By David Webb – The Rare Reporter During every election cycle at some point I start to wonder why anyone would even want to run for elected office in light of the nastiness of politics. It’s easy to see why older LGBT people would be attracted to the idea of public service because it provides an opportunity to put professional skills to use for the public good while keeping busy in retirement. We also know how important it is for the advancement of LGBT rights to have openly gay people serving on government bodies. It sounds like a perfect idea for the professional who is retired or nearing retirement to round out a career, but be forewarned of the risks. Any candidate announcing a political campaign opens themselves up to the most invasive intrusion into their personal and professional lives possible. The truth is that practically everyone has something in their lives that they would just as soon not become public knowledge, and that might well happen. No matter how long ago something happened and regardless of whether it went unnoticed at the time, someone will either remember it or discover it when the spotlight focuses on a political candidate. And misdemeanor convictions suddenly become a very big deal.
A lesbian Dallas City Council candidate recently learned that when she went before The Dallas Morning News editorial board and found herself under fire over a misdemeanor criminal record. The editorial board had obviously done its homework by researching the candidate’s criminal record. It’s really easy to do because the Dallas County District Clerk’s Web site and many other government entities across the country offer free public access to all criminal and civil records. And for a small fee anyone can access commercial Web sites that offer the same information about anyone living anywhere. On her own, the candidate owned up to pleading guilty in 2007 to misdemeanor theft in connection with her former job as executive director of a nonprofit local public improvement district. The candidate said an audit of her expense reimbursements turned up irregularities. The reimbursements were for cash payments she made for contract labor and supplies for maintenance jobs such as painting and minor repairs in connection with public improvements, she noted. The audit reportedly revealed an absence of substantiating receipts. Originally, she wanted to go to trial and fight the charge, said the candidate, who was fired from her job in 2005 over the discrepancy, but after two years she was broke and unable to proceed. It didn’t seem like such a big deal to plead guilty to misdemeanor theft to end the case, she said. Her penalty was a $1,000 fine and a probated 180-day sentence. What the candidate apparently didn’t realize was that the editorial board would also uncover an almost two-decade-old DWI conviction and a bad check for $20 she wrote almost a decade ago in a grocery store. The candidate said she didn’t mention the DWI because it had occurred so long ago, and she didn’t even think about the bad check that she made good for in 2009 when she learned about it from the District Attorney’s collection division. The Dallas Morning News editorial board however did think it was a big deal, and in an editorial they declined to endorse the candidate over it while noting she seemed capable and had some good ideas. At the same time, it declined to endorse the incumbent or a third candidate in the race, without saying anything good about them. Having known the lesbian candidate as a strong neighborhood leader for more than a decade, I believed her explanation about the theft charge. As regards the DWI and the bad check charges, they’re as common as rodents and insects in all parts of the country. Last weekend, the lesbian candidate wound up losing the race and coming in third place. It’s hard to know how much the revelation of the misdemeanor criminal record had to do with her losing, but it obviously didn’t help. Of course, the message here is for anyone considering a run for political office to make sure and check their criminal record before they step into the spotlight. There’s no telling who or what might be waiting to jump on stage with you. David Webb is a veteran journalist who has covered LGBT issues for the mainstream and alternative media for three decades. E-mail him at davidwaynewebb@yahoo.com.]]>

David Webb – The Rare Reporter Despite its stellar, well-known rise to political prominence in many cities across the country, local LGBT communities might find themselves hard-pressed to document their glory days in coming years. We apparently are forgetting our history as fast as we live each new day. So many people have either died, moved away from the cities of their youth or both that the number of people who remember what happened in their locales after the birth of the gay rights movement in June 1969 are dwindling daily. It’s not unusual for people not to be able to remember local LGBT political gains in cities nationwide because definitive histories have not been written about our local cultures. It’s not unusual for arguments to break out about what gay bars existed when and where because there is so little record of their existence. If we don’t remember where we’ve been and what we’ve done, are we prepared for where we need to go in the future? Many LGBT communities are fortunate to have long-running publications that have chronicled the events of several decades, but most lack those resources. Some LGBT people have amassed personal collections of gay magazines, newspapers and other literature dating back to World War II before most people in the community were born. But I’m only aware of a few cities where such collections have been saved for scholarly use. When old timers in the LGBT community talk about what they witnessed decades ago, it provides a fascinating glimpse into what life was like for LGBT people struggling in an oppressive time that most of us have never experienced. Research of newspaper archives reveals that in the 1950s and 1960s law enforcement agencies aggressively pursed gay people in their homes during private parties. People were literally arrested for same-sex dancing in those days. PBS has produced a fascinating 90-minute documentary, “Stonewall Uprising,” that focuses on LGBT life in New York City in the 1960s and what led up to the pivotal moment in 1969 when gay men, lesbians and drag queens decided to revolt against tyranny. Likewise, there have been show business histories written about the persecution of LGBT people in Hollywood in the 1950s, but what happened in most other cities is in danger of being lost forever. LGBT communities thrived in some manner in every city of any size, and it needs to be documented. We can’t afford to forget that our lives today are literally blessed in comparison to what the people before us experienced. We can’t ever let politicians forget that our lives matter, and that we will never go back to the old days of subjugation. And don’t ever forget that there are still many people around who would like to see our community dissolved and powerless. Pastors of churches that are members of the powerful Southern Baptist Convention are proponents of a movement to discredit and render us politically powerless. That’s why it is important to document our history, to show young people in our community what we accomplished and to show our detractors that we’ve fought many battles in the past and that we will do it again if necessary. Perhaps, it could be a collaborative effort with many writers who lived through the times reflecting on what happened. We’ve certainly got the talent and the resources in every city to document our history. The idea has been tossed around before, but apparently nothing has ever came of it. Isn’t it time that we did it? David Webb is a veteran journalist who has covered LGBT issues for the mainstream and alternative media for three decades. E-mail him at davidwaynewebb@yahoo.com. ]]>