10 January 18 - 24, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents to know that she and her wife are just regu- lar people. She’d caught wind that Marvin Morton, then-HOA leader of her Burleson neighbor- hood, had taken issue with a garden display tucked in her front yard: a 12-by-18-inch rainbow sign. Even though Cooley knew that Morton was home — she happened to see him pull in — he didn’t answer. A “cowardly” response, as far as Cooley was concerned. She’d been shocked at how hateful and aggressive Mor- ton’s messages had been to his fellow HOA board members. “I was raised and lived most of my adult life in a very conservative world,” Cooley, a native Texan, said. “So I’m well aware of what people think, but this is just blew right past any of my expectations.” Plenty of Cooley’s neighbors also plant signs in their own front yards, ones celebrat- ing the holidays or cheering on high school- aged kids. But as far as Cooley understands it, no one else had been targeted for theirs. Cooley’s suspicions were all but con- firmed when she saw Morton’s texts, mes- sages that ultimately prompted another member to resign in protest. “The gays do not need to influence our kids they are having a hard enough time as it is,” Morton wrote in one, as first reported by Dallas Voice. “The fags need to get back in their closet and leave the kids alone!” Cooley and her wife just want to be treated fairly. But they allege that they were discriminated against when they were made to cough up a $45 fine. It wasn’t just about the money for them. It was also the principle. Another HOA board member at the time, Kirbi Gibbons, teaches chemistry at Burle- son High School. Three of Cooley’s children attend that campus, although they don’t take Gibbons’ class. “Any pride flag is a no go for me,” Gib- bons wrote to Morton and the other HOA board members in a series of messages. “They singled themselves out putting it out front. I’m not flying a straight flag. They are more than welcome to relocate it to the back yard. I just got hit really hard at school this year with the gay bi trans bs and this is just propaganda for that. It’s not right.” Gibbons’ texts were disturbing to Cooley. If that’s how the teacher speaks about the LGBTQ+ community, then how might she treat vulnerable students in the classroom? Connie L. Cooley, Amy’s wife, recalled feeling “floored” by the texts: “It was like our worst thought that we could think, is these people are trying to kick us out of the neighborhood. They’re calling us names. They’re assuming all of these things. This, for this garden sign?” Morton and Gibbons have since resigned from the board. They, along with Burleson ISD, did not return the Observer’s requests for comment. Burleson resident Clay Singleton’s yard features a sign honoring his tuba-player kid, but he told the Observer that he’s never re- ceived a similar complaint, despite living across from the Cooleys. They’re great neighbors, he said, people anyone would want to live near. “The whole HOA thing is just absolutely ridiculous,” he said. Another nearby couple told Dallas Voice that they’ve kept year-round decorations in their own yard. In more than 10 years, they haven’t been slapped with violation notices or been made to fill out forms. “I think it’s so stu- pid that the HOA is putting those ladies through that,” one of the neighbors told that outlet. “It’s discrimination, no doubt about it.” Morton’s former HOA board colleague, Calvin Brown, saw it that way too. He was so disgusted by the texts that he resigned. Brown reached out to the Cooleys and showed them the homophobic text mes- sages at their home. To him, it looked like the couple might cry. “It was really sad,” he said. “It’s just not right what [the other board members] did.” Eventually, the pro-LGBTQ+ organiza- tion Equality Texas got involved. Spokesper- son Johnathan Gooch told the Observer via email that scenarios like this “expose a real shortcoming in Texas law” and called for nondiscrimination protections statewide. Gooch also pointed out that 75% of Tex- ans polled in one survey expressed support for LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination laws. Legis- lators, he said, “need to start paying atten- tion.” He encourages folks to contact Equality Texas for help when they experi- ence discrimination. Or, as Connie framed it: “Why should I have to pay $45 for somebody else’s preju- dice and discrimination?” Some recent developments have sprung from the HOA scandal. Brown is back on the board, this time as vice president. The Coo- leys received a check for $45 as reimburse- ment for the fine. The law firm representing the HOA emailed them an apology. And the board has adopted an ethical code of con- duct. “No more targeting people because of their beliefs, gender, etc.,” Brown said. Connie told the Observer last month that she’d been experiencing some sleepless nights. Today, she said, that’s improved. But, Connie knows that the pair who ex- pressed those homophobic views are out there. Even though she’s not worried about the “two bigots” bothering her family again, they likely still believe the same things. She hopes that they don’t act on them in the fu- ture, especially since other targets may not be willing or able to call them out. Speaking in December, Connie cited a quote from popular podcast host and author Brené Brown: “People are hard to hate close up.” Not feeling wholly safe in their neighbor- hood was terrible. Amy noted that they pur- chased a Ring doorbell camera, just in case. Connie said that she and Amy “deserve to live here as much as anybody else, and we de- serve to have a rainbow yard sign if we choose — just like other people choose to put out their student-is-a-senior sign or their TCU fan or, you know, ‘Merry Christmas.’ “Whatever it is,” she added, “we deserve to be treated the same.” ▼ DRUGS ‘MAIN SOURCE OF SUPPLY’ 3 CARROLLTON FENTANYL DEALERS SENTENCED TO FEDERAL PRISON FOR JUVENILE DEATHS. BY KELLY DEARMORE T he dominoes continue to fall in the Carrollton fentanyl case that is con- nected to a number of juvenile over- doses and deaths in 2022 and 2023. Last week, Leigha Simonton, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, an- nounced that a major supplier and two oth- ers were “sentenced to a combined 35 years in federal prison for their roles in the drug conspiracy that claimed the lives of three teenagers in north Texas.” Jason Xavier Villanueva, 23, Roberta Al- exander Gaitan, 20, and Rafael Soliz, Jr., 23, were arrested in early 2023 amid several other arrests related to dealing illicit pills cut with fentanyl that were marketed to ju- veniles as other forms of opioid prescription pills such as Percocet and OxyContin. Upon his February 2023 arrest, Villan- ueva, who received a sentence of 15 years in federal prison, was described by Simonton as the “main source of supply in the Carroll- ton juvenile overdose cases” in a press con- ference at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas. Investigators said Vil- lanueva “worked through a juvenile dealer” to supply pills to a pair of dealers that had rented a house near R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton, resulting in victims ranging between the ages of 13 and 17. Gaitan and Soliz, who received sentences of 5 and 15 years respectively, were two of the young dealers Villanueva supplied drugs to. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney, the two were indiscriminate with who they sold the drugs to while the entire operation moved in a brazen manner, seem- ingly unafraid of being caught. “In court documents, Mr. Villanueva ad- mitted he distributed more than 200,000 fentanyl pills to north Texas customers over the course of five or six months, at a rate of about 40,000 pills per month,” the state- ment read. “He sold the pills — round blue tablets marked M-30 — to a network of juve- nile and adult dealers, including Mr. Gaitan and Mr. Soliz, who went on to sell to friends, classmates, and other customers in Carroll- ton. He often advertised on Instagram and following the arrest of one of his codefen- dants in February 2023 posted, ‘Only thing that’s gonna stop us is feds.’” Since February 2023, the Carrollton po- lice department and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District have stepped up their efforts to create awareness on the le- thal dangers of fentanyl. Even with the pub- lic on higher alert than in the past, the school district continued to experience a number of incidents likely related to fen- tanyl in 2023, with multiple students need- ing emergency medical attention while on campus, including one at a middle school, in order to be revived. There have been 10 arrested in connec- tion to the three deaths and several over- doses of juveniles in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD from September 2022 to Janu- ary 2023. The three latest results bring the total number of sentences in the overall case to five, following the 2022 sentences of Don- ovan Jude Andrews (9 years) and Stephen Paul Brinson (8 years). The charges related to the Carrollton fentanyl overdoses and deaths were all filed in early 2023. But the charges could have looked much different had they been filed at the end of last year. On Sept. 1, 2023 a new law in Texas went into effect that al- lows authorities to charge fentanyl dealers who supply pills linked to a death with murder. ▼ CITY HALL A PERMANENT VACATION? BUSINESS OWNER HOPES MAYORAL RECALL WILL BRING DALLAS TOGETHER. BY JACOB VAUGHN L ast September, when Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson told the world he had switched political parties from Demo- crat to Republican, it ruffled more than a few feathers in the blue-leaning city. Now, a Dallas activist and former City Council can- didate named Davante Peters is circulating a petition to recall the mayor. Johnson’s party switching isn’t the only factor that inspired the petition. Peters said the mayor’s absence from city meetings over the last few years prompted him to file his petition with the city secretary. According to Unfair Park from p8 Courtesy Connie Cooley Connie L. Cooley (left) and Amy Cooley say their Burleson neighbors weren’t made to pay similar fines for yard signs.
