Parker celebrates with her partner Photo: AP

History has been made…deep in the heart of Texas.  Where the doctrine of the conservative right usually reigns, a mold has been broken.  Houston, TX is the largest city in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor.  Annise Parker has done it – and she has not only proven herself worthy of the job, but has also proven that when it comes down to it, even a city in the conservative south is growing less and less concerned with a candidate’s gender and sexual orientation and more concerned with the issues.

The LGBT community is celebrating Parker’s win as hope for a more promising future.

“The fact that an openly gay candidate wins for mayor in the nation’s fourth largest city, in the South, in Texas, shows that when Americans get to know gay people as people, not as stereotypes, their resistance to treating gay people equally reduces,” Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, a gay-marriage advocacy group, told USA Today.

All of those anti-gay campaign efforts in Houston led anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups failed to sway the opinion of the majority.  What is that old saying…oh yes, stick and stones may break my bones but…Annise Parker has won anyway!