Unfair Park from p4 from AIDS. But Tebedo passed hot chocolate out to the volunteers despite his poor health. “I can still taste it,” Monroe said sometime before his own AIDS-related death last year. Things shifted after an arsonist razed the AIDS Resource Center in 1989, Waybourn says. Dallas’ gay and lesbian community re- alized they weren’t as safe as they thought they were. It didn’t happen overnight, but the blaze sparked a “huge awakening” for many. “That was the tipping point, where people realized that you can either sit on your hands or you can get involved,” Way- bourn says. “And for a lot of people, it was to get involved.” C hristmas lights danced on posters de- manding District Judge Jack Hamp- ton’s ouster. “Hampton and Hitler Don’t Know Love,” one read. Protesters who’d gathered near City Hall roared: “Hampton must go!” At that point in late 1988, around 1,100 Dallas County residents had died of AIDS since the county started keeping track five years earlier. But days be- fore Christmas that year, protesters with the Dallas Gay Alliance and other groups made it known that they were fed up with the un- equal treatment they received under the law. LGBTQ+ activists accused Hampton of making “anti-gay statements,” according to a Dallas Morning News article published in December that year. They believed he’d handed down a light punishment to an 18-year-old who fatally shot two gay men. Even though the law allowed for a life sen- tence, Hampton gave the convicted mur- derer 30 years. He reportedly justified the decision to a local journalist, saying the vic- tims were “queers asking for trouble cruis- ing the streets, picking up teenage boys.” “Dallas bears the shame for every day [Hampton] sits there, and the world is watch- ing,” said Waybourn, who served as Dallas Gay Alliance president, according to the News. “It is not the first time that gays and minorities have been brutalized and victim- ized by the Dallas County judicial system.” Discrimination also wormed its way into the workforce. People would lose their jobs for being gay, Waybourn tells the Observer. Lone Star Gas fired male waiters assigned to the executive dining room for fear they would expose the bigwigs to AIDS. Servers were still allowed to work in the employee dining rooms, though, Waybourn says. Republican President Ronald Reagan long avoided talking about AIDS, mentioning it for the first time publicly in September 1985, more than four years after taking office. (What would come to be called the AIDS epidemic was reported as early as June 1981. Later that summer, the public began referring to it as “gay cancer.”) The stigma surrounding AIDS made it difficult to find accurate information, and the county was limited in what it could say, so the Dallas Gay Alliance launched its own edu- cation program to teach people about how to stay safe. “Really, we were the only source of information that was reliable and truthful,” Waybourn says. Some believed that the gay community 66 had created AIDS via its “alternate lifestyle,” the University of North Texas’ library notes on its website. HIV- and AIDS-positive peo- cheap computer and printer, according to The Dallas Way. Soon, the Victory Fund be- gan petitioning for small-dollar donations. If they received $200, they’d give half to en- dorsees and half to the fund. It led to the cre- ation of a national mailing list featuring prominent people in the queer community. Openly LGBTQ+ members were now run- ning for office — like Craig McDaniel, who was elected to Dallas City Council in 1993. But Waybourn never actually ran himself: “I’d make a terrible candidate,” he says, chuckling. Still, he wanted to launch the Vic- tory Fund to make sure contenders would understand what they were getting into and how to respond to the day’s pressing issues. “People don’t care about who you’re sleeping with as much as they care whether or not the potholes are going to get fixed,” he says. Dallas City Council has recognized June as Pride Month for more than a decade, and rainbow flags fly outside City Hall, Fair Park and the airport. Earlier this month, council members unanimously voted to commemo- rate the late, legendary gay rights activist Don Maison with street toppers. Texas could also soon gain its first Black lawmaker living with HIV: Dallas-based Victory Fund endorsee Venton Jones will be the Democrat on ballot for House District 100 in November. Mayor Pro Tem Chad West has earned the Victory Fund’s backing, too, and said it was meaningful because of the group’s thorough vetting process. Diversity makes communi- ties and elected bodies stronger, he says, and it’s important for LGBTQ+ people to have representatives who can speak for them. “The Victory Fund recognizes that,” courtesy William Waybourn ple were often shunned because of mis- guided fears about casual transmission. For a time, conspiracy theories spread that it could be contracted like the common cold. Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., an influential and frequent presidential candidate known for his homophobic and anti-Se- mitic views, speculated that the U.S. gov- ernment had lied about the truth behind AIDS. “There is no known case, in which any research institution has conducted tests to determine whether AIDS is or is not actually transmitted by coughing, kiss- ing, or insect-bites, for example,” he wrote in a 1987 Democratic candidate pamphlet. Fervent LaRouche followers once fought for political power in Dallas County. GUTS would stage protests to confront his supporters, counteracting propaganda with accurate AIDS information. In 1981, one person reportedly died from the disease in Dallas County, according to a decades-old news package. The annual death toll ballooned from there: 78 in 1984 to an estimated 129 the following year. Crossroads Market, Dallas’ LGBTQ+ community center, had 12 partners when it first opened, Waybourn says. Only two re- mained by the time they sold it roughly a de- cade later in 1991: Waybourn and his boyfriend. Everyone else had died. Funerals were frequent. “Two a week, sometimes three a week,” Waybourn says. “And you didn’t go to T-ball practice. You went to learn how to sink an IV.” Medicine left behind by the deceased was given to those in need. William Waybourn led GUTS in the 1980s. Dallas Gay Alliance sued in 1988 with claims that Parkland Hospital had just one physician who handled more than 700 AIDS patients every month. The waiting list for treatment grew and grew. Seven people re- portedly died before they could get care. Waybourn remembers that at the time, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce had invested heavily in a tourism promotion campaign. Yet the greatest resource someone with HIV could receive was a bus or plane ticket to a city with better services, he says. Parkland now has neighborhood clinics all over the city, Waybourn says. Officials real- ized that it was better to put medicine where the people were. “There’s a lot more savings in wellness than there is in illness,” he says. A fter years of demonstrating and cor- recting misinformation, Waybourn set his sights on public office. Ann Richards recognized that EMILY’s List, a political action committee supporting Dem- ocratic women, had helped her secure the Texas governor’s mansion in 1990. LGBTQ+ people needed something similar, Way- bourn thought. So he created the Victory Fund. Waybourn drove to Washington, D.C., in April 1991 with his dog Pepper, a German shepherd and lab mix. His longtime partner, Craig Spaulding, headed that way months later, bringing along the couple’s two cats, Yuri and Buford Pussy. A basement office served as headquarters, which housed a West says, “and they help candidates who might not otherwise have a platform or … a strong support network to get started.” T he quilt panel was crafted from white cloth with hand-cut black letters and spelled out a grim message. “My name is Duane Kearns Puryear,” it read. “I was born on December 20, 1964. I was diag- nosed with AIDS on September 7, 1987 at 4:45 PM. I was 22 years old. Sometimes, it makes me very sad.. I made this panel my- self. If you are reading it, I am dead …” Puryear, who died in 1991, had been ac- tive as an organizer with GUTS and partici- pated in the potter’s field demonstration, according to The Dallas Way. He aspired to be “the first person to make his own panel for the AIDS Quilt,” a grand memorial hon- oring AIDS victims. Today, the quilt has nearly 110,000 names stitched into some 50,000 panels, according to the National AIDS Memorial. Equality Texas CEO Ricardo Martinez has read about the quilt and says when he was a teen, he was inspired by organizations like ACT UP. (Eventually, Waybourn says, ACT UP embraced GUTS and the group up- dated its name to GUTS: ACT UP.) Even though the LGBTQ+ community has made progress over the past few de- cades, those gains need to be defended, Mar- tinez says. Texas has turned increasingly combative toward gay and transgender rights over the past two years. Lawmakers have banned trans kids from participating on the sports team that aligns with their gender identity, and some want to outlaw family-friendly drag shows. MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 JUNE 23–29, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
