-LGBTQ hate crime murder there of college student Matthew Shepard in 1998, was being canceled. The cancellation came without warning and without explanation. Less than two weeks later, following public outcry over the decision, Keller ISD officials announced that the production was back on, with Superintendent Tracy Johnson saying in a written statement, “Keller ISD’s administration recognizes the time and effort that has been put into the adapted version of The Laramie Project by students and staff members. Upon further consideration of this, the administration has decided to proceed as previously planned with the May performance of The Laramie Project.”
Also on the north side of the DFW Metroplex in February, Lewisville ISD administrators put popular Hebron High School teacher Rachmad Tjachyadi on administrative leave after the rabidly anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok got hold of and posted online video of Tjachyadi wearing a pink dress at school as part of the school’s Spirit Day activities. Despite a wave of public support for him, Tjachyadi eventually resigned from his position and left the school district.
Out west in Canyon, Texas, in 2023, West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler prompted a lawsuit from students and a student advocacy organization and a “no confidence” vote against him by the school’s faculty after he forced the cancellation of a charity drag show that would have benefitted The Trevor Project. Then in mid-March this year, despite the anger over his decision in 2023, Wendler stepped in and cancelled a second planned charity drag show, even as the lawsuit against him and the school continued.
Business in the Gayborhood
Three business partners have purchased Hunky’s on Cedar Springs Road and its second location in the Bishop Arts District from Rick Barton, who founded Hunkys with his brother David in 1984.
Jeffrey Yarbrough, one of the new owners, said he’s been eating at Hunky’s since the 1980s when he worked at Women’s Wear Daily at the Apparel Mart. And while he was joking when he declared, “We’re not turning this into McDonald’s,” he wasn’t really joking at all.
He and his business partners are promising nothing will change with the iconic restaurant that has been a Cedar Springs landmark and a haven for the LGBTQ community for decades. Well, one thing has changed — the addition of “boozy milkshakes.”
Yarbrough has had plenty of experience as a restaurant and bar owner, having previously owned Art Bar and Club Clearview in Deep Ellum. He also noted that his Deep Ellum businesses tended to cater to a counter-culture crowd, so he understands why Hunky’s is so important to North Texas’ LGBTQ community.
After leaving the bar and restaurant business, he and his partners started a boutique real estate company that specializes in the restaurant industry.
Yarbrough promised to find Barton the right buyers, and, after a number of offers, it turned out Yarbrough and his partners were the right buyers.
The Dallas Tavern Guild, the association of Oak Lawn’s gay bar owners, did so much more than just run bars. For decades, they staged the annual Pride parade and other events on Cedar Springs Road. And the Cedar Springs Merchants Association worked to make Cedar Springs Road one of the most vibrant shopping streets in the city.
Both closed down for the pandemic and, for a time, disappeared. Earlier this year, the CSMA began meeting and invited the bar owners to be part of the action. At a July meeting of the newly recreated organization safety and security, upcoming events and area beautification were discussed.
Newly-revived Pride in Dallas on Cedar Springs in September and the Halloween street party came off without a hitch and CSMA are hoping for even bigger and better events next year.
Churches in flux
The General Convention of the United Methodist Church voted to change language removing its 40-year old ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” serving as clergy. Also, clergy may no longer be penalized for performing same-sex weddings.
Although lesbians and gays had officially been banned from serving as clergy, enforcement of that ban varied from diocese to diocese. Around the country, a number have been serving as ministers and at least two have been elevated to bishop.
The new wording allows different regions to have different rules while respecting each other’s differences.
And in Dallas County, a number of Methodist churches have already been quietly performing same-sex marriages.
The vote came as the United Methodist Church in April held its first General Conference since before the COVID pandemic. A number of congregations have left the denomination in recent years over the issue.
The issue had caused a split in the United Methodist Church. A number of churches that opposed any change to church policy left the denomination. At previous conventions, a majority of churches in North America had voted for the changes. But conservative Methodist churches from Africa opposed the changes and defeated the proposals.
In Texas, 40 percent of the United Methodist churches left to join the conservative Global Methodist Church or to become independent.
Over the past 10 years, charges have been brought against pastors who performed same-sex weddings. The most famous case was brought against the Rev. Frank Schaefer who performed a private marriage ceremony for his son. Schaefer was defrocked at the time, but was welcomed back when he moved from his more conservative east coast diocese to California.
Locally, the Rev. Eric Folkerth had charges brought against him for performing a same-sex wedding ceremony at Northaven Church. He was disciplined for his action by his bishop.
And the Rev. Rachel Griffin, senior pastor at Oak Lawn UMC came out and married her wife after the vote.
Her reaction to the change in wording is simple: “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” Griffin-Allison said, describing her life before the change as being “forced into hiding in the middle of the Gayborhood.”
Names in the news
The year kicked off on a sad note as we said goodbye to a longtime ally and staunch supporter of the LGBTQ community, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who passed away on Dec. 31 at Baylor, Scott & White rehab facility following back surgery.
In early February, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker announced she would be stepping down as president and CEO of Victory Fund, the national LGBTQ organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ candidates to public office at all levels of government. Parker had led the organization since December 2017.
Black Tie Dinner named Carter Brown, founder and CEO of Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, recipient of the 2024 Kuchling Humanitarian Award.
The Houston-based advocacy organization The Normal Anomaly opened offices in Dallas in June, and in August, trans man Twan McGary was named as the organization’s program manager for the Dallas office.
In July, officials with The Trevor Project announced that former Dallasite Jaymes Black would be taking over as CEO of the organization. Black, an attorney, joined The Trevor Project after several years as president and CEO of Family Equality.