Courting Nikki

She's been with the ancestors for the last seven months and her 44 year life was way too short for all of us who loved her, but Nikki Araguz Loyd will never be forgotten by me or anyone in our community.

She will also not be forgotten for her ginormous contribution to trans rights for us trans Texans.  It was her tenacious and ultimately successful six year legal fight in the Delgado v Araguz case that secured marriage rights for us here in the Lone Star State.

Courting Nikki is a short documentary by Cressandra Thibodeaux that follows Nikki through this case.  It also brought back some memories for me of that time and the amazing complex woman I was blessed  to call my friend.

This documentary video was shown at Nikki's memorial service

30th Anniversary of the Crushing of the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations

'It's a reminder to those of us who live in democracies that as much as we gripe about the imperfect nature of the governments we live under, these freedoms are hard won and require eternal vigilance to keep.' 
-TransGriot  June 4, 2009 

Back in May 1989 the world watched as student led demonstrations calling for greater democracy and an end to government corruption occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square as the world watched.

Then late in the evening on June 3 and into the early morning hours of June 4 the plug was pulled on the international television network's live feeds. moments later PLA troops rolled into the square with trucks and tanks firing their weapons to brutally end the protests .

Estimates of the dead ranged from 200 to 1000 people as China was universally condemned for what happened.  It also produced this iconic photo of a lone Chinese man stepping in front of a tank column before being taken away by police to a still unknown fate.

It's now been 30 years since that fateful evening that impacted modern Chinese history.  Despite their Chinese government's diligent efforts to scrub it or suppress any knowledge that it happened inside the country , those of us outside of China ensure that the memory of what happened in 1989 never dies.

And we must keep the memory of what happened alive for future generations so that those persons who died in Tiananmen Square didn't do so in vain.

     

Sarah Thomas Making NFL History Again

It's often said in sports circles that the best officials are ones whose names don't get in the headlines or don't make ESPN Sports Center for making bad calls. 

Sarah Thomas' name is in the headlines again because she is a trailblazer, and that's always a good thing.

The Mississippi native and mother of three kids is in her fourth season as a NFL official, and is STILL making history.  She is the first woman to not only officiate in an NFL preseason and regular season game, she is also the first to officiate in a regular season college game, a college bowl game, and the first to do so in a Big Ten Conference stadium.

The other interesting note for me is that Thomas' first NFL game was right here in Houston.  She was part of  referee Pete Morelli's officiating crew working the September 13, 2015 game at NRG Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and my Texans.

When the playoff game between the Los Angeles Changers and New England Cheatriots Patriots kicks off this weekend at Gillette Stadium, Thomas will become the first woman to officiate an NFL playoff game.

If you're wondering how NFL referees get assigned to the high stakes playoff games, it is based on a merit system.    Officials are individually graded by the league office for their work on every play during regular season games.

The system takes into account calls the make or don't make.   There are also subjective elements that play a part in the evaluations such as communication, decisiveness, game management, rules knowledge and positioning on the field.

The scores are tabulated, and the officials are placed in three tiers.  Tier I officials are eligible to work in the Super Bowl or the AFC and NFL conference championship games.   Tier II officials are assigned to the wild card or divisional round playoff games 

If you're in Tier III, you not only don't work any playoff games, you are probably looking at being placed on probation.   Two consecutive years in Tier III leads to your dismissal from the NFL's officiating ranks. 

We now know based on her assignment to this divisional round playoff game, that Sarah Thomas was in the Tier II group of officials for the 2018 NFL season.   Hopefully one day we will see her make more history officiating a conference championship game or a Super Bowl.

It's a safe bet that will probably happen for her sooner rather than later. 

Congratulations Judge Rabeea Collier!

Yesterday afternoon I got to witness some Texas history being made.

While many people have heard of the 17 African American women being elected to the judicial benches in Harris County, another story being missed is that we had a large group of Asian American judges running for office in this cycle as well.

One of those judges who was successfully elected was Rabeea Sultan Collier.   This was her second run for a judicial bench.  She lost a Democratic primary runoff for the 11th District bench in 2016.

Her second run was much more successful.  She overwhelmingly won the 2018 Democratic primary race for the 113th District Court seat, and comfortably defeated the Republican incumbent Michael Landrum in the November midterm election.

The TSU Thurgood Marshall School of Law grad has been a practicing attorney for 12 years.  She's served as a board member of the Harris County Democratic Lawyers' Association, the Association of Women Attorneys, and served on the State bar of Texas' Women in the Profession Committee.

