For the most part, we didn’t see any nasty homophobia in the 2009 Mayoral election until the runoff, at which point it oozed out from several locations. This time around, the gay bashers aren’t wasting any time. First, usual suspect Dave Wilson crawled out from under his rock to send a hateful letter about Mayor Parker, which in a nice bit of ju jitsu she then turned into a national fundraising appeal. More recently, one of her actual opponents in the race decided that gay tourists and their money are icky.
The Houston mayoral election is still four months away, but challenger Fernando Herrera must be getting desperate considering he’s already throwing anti-gay mud at incumbent Annise Parker. Herrera posted a picture to his campaign’s Facebook page (screen grab above) from the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau’s “My Gay Houston” campaign. The campaign features prominent LGBT Houstonians talking about what makes Houston great. Herrera captioned the photo as follows:
“The Gay Boy’s Weekend in H-Town?
The July 13th, 2011 City Council Agenda includes $420,000.00 for the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau. Yes…the same Bureau that launched the My Gay Houston campaign and website. See where your tax dollars are going –www.myGayHouston.com. Read all about it — http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6780236.html
I’m just saying…”Well, “I’m just saying” that most major cities in the U.S. are actively competing for the LGBT vacation dollar (including Chicago, Los Angeles, Los Vegas, Washington D.C., Dallas and even Salt Lake City), and if Houston is to be competitive as a vacation and convention destination it has to follow suit. I’m also “just saying” that gay-baiting the very popular Parker is a dumb political move that does little to legitimize Herrera’s struggling campaign.
Here’s the link to that photo in case you want to add your voice to the comments. It’ll be by far the most attention Herrera has gotten for his campaign. When you’re done, head over to My Gay Houston and see what exactly it is that he’s so afraid of.
He put it on his personal page too, and there are more comments there than on his “for Mayor” page.
Thank you again for your work on getting the financial docs out there. It really helps.
Gee, you would think they could focus on the crappy job performance of the Mayor, which is a lot more relevant.
I made sure to spend some of my tourist dollars when I was touring the contribution page of Mayor Parker’s website.
Either the link now is not working for me or has been taken down. Fernando accepted the active support of a cluster of gay Republicans in his past contest, and told the hard-right GOP Candidates Committee that he supported the right of longtime domestic partners to receive the pension of a partner, and possibly to inherit from them.
Nope, sorry, Fernando is not anti gay, nice try in pulling the “gay card”. His point is about the money being spent for this visitors bureau:
Council created the Houston 1st Corp–partly to promote conventions and entertainment. Wed Council votes on $420,000 to the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau—a non-profit which performs a similar function. Here are a few of the salaries at GHCVB (in thousands)–$295; $195; $159; $161; $119; $129; $116; $126. Historically, Houston taxpayers provide 83% of the $12mil GHCVB budget. 8 employees total $1.3mil!
Elle, those salaries aren’t out of line for professionals with degrees and some years of experience. Whether those jobs are needed or not is a separate question.
Ross, we are not disputing why they are getting paid those salaries, question is why is the city funding 83%???? At a time like this, city should not be singling out one group of people to attract business. Again, not anti gay, just my opinion. For the record, I would not vote for someone who was anti gay. I’ve met Fernando, his fam. and some of his co-workers and he is not anti gay. PS: i’ve also met some on his campaign staff who are also gay. I hate to point this out but this is what i have seen for my own. I will still continue to do my homework on him and encourage everyone to do the same.
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