HoustonChronical.com
More gays pick
Galveston
as spot to live and
relax
Visitor's center,
church, businesses
catering to Isle's
growing group
By ALLAN TURNER,
chron.com from the Web, December 25, 2007
Houston, Dec. 24 -- With its
laid-back lifestyle and low cost of living, Galveston promises to become the gay
tourist mecca and residential center of the South, said activist-publisher Laura
Villagran, who earlier this month opened the city's first gay and lesbian
visitor's center.
Long known for its vibrant bar scene and raucous Splash Day celebrations,
Galveston in recent years has become home to a growing gay and lesbian
professional class. Now, real estate agents say, the city is poised to
become a retirement haven for graying gays who, like their heterosexual
counterparts, succumb to the lure of sun and surf.
In recent years, signs of a growing gay presence have appeared in Galveston, a
city of 57,000 that boosters boast couples tolerance with a quirky small-town
charm.
Last year, Harbor Metropolitan Community Church, catering to gay worshippers,
opened on 39th Street. This year, roughly 8,000 revelers turned out for
the summer Splash Day celebration on East Beach and, in October, throngs jammed
the Strand for the city's first gay pride festival.
Liberal residents
Now, Villagran's visitor's center, which functions as a travel agency and
clearing house for tips on entertainment, real estate, health services and
gay-friendly businesses, occupies a prominent spot near the heart of the city's
tourist district.
A recent Houston-area survey by Rice University sociology professor and pollster
Stephen Klineberg found Galveston residents the region's most liberal on the key
issue of gay marriage. Forty-five percent of island participants believed
such marriages should be given legal status. Elsewhere in the Houston
area, no more than 33 percent agreed, and in Montgomery and Fort Bend counties,
the total dropped to about 25 percent.
Lawyer-real estate agent David Bowers experienced such apparent tolerance
first-hand when, during his bid for a third term on City Council in 1998, he was
denounced in a newspaper advertisement as a homosexual. Bowers, who was
running unopposed, was unfazed.
"It was amazing," said Bowers, who later made an unsuccessful bid for mayor.
"What was heartening about the whole experience was that many straight families
called me in support. They were very concerned that someone in Galveston
would run that ad. The whole community was embarrassed."
'Couldn't afford prejudice'
Curtiss Brown, a longtime Galveston political observer who has lived on the
island more than three decades, suggested that scrutinizing the island through a
prism of gay life is "putting a magnifying glass on an elephant."
"It's more broad than that," he said, arguing that the city's history as an
immigration port and its devastating 1900 hurricane contributed to a
far-reaching tolerance. "We learned that we just couldn't afford
prejudice."
Although anti-gay sentiment occasionally has surfaced — in 1999 a Houston
minister led a protest at a newly opened gay beachfront motel — gay-straight
relations in the city generally have been harmonious.
OutSmart magazine editor Tim Brookover, a Galveston native, observed that the
island city long has had a gay presence, "but people didn't recognize it or talk
openly about it."
Villagran said people increasingly "are coming out of the closet, so to speak,
and choosing to live openly as gays."
"As time has gone by, as history has played out, there's been much less stigma,"
said Trey Click, editor and publisher of The Parrot, an island entertainment
monthly. "People have recognized that it's not — oh my God! — the gays
have come to ruin the world. During the last 10 years, there's been a big
increase in gay-owned property."
Real estate sales up
Phil DeMarco, owner of the gay-oriented Lost Bayou Guesthouse, noted that at
least four other homes within two blocks of his bed and breakfast are owned by
gays. And real estate agent V.J. Tramonte confirmed that sales to gays and
lesbians have speeded up in the past two or three years.
Bowers, who currently works as a real estate agent, placed the city's gay
population at 10 percent.
Gay real estate agent Eldredge Langlinais, a former Houston resident who also
owns the Pink Dolphin Bar and heads the gay Krewe of Banner Mardi Gras group,
said many gays are attracted by the city's large stock of older homes.
And, as many are childless, he said, they have the financial resources to
restore more derelict properties.
"I first bought a weekend cottage in 1978," he said. "When I crossed the
causeway — the ambience, the different look, the palm trees, the older houses
and, of course, the water — I'd know immediately that I was somewhere else."
allan.turner@chron.com
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