During the 2018 cycle, Collier made history on multiple fronts with her November 6 win.   She became the first person of Pakistani descent and the first Muslim woman to ever win a Texas judicial bench.

I had the honor and distinct pleasure of watching Rabeea's investiture ceremony yesterday inside a packed Harris County Civil Court building ceremonial courtroom in which she took the oaths of office.

As of Wednesday morning, she began writing her own chapter of the distinguished history of the 113th District Court.   She is only the second woman ever to serve as a judge in this court.

Along the way she will serve as a role model and a leader to many inside and outside her community 

Congratulations Judge Collier!  It was an honor and a pleasure to be there to witness history and meet your family.  I know you will be an outstanding judge, and continue to be a trailblazing leader in our community.

Historic Change Comes To Fort Bend County!

When I was growing up in Houston,  I had a great uncle and aunt who lived in Rosenberg that we used to visit every Christmas until they moved to Houston during my college years. Fort Bend County was despite a sizable Black population, largely white and conservative leaning.

It was Tom DeLay's power base during the 80's and 90's as a reliably red suburb on the southwest corner of purple to blue Harris County.   DeLay rose from here to prominence in the Texas GOP and a state legislative seat.  He eventually got to Washington DC repping the 22nd Congressional District, and became the House Majority Leader and a major adversary of President Bill Clinton.

Fort Bend County isn't red any more.  It has increasingly been trending purple because of the numerous suburban neighborhood that have popped up around Missouri City, Sugar Land, Katy and Rosenberg like Mission Bend, Sienna Plantation, Quail Valley and others.

Fort Bend County not only became since the 80's one of the Houston metropolitan area's fastest growing suburbs next to Montgomery County to the north of us, it is also rapidly diversifying. 

That spells political trouble for the Texas and Fort Bend County Republican Party.

Tom DeLay Country finally flipped blue in the midterms, and while we were at NRG Center yesterday gleefully celebrating Harris County going deep blue, down I-69 our suburban neighbors were having a very Happy Blue Year celebrating their own historic gains.

The Fort Bend Democrats had come close in 2016.   Hillary Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Fort Bend County in decades, but unlike here in Harris County, Republicans still won countywide, but by much narrower margins than usual.

That set the stage for what happened on November 6 when the Blue electoral tsunami hit Fort Bend County.

Brian Middleton became the first African American ever elected as the Fort Bend County DA. He was also the first Democrat elected as Fort Bend County DA in 25 years. 

But they didn't stop there.  KP George was also elected to become Fort Bend County judge (the chief executive of the county) and become the first South Asian elected a county judge anywhere in the state of Texas. 

George, as Lina Hidalgo made happen here in Harris County, unseated a longtime Republican incumbent in Robert Herbert, who had held the position for 15 years.

Missouri City also elected its first African American mayor in Yolanda Ford.   The lifelong resident of the town and city council member beat incumbent mayor Allen Owen, who had been running the city for nearly 25 years.

Fort Bend County also elected seven Democratic judges, one of them being a high school classmate of mine in Teana Watson.   This was her third attempt at a judicial run, losing in 2012 to James Shoemake for the 434th District Court, then four years later narrowly losing the race for the 400th District Court to GOP incumbent judge Maggie Jaramillo.

The third time was the charm for Watson in her race for the Fort Bend County Court At Law #5 bench, comfortably beating Republican Harold Kennedy. 

Shapnik Khan, the vice chair of the Fort Bend Democratic Party, also attributed the wins to the increasing diversity of the county.

“It’s the minorities like us,” he said in an interview with Ella Feldman. “The Asian-Americans, the Hispanics, the African-Americans, it’s a combination of the different ethnicities. They’re moving in, and not only moving in, but getting involved.”
That they are.   Even more importantly, they are working together to change the county for the better and make its leaders and government officials as diverse as Fort Bend County is.Congrats Fort Bend Dems!  The easy part is over of flipping the county blue.   Now comes the hard work of keeping it that way.

Apollo 8 50th Anniversary

Fifty years ago today the Apollo 8 mission was launched just four days before Christmas.

1968 had been a rough, tumultuous year.  We'd lost the Rev Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to assassins bullets.  Riots had broken out in several US cities.  Czechoslovakia got invaded by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact to put an end to the Prague Spring.
The Vietnam War was raging, and the protests against it were ramping up.  Nixon was now the president-elect after LBJ declined to run for another term.

Despite all the national and international drama, NASA was still working to make President Kennedy's challenge to the country to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade happen.

And this mission was critical to making the other goal happen with the clock inexorably ticking toward the end of the 1960's.

After launching on December 20 with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders onboard   was one packed with historical firsts.   The first to leave Earth and set out for another celestial body.  Most importantly in that Cold War space race period, the first manned mission to orbit the moon. 

It arrived at the moon to start its ten orbits of the moon on Christmas Eve.   And then the got the sight and the photo of a lifetime, the famous shot of Earth rising above the moon.

They also sent a message from lunar orbit to the people back on Earth breathlessly watching the mission.



Seven months later, the mission that President Kennedy had set the nation on course to complete would be accomplished with Apollo 11 landing on the moon that July.

Dewey's Historical Marker Erases and Gaywashes Black Trans History

'It's always sad to me when a historic site closes,   Here's hoping that someone in the Philly LGBT community will work to have a historical marker placed at that spot where Black trans history was made once the new hotel is completed.'

-TransGriot, April 25, 2017 
One of the trans themed protests that I have talked about on this blog was the 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit In and Protest, in which gender variant African Americans led a weeklong protest starting on April 25 at the diner that led to the owners rescinding a transphobic policy.

Because Dewey's was a 24 hour eatery near the Philly gayborhood, it was a hangout for trans and gender nonconforming people.  The owners, afraid they would lose cis customer business, announced a policy that anyone who was dressed in attire at odds with their birth gender would not be served.

After getting protested for a week, they dropped that policy.

Dewey's, operating since 1978 at 219 S. 17th St, as a 24 hour restaurant called Little Pete's, permanently closed last year and was subsequently demolished to make room for a new Hyatt Hotel on the site. 

During the 2015 LGBT Media Journalists Convening, the hotel we were using for the convening was directly across the street from the restaurant.   When I was told during the opening mixer event by local Philly community folks that we were across the street from this trans historical spot,  all of the trans journalists in attendance that year quickly agreed after I told them that we would take a photo in front of Dewey's.

During a break in the convening action, we  along with NLGJA executive director Adam Pawlus went across the street to take that photo.

While I was happy someone read my blog post about the Dewey's closure last year and started the process to get a Pennsylvania historical marker placed at the former Dewey's site that I suggested in the post, what I'm not happy about, and neither is the Philadelphia Black trans community, is that the marker gaywashed and erased us out of history we made.

The marker was dedicated on October 1, and there is no mention on the historical marker that it was Black trans gender variant people who sparked, led and executed this event. 

The text of the marker states: “Activists led one of the nation’s first LGBT sit-ins here in 1965 after homosexuals were denied service at Dewey’s restaurant. Inspired by African-American lunch-counter sit-ins, this event prompted Dewey’s to stop its discriminatory policy, an early victory for LGBT rights.”

Frankly, I'm not surprised it happened.   I've had Philly based Black TBLGQ advocates candidly talk to me about the disturbing undercurrent of anti-Blackness in the Philly TBLGQ community. 

 I've been worried that because of that Philly area anti-Blackness, erasure of the involvement of Black trans people in the the text of the marker for the Dewey's sit in would happen if we weren't involved in the process while it was being created to emphatically insist that the marker reflect that. 

I also suspected it might happen because ever since I've started talking about Dewey's on this blog and on the Bilerico Project that I used to write for, I got pushback from white gays trying to whitewash the event, or assert there wasn't any African American or trans involvement in it. 

Here's hoping that the Philly activist community can get the gaywashed marker corrected so it tells the real story for future generations who read it about what happened on that spot where it stands over 60 years ago

30th Anniversary Of Ann Richards DNC Keynote Speech

Thirty years ago today Ann Richards, who was our state treasurer at the time, gave  the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention delegates gathered in Atlanta.

Two years later, she would become the second female governor of Texas.

She is still dearly missed by all of us who loved having her in the Governor's Mansion and in Texas Democratic Party circles. 

It would be interesting to see what Governor Ann would say about the current occupant of the White House if she were still with us.

But enjoy this respite from the Trump madness and check out this video of her 1988 keynote speech.

85th Anniversary of Nazi Book Burning

"Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."
-Heinrich Heine, 1920 

85 years ago today Nazi Germany committed a crime against knowledge. 

After conducting a May 6 raid on the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute which since 1919 had been doing pioneering research on trans and gay people, on May 10, 1933 the institute's 20,000 books and 500 images along with other 'unGerman' books went up in flames in the Opernplatz (now called the Bebelplatz) as Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels spoke in front of a crowd of 40,000 people.

The other critical thing that was seized in that May 6 raid was the Institute's lists of names and addresses.   Some historians assert the list was used by the Gestapo and SS to launch the 1934 purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA and round up of the German TBLGQ people left in the country called Operation Hummingbird. 

Marking the spot in the Bebelplatz where our TBLGQ history and knowledge went up in flames along with other books deemed 'unGerman' by the Nazi regime is a plaque with the Heine quote and a glass panel.   It's a window that allows you to peer into an underground room with empty bookshelves, symbolizing the knowledge and history that went up in flames on that day. 

We are dangerously close in the United States to not heeding the lessons of the rise of Nazi Germany and repeating its deadly to marginalized peoples mistakes.

Conservatives are quick to call any news story or article criticizing them as 'fake news' and even call any news outlets critical to them 'lugenpresse'.

That needs to stop before it does damage to our country we can't fix in a few election cycles .

Finn Jones Makes Texas Trans Political History

As many of you are aware of, the Texas primary elections were held on Tuesday night.   In addition to seeing who won, who lost, who made it to the May 22 runoff elections and who advanced to the November 6 general elections, some Texas trans political history was made. 

Finnigan  'Finn'  Jones is running for the Texas House 94 seat in North Texas.   Because Jones didn't have an opponent in the Democratic primary, once the voting started, Jones became the first out trans masculine Texan to win a party primary race, and the first to do so for a Texas legislative seat.

Jones said this on his FB page when I pointed out the history he'd just made.

"Wow!!! I honestly had not even thought about that. As I pointed out to her (TransGriot),  I am running for all of us. We have a right to have a voice at the table and be heard. Not just on lgbtq Rights, but on health care, public education, teacher retirement, discrimination in all forms and so much more,." he wrote. 

"I am proud to be that voice and that ear for the community. I will always listen and I will always learn and progress forward. Our citizens deserve that much from their elected officials."

Yes, we do.

Hs opponent in the general election will be the incumbent state rep Tony Tinderholt.(R-Arlington) who is considered the fourth most conservative member of the Texas Legislature, is a member of the Texas Freedom Caucus and as you probably guessed, is not a friend of our community.

Finn is going to have his work cut out for him if he is going to make the history of becoming the first trans Texan elected to our state legislature. 

But as the old saying goes, you have to be in it to win it, and Finn has cleared the first hurdle to make that happen by getting the Democratic Party nomination.

Here's hoping he makes even more history on November 6.

Here's A Real SOTU Speech By A Real POTUS

For those of you who are boycotting (like I am) Dear Orange Misleader's State of the Union speech and are wishing you could once again see a president we could all be proud of giving one of these addresses,
may I present to you President Obama's final State of the Union address in 2016.

What a galaxy of difference in terms of not only intellect and respect of our president, but actually having someone who can speak in complete sentences, unlike the white supremacist idiot we have now.

Enjoy

My Houston Statue Replacement Suggestions

Don't think that because we're still recovering from Hurricane Harvey's aftermath that we've forgotten about that hideous Spirit of the Confederacy statue desecrating Sam Houston Park that alas, Harvey's raging floodwaters didn't mercifully wash away.

We still want that statue celebrating the triumph of Jim Crow segregation and put up during that time to go away.

Some folks have asked when it is taken down, and when is the operative word here, what should go up in its place?

Easy. Put a statue up honoring a prominent Houstonian.

First up is to erect a statue in that spot honoring Barbara Jordan, a proud daughter of this city.  

She became in 1967 the first (and sadly so far) only Black woman elected to the Texas Senate and the first Black Texan to be elected to the Texas Legislature since Reconstruction.  

She then made history again by getting elected to the US House of Representatives in the newly created 18th Congressional District in 1972.   She was on the Judiciary Committee during the Watergate impeachment hearings , made two historic keynote speeches to Democratic national conventions in 1976 and 1992 and was the ethics advisor for Gov Ann Richards.

She made history even when she died in 1996.   She became the first Black Texan to be interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, where she is buried with other Texas heroes and sheroes right next to her friend Gov. Ann Richards.

My next suggestion is US Rep. George Thomas 'Mickey' Leland,

While he wasn't born here, (born in Lubbock,TX)  Leland grew up in 5th Ward, graduated from Wheatley and later from TSU.

He was a two term state legislator who succeeded Barbara Jordan when she retired from the US House in 1978. He served as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus during the 99th Congress, and chair of the House Select Committee on Hunger

Leland was a humanitarian and advocate who was killed in an August 1989 plane crash at age 44 while on a mission to bring food to famine stricken Ethiopia.  

May I also suggest for a statue the first female mayor of Houston in Kathy Whitmire?  

Many of the powers that be hated her, but she was actually the first candidate I was eligible to vote for in a Houston mayoral election.

The native Houstonian CPA and UH grad served as our city controller before she won election in 1981 by building a broad progressive coalition that she successfully maintained it for 10 years across five two year terms.

Her bid for a sixth consecutive two year term as mayor was derailed when her diverse coalition suffered major defections by Lanier taking some of her white support and Black voters supporting Sylvester Turner's bid to become Houston's first Black mayor.

She broke the power grip that the 'good old boys' had on city politics and the mayor's chair.  It's why the Houston conservatives pushed term limits after Bob Lanier won in a 1991 runoff with future (and current) Houston mayor Sylvester Turner.

Whitmire appointed our first Black police chief in Lee Brown, who in 1998 would later become our first African-American mayor.  She appointed now state Sen. Sylvia Garcia to a municipal judgeship as our first Latina municipal judge, and was a vocal supporter of METRO's plan to build a rail component to our public transit system.

She also tried to pass in 1984 a non discrimination ordinance that also covered gay people that met the same death by referendum fate as HERO did 30 years later  

But those are just three worthy Houstonians I can think of who deserve to have a statue commemorating them in Sam Houston Park instead of that white supremacist abomination that sits there now.  

Dallas' Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade Names First Ever Trans Grand Marshal

During our pride parade here in Houston history was made when Lou Weaver was elected to become our first ever trans masculine parade grand marshal.  

Trans history is also being made on the other end of I-45 in Dallas for their Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade.   While most cities in the Lone Star State celebrate TBLGQ pride near the traditional historic late June date that can get a tad warm down here, Dallas celebrates it in September.

When Dallas' pride parade takes place on September 17, it will have its first ever trans grand marshal of any gender in Nicole O'Hara Munro.  She's also making history as the first ever African American ever named Dallas parade grand marshal.

Born in NOLA, Nicole now lives in Dallas, and is a trans rights advocate who works with an TBLGQ youth group and A Nu Trans Movement in addition to being the show hostess at Marty's Live.

And it's so apropos that it happened for this year's parade.   Texas trans people are under GOP legislative attack, and 14 of the 16 people we've lost in 2017 have been Black trans women.

It's gratifying to see that Dallas has elected a Black trans woman as their grand marshal.

She will be joined by the parade's masculine grand marshal in newly elected District 6 Councilmember Omar Narvaez .  He is the first openly gay candidate elected to the Dallas City Council in over a decade.

I've already commented on Omar's awesomeness on this blog, and glad to see he's being recognized for the trailblazing work he has done in the DFW area

 Congrats to both of the 2017 parade grand marshals.   May need to check my schedule and see if I can be up there for this piece of modern Texas trans history.

50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia SCOTUS Case

Today is the 50th anniversary of the US Supreme Court dropping the landmark Loving v Virginia case decision which killed the laws prohibiting interracial marriage in this county.

The case was brought by an interracial couple, Mildred and Richard Loving, who had gotten married in Washington DC in 1958 and returned to Virginia to live.   They were arrested, tried and convicted in the town of Bowling Green, VA for violating the white supremacist 1924 Racial Integrity Act.

They were sentenced to a year in jail, but the sentence was suspended under the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return for 30 years not even to visit family.  

The Lovings moved to Washington DC, and Mildred Loving wrote a letter to then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy appealing for help in their case.

That letter was forwarded to the ACLU,  whose lawyers subsequently filed the legal case that went to the Supreme Court.   On June 12, 1967 the SCOTUS unanimously ruled that Virginia's laws against interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment and were unconstitutional.  

That ruling overturned similar laws still on the books in 16 states, and led to a surge of interracial marriages.  In addition, the precedent set in the Loving v Virginia case was cited in several cases holding that restrictions on same sex marriage in the United States was unconstitutional, including the 2015 Obergefell v Hodges SCOTUS decision.

In fact, Mildred Loving on the 40th anniversary of the case commented about the then same sex marriage battle that was raging and winding its way through the courts.

"I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights."

Richard Loving died in 1975 and Mildred Loving died in 2008, so they didn't get to see that legal precedent they set by standing up against injustice being used to strike down injustice against another group of marginalized Americans.

And in the United States today, one in every six married couples is an interracial one and I know more than a few of those couples in my own life.

So while this case wasn't exclusively about love conquering all as the movie Loving would have you believe, this case at its core was about striking down white supremacist oppression and an unjust law.

At the same time, to borrow a line from Battlestar Galactica, you cannot declare war on love.

Texas Trans History- The Texas 'T' Party

In the wake of the recent death of Linda Phillips, one of the co-organizers of this event along with her wife Cynthia, been needing to talk about this event that grew to become one of the largest trans themed conferences events in the nation.

And even better, it was based here in Texas.

Back the late 80's, the trans community was tentatively beginning to come out of isolation and forming local transgender support groups that allowed crossdressers and trans people to meet each other, form friendships and go on public local outings as a group in addition to being informed about the latest developments in pre-Internet Trans World.

One of those support groups that sprang up was the San Antonio area based Boulton and Park Society that formed in 1986.

Linda and Cynthia Phillips joined it not long after its formation, and the couple soon ascended to leadership roles in the organization.  Linda became the secretary and treasurer of the Boulton and Park society, while her wife Cynthia became the Executive Director  

Linda and Cynthia also became board members of IFGE, the International Foundation For Gender Education in the 1990's along with doing the talk show circuit to talk about their marriage in which one partner is transgender and the other cisgender.

The Texas 'T' Party started in 1988 as a way for Boulton and Park Society members and other Central Texas area crossdressers to have an event that allowed them to be en femme for an entire weekend at a local San Antonio hotel.  They were only expecting 20-40 people to show up, but to their surprise the word got out and 128 people attended that inaugural event.

The second Texas 'T' Party in February 1989 had 75 people journeying to San Antonio a full day before the conference officially started on Friday, so programming was extended by a day to have events on Thursday starting in 1990.

The 'T' Party grew to include vendors, beauticians, manicurists, makeup artists, photographers, panel discussions, a talent show, programming for the spouses and a keynote speaker.  It also quickly assembled a large mailing list of attendees from across the nation and several countries.

The 'T' Party growth was so explosive that by the third annual one in February 1990 it was not only drawing over 300 regular participants, it had forged a deal with American Airlines to become their official air carrier.  As part of that relationship with American Airlines, a coupon discounting air travel to San Antonio for the event was included in the T Party event confirmation packet.

The Texas 'T' Party growing in a short time to major trans convention status was critical to the startup and success of another Texas based event that was the genesis of the political organizing and messaging of the modern trans rights movement in the International Conference of Transgender Law and Employment Policy.  (ICTLEP).

Phyllis Frye attended the 1992 'T' Party in order to help promote the inaugural August 26-30, 1992 one of what turned out to be six ICTLEP conferences in Houston with the blessing of the Phillipses, who became major supporters of the ICTLEP conference.

The explosive growth of the Texas 'T' Party led to it not only becoming a weeklong event, but outgrowing its original hotel to become arguably the largest trans themed convention in the United States.

After hosting the 1995 'T' Party at a new San Antonio hotel, it surprisingly moved up I-35 to Dallas for two years in 1996 and 1997 for its eighth and ninth annual editions before returning the T' Party back home to San Antonio for its 10th anniversary edition in 1998

But the 1990's also saw the growth of other trans themed conferences like the Southern California based California Dreaming, Fantasia Fair in Provincetown, MA and an Atlanta based one called Southern Comfort which was also rapidly growing in popularity in Trans World.

The Phillipses also being busy during the decade with television appearances, collegiate panel discussions, sitting on boards in addition to holding leadership roles within the Boulton and Park Society and being the principal organizers of the T Party led to the decision to end it with one final Texas T Party in 1999.

For eleven years the Texas 'T' Party was the destination convention for many crossdressers, trans people and their spouses who took advantage of the mild Texas winter-early spring weather to be themselves if only for a week in the Lone Star State before it ended.

Thanks to the Phillipses and the team that worked to put on the Texas 'T' Party for over a decade, it was more than just a weeklong party.  It was also an event that educated and informed our community, helped many find lifelong friends, helped many people come to the epiphany that they were definitely trans, and was a critical early informational building block in the modern trans rights movement.

And it did so with a Texas twang and that legendary Texas hospitality..