Mayor Annise Parker won reelection here — twice — by taking on some of the city’s most basic municipal problems: the water system, street repairs, homelessness.
But when Parker pushed aggressively for Houston to adopt nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people, the mayor’s support was tested and the fourth-largest city in the country found itself at the center of a national debate over LGBT rights.
Parker, the first openly lesbian mayor of a major U.S. city and a moderate, admittedly wonkish, politician, has made Tuesday’s citywide vote on the nondiscrimination ordinance a deeply personal battle.
Read more in the Los Angeles Times.