And, as many are childless, he said, they have the financial resources to restore more derelict properties. Gay real estate agent Eldredge Langlinais, a former Houston resident who also owns the Pink Dolphin Bar and heads the gay Krewe of Banner Mardi Gras group, said many gays are attracted by the city's large stock of older homes.
And real estate agentĬonfirmed that sales to gays and lesbians have speeded up in the past two or three years.īowers, who currently works as a real estate agent, placed the city's gay population at 10 percent. , owner of the gay-oriented Lost Bayou Guesthouse, noted that at least four other homes within two blocks of his bed and breakfast are owned by gays. During the last 10 years, there's been a big increase in gay-owned property." Real estate sales up Phil DeMarco "People have recognized that it's not - oh my God! - the gays have come to ruin the world. "As time has gone by, as history has played out, there's been much less stigma," said Trey Click, editor and publisher of The Parrot, an island entertainment monthly. Watt tweets the two things he doesn't miss about Houston (and one thing he does)
Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo says he is still working with Texas DPS investigators after allegations he had stopped cooperating.Villagran said people increasingly "are coming out of the closet, so to speak, and choosing to live openly as gays." OutSmart magazine editor Tim Brookover, a Galveston native, observed that the island city long has had a gay presence, "but people didn't recognize it or talk openly about it." "We learned that we just couldn't afford prejudice."Īlthough anti-gay sentiment occasionally has surfaced - in 1999 a Houston minister led a protest at a newly opened gay beachfront motel - gay-straight relations in the city generally have been harmonious. "It's more broad than that," he said, arguing that the city's history as an immigration port and its devastating 1900 hurricane contributed to a far-reaching tolerance. , a longtime Galveston political observer who has lived on the island more than three decades, suggested that scrutinizing the island through a prism of gay life is "putting a magnifying glass on an elephant." The whole community was embarrassed." 'Couldn't afford prejudice' Curtiss Brown They were very concerned that someone in Galveston would run that ad. "What was heartening about the whole experience was that many straight families called me in support.
"It was amazing," said Bowers, who later made an unsuccessful bid for mayor. Bowers, who was running unopposed, was unfazed. Lawyer-real estate agent David Bowers experienced such apparent tolerance first-hand when, during his bid for a third term on City Council in 1998, he was denounced in a newspaper advertisement as a homosexual. Elsewhere in the Houston area, no more than 33 percent agreed, and in Montgomery and Fort Bend counties, the total dropped to about 25 percent. Forty-five percent of island participants believed such marriages should be given legal status. Now, Villagran's visitor's center, which functions as a travel agency and clearing house for tips on entertainment, real estate, health services and gay-friendly businesses, occupies a prominent spot near the heart of the city's tourist district.Ī recent Houston-area survey by Rice University sociology professor and pollster Stephen Klineberg found Galveston residents the region's most liberal on the key issue of gay marriage. This year, roughly 8,000 revelers turned out for the summer Splash Day celebration on East Beach and, in October, throngs jammed the Strand for the city's first gay pride festival. Last year, Harbor Metropolitan Community Church, catering to gay worshippers, opened on 39th Street